Dania Shapes | en

Dania Shapes is Daniel Lopatin, who began recording ambient compositions in his bedroom while studying aesthetic philosophy and experimental music at Hampshire College (USA). As a child, Lopatin had studied piano under the training of his mother, but he was a whimsical young boy and didn’t have the requisite precociousness that classical training required of him. Thus, he turned to his father’s old Roland Juno-60 synthesizer. He quickly learned a thing or two about the extreme drama of the mod wheel, erased all of his father’s organ presets in favor of toneless noise, and the rest is history.

Celebrating the potential of amateurishness, decadence and romance in the realm of digital audio arts, Lopatin looks to marry the aesthetic sensibilities of experimental electronics with his allegiance to the classically ‘beautiful’ in music. ‘Glitch’ is less a process for Lopatin, but an aesthetic for Dania shapes which Lopatin emulates by hand. Pairing the residual effects of romantic, heart string melodies with steroidal, detailed, maximalist noise, Dania Shapes’ audible bricolage is a tribute to both the beautiful and the broken all at once.

Soundsystems Pastoral was recorded during the winter of 2004 using synthesizers, a first generation digital sequencer, and a freeware sound editor. It was remixed in 2006 for release on Naiv Super. This summer Lopatin is collaborating with Christophe Bailleau on a composition which will appear on Bailleau’s upcoming full-length, as well as beginning work on the followup to Soundsystems Pastoral, entitled ‘Machines. Minuets’. .