mokroïé Explores Life’s Unanswered Questions on Immersive New EP
Electronic project mokroïé, created by composer and producer Francesco Virgilio, explores existence, adolescence, loss and the mysteries that connect them on new four-track EP 'Unanswered'.
Blending progressive electronics with organic instrumentation, psychedelic textures and cinematic storytelling, Unanswered moves between the enormous scale of nature and the cosmos and the intensely personal experience of human emotion. Rather than attempting to provide easy resolutions, the record embraces the uncertainty behind some of life’s biggest questions.
That journey is divided into two distinct halves, Outside and Inside. While the first looks outward towards nature, space and existence, the second turns its attention inward towards adolescence, melancholy, grief and absence.
Opening instrumental ‘Eternity’ sets the scale, presenting existence as a tension between the instinct to live and the inevitability of death. Sparkling electronics meet organic textures as Virgilio creates a sonic connection between Earth and the stars.
‘Over The Clouds’ moves into more serene territory, beginning as a luminous dreamscape before gradually descending into uncertainty and eventually finding comfort through ethereal piano.
The EP’s second half opens with ‘Teenage Sunday Sadness’, where carefree energy slowly gives way to unexplained melancholy. Capturing the emotional contradictions of adolescence, the track explores how sadness can appear even when there seems to be no obvious reason for it.
Closing track ‘Negative Space’ is Unanswered’s only vocal composition and features Alison Thom of Australian band Howlite. Her haunting vocals sit against ethereal electro-pop and delicate orchestral arrangements as the song confronts grief and the empty space left behind by someone we love.
A whispered French phrase,“l’attente d’un retour”, or “the waiting for a return", encapsulates its lingering sense of absence.
The collaboration reunites Thom and Virgilio following mokroïé’s previous electro-orchestral remix of Howlite’s ‘Blood Type’, which dramatically reworked the original with new electronic textures and sweeping arrangements.
The music, however, represents only one half of the Unanswered experience. Each track is accompanied by its own film, with Virgilio designing the visuals as extensions of the compositions. Cosmic dust, enormous skies, human figures, rain-soaked landscapes and fragments of everyday existence create a dialogue between sound and image throughout the project.
That multidisciplinary approach has long been central to mokroïé. Virgilio treats the project as a borderless creative laboratory, moving between electronic, rock, pop and industrial foundations while incorporating elements of jazz, soul and global music.
Previous releases have also seen mokroïé collaborate with artists including Allonymous, Dave Collingwood, Cyril Atef and Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo-winning photojournalist Sergey Ponomarev, who contributed to the multidisciplinary 2017 project GLOBAL - SYSTEM - ERROR.
Following projects including Machines & Soul, WORKS2K21 and Moving Forward, Unanswered takes mokroïé into particularly introspective territory.
Moving from stardust and mortality to teenage melancholy and personal loss, the EP connects the immense with the intimate, embracing the idea that some of the most important questions may be the ones that never receive an answer.
