Pluton/Neptune by João Orecchia & Sicker Man

Pluton/Neptune is an improvised meditation on celestial movements; slow steady orbits of unfathomable masses, like planets, that exist, and then don’t. But maybe they do, somewhere… because how can a planet suddenly no longer exist?

Berlin of the early 2000s, where João Orecchia and Tobias Vethake (AKA Sicker Man) met, is such an enigmatic planet - a place of wild energy and vibration, a place that somehow no longer exists. Not the euphoric atmosphere of the 90s, but still equally unique, and practically unimaginable to the current migrant landing in the city. It has changed, become something else, moved on.

Playing in small clubs that occupied temporary spaces in abandoned shopfronts and apartments, the duo connected through a shared vision of combining obscure collections of acoustic instruments with electronic devices such as looping machines and analog effects. Common instruments like guitar and cello shared space with toy pianos, kazoos and melodicas, forming floating textures and drifting melodies.

After Orecchia settled in Johannesburg in 2005, the duo continued meeting every few years to improvise. Pluton/Neptune was recorded in February 2019 and sounds of old friends telling stories of adventures through an intense bubbling dialogue in musical style that’s developed over 20 years.

Pluton: Hydra, Nix, Charon / Neptune: Nereid, Sao, Naiad, Psamathe

João Renato Orecchia Zúñiga is a Peruvian Italian Brooklyn-born Johannesburg based artist, composer and maker.

Orecchia has released several recordings, has received a South African Film & Television Award for sound design and has published in the Leonardo Music Journal and the Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies.

joaoorecchia.com