Lorenzo Senni is a Milan-based composer and multidisciplinary artist devoted to investigating and abstracting the mechanisms of dance music. His releases deconstruct the sounds of trance, hardstyle, hard-trance 1990s rave culture. He heads the experimental music label Presto!?. Senni’s latest EP, Persona, appeared this past November on Warp.
Senni studied musicology at the University of Bologna. His third LP, Quantum Jelly, which appeared on the independent label Editions Mego, was received with unanimous acclaim: it was #10 on the Boomkat Top 100 of 2012, #34 on Fact’s Top 50 releases of 2012, and #7 on Debug’s November 2012 chart. The record is deeply influenced by Senni’s love of 90s trance/hard-trance music and by a growing interest in this genre’s musical structures and inner mechanics. Senni works trance’s obvious, euphoria-inducing tropes (static, breakdowns, restarts, super-saws, endless build-ups, and over-the-top, instantly gratifying melodies) into forms inspired by experimental, noise, and abstract computer music: for example, he’ll structure tracks around a single idea, force the architecture of build-ups into non-build-ups (sonic spirals of repetitive arpeggiated melodies), thereby preserving, if reinventing, the emotional tension and drama. His 2014 mini-album on Boomkat Editions, Superimpositions, was accordingly lauded for its “pointillistic trance” and its playful exploration of the emotional buildups and breakdowns of euphoric rave music.
As founder of Presto!?, Senni has released albums by internationally acclaimed artists such as Florian Hecker, DJ Stingray, Marcus Schmickler, Carl Michael Von Hausswolff, John Wiese, Werner Dafeldecker, Lawrence English, Alberto de Campo, Greg Davis and more. On his global tours, Senni has opened for Peter Rehberg & Stephen O’ Malley (KTL), Cut Hands (William Bennett, Whitehouse), John Wiese, EVOL, Dave Phillips, and others.
Senni also composes music for cinema. His soundtrack for the award-winning movie Da Vinci was screened at the 55th Venice Biennale. He has also collaborated with the theatre companies Orthographe and Pathosformel.