Name: Fabio Florido
Nationality: Italian
Occupation: Producer
Current release: Fabio Florido's latest LP under his Disenthrall moniker, Balancing In The Digital Age, a collection of six immersive soundscape compositions, is available now via bandcamp.

If these thoughts by Fabio Florido piqued your interest, visit him on Soundcloud, Facebook and Instagram.

We also have a Fabio Florido interview if you'd like to dive deeper into his world.



Fabio Florido: "I think every single human being has experienced healing and hurting from music. Ah! Music. There is music for every moment of our lives, for every little facet, every mood. Sometimes it lifts us up, sometimes it sinks us deeper into our thoughts, but in the end who's to say it's not exactly what we need at that moment?

So in the end we could say that there is no music that "hurts", unless the consumption of it is obsessive. It would be important to vary, always, balance even in the consumption of music. And my experience is exactly this, having 360-degree ears (obviously always following a basic taste line), but I definitely invite many genres of music into my life, even when sometimes I really don’t like what I hear. Maybe when someone else has control of it, I still try to listen with curiosity.

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I certainly see the biggest need and potential for music as a tool for healing in various anti-depressive therapies in severe cases and professionally. But, being a DJ myself, I see the greatest potential in electronic music festivals.

Often the audience is very young and we know that in those moments various aspects of the personality are being formed, as well as knowing about the small and big problems that young people have to face on a daily basis.

All music is frequencies, but unlike vocal-led music where the message is more or less pretty clear, electronic music is literally just frequencies that go on and on for hours on end. Well, it would be nice to be able to introduce in DJ schools some sections in which we teach the boys and girls about the enormous responsibility they have to play with frequencies. Because we are literally playing with people's cells and molecules! Giving them sounds that we know induce positive responses in the human body, would be much more constructive. And I’m not saying that we should all start playing “fluffy” stuff. Techno music, for instance, can have  enormous healing properties. What is missing is the awareness and/or the intentions of this from most DJs.

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Talking about rhythms, brainwave entrainment refers to the brain's electrical response to rhythmic sensory stimulation, such as pulses of sound or light. Every cell in the brain produces electricity as a byproduct of its activity. The sum of all the electrical charges creates patterns in the brain and these patterns are related to brain wave activity.

When the brain is given a stimulus through the ears, it emits an electrical charge in response, called a Cortical Evoked Response. These electrical responses travel throughout the brain to become what you hear. When the brain is presented with a rhythmic stimulus, such as a drumbeat, for example, the rhythm is reproduced in the brain in the form of these electrical impulses. If the rhythm becomes fast and consistent enough, it can start to resemble the natural internal rhythms of the brain, called brainwaves. When this happens, the brain responds by synchronising its own electric cycles to the same rhythm. This is commonly called the Frequency Following Response. This all means that in fact, we can manipulate our brainwaves through music and rhythms and therefore we can literally adjust or lead our brain to send signals to the body on demand.

Consistent and round beats - relaxation. Too fast and harsh beats - messing up.

Easy as that! There’s much much more to say about resonances, Schumann Resonance or the voice being the best overtone instrument .. but well ... for another time!

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On the one hand, there is my techno side, with which I'm trying recvently to insert both present and subtle expansive notes, pads, chords and frequencies. Including organic elements reminiscent of nature, even if processed, within dance floor tracks. But just to send a more important message, I have created an ambient alias, with which I am delighting in studying each break - the metrics of the tracks, the insertion of the elements and the frequencies, in order to induce the calmest experience possible. On almost every track I'm using shamanic drums at a very slow pace but in constant intervals to try and make the listener's heartbeat resonate with the drums, to induce total peace and at the same time recall an ancient memory through the use of various South American instruments. It’s a process and I am just at the beginning of it!

My latest LP Balancing In The Digital Age, released through my alias Disenthrall, is made of six tracks at 18-minutes each and primarily using positive chords, nothing in minor or similar. And for first time I recorded live a good number of shamanic instruments, often reproducing sounds from natural elements. I wanted to come through with a sonic design to create the most possible calming experience. Letting the long tracks, slow LFOs, pads and each element breath, aiming to bring through a primordial message.

I believe this type of music is very important to listen to especially during these times, and especially for people living in cities with little connection with nature.

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We are on the threshold of a new era in which augmented reality will make its first appearance to the general public. On this occasion, it is safe to say that thanks to technology we will be able to immerse ourselves in audio-visual experiences that we could never even have thought of.

Imagine putting on headphones that play music far beyond stereophony, but with infinite layers of depth, thanks to new ways of presenting music with STEMS, combined with a pair of glasses that allow visuals, scenery and colours to respond generatively to sound impulses, maybe even connected to your heart-beat, your age, your location - all in order to give you an exclusive experience made just for you and your needs. I am very excited to see how this will develop.

I also think that more and more festivals and concerts will experiment with different sound systems with columns spread all around instead of just in front, pre-assigning sounds to be sent to each column, where people lie on the grass with their eyes closed or blindfolded. Losing visual orientation and hearing sounds coming from multiple directions will be a bit scary initially, but once you surrender to it, the listener will benefit far more than just jumping, screaming and clapping, all at once. And that's not to say that that isn't incredible! Just a deeper and less extroverted experience. More healing?

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Spirituality is a beautiful word. Spirituality is not linked to any religion or doctrine. It doesn't tell you what to do or what to think, it doesn't tell you how to behave or who to surround yourself with. And certainly it doesn’t have a “place” to go to. It’s just intangible, but whoever feels part of it knows that the connection to other people is even stronger than sitting all together in one room. It is simply listening to oneself, finding within oneself that voice that always knows what is right, but which in our society is too often overloaded with a thousand fears, doubts and uncertainties.

Being "spiritual" is not at all as easy as many believe ... nor is it a fashion. It requires a lot of will and daily commitment, without knowing much about where it will lead you.

As far as I'm concerned, it's exactly thanks to my approach to spirituality that I've been able to develop various musical projects, discovering ancient instruments and cultures and a multitude of experiences that are slowly, slowly helping me to think with my own head."

Books, websites and articles recommended by Fabio Florido:

The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge by Jeremy Narby
Listening to Ayahuasca by Rachel Harris, Phd
The End Is My Beginning by Tiziano Terzani
The Sentient Machine by Amir Husain

https://healingforest.org
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000rbl9
Theory of Sound healing on Udemy