Name: Lorenzo Setti aka ATŌMI
Occupation: Composer, drummer, sound artist
Nationality: Italian
Recent release: ATŌMI's expansive full-length Little Floating Oracles, mastered by Lawrence English and featuring Laura Masotto and Giulia Bernardi, is out via Lady Blunt.
Recommendations: Even if I think that books, most of the time, find readers in a specific moment of their lives, I can try to give 15 Questions’ readers some hints.
I would like to suggest books that have the power to redefine your perception of reality like: Psychomagic by Alejandro Jodorowki, Journey to Ixtlan by Carlo Castaneda and Parallel Universe of Self by Frederick Dodson.
For topics closer to transpersonal and mystic philosophy I suggest: Psychology of the Future by Stanislav Grof, Search for the essence of life by Willigis Jäger and C. G. Jung’s books.
Regarding hermetic, esoteric and symbolism I suggest: The Kybalion by The Three Initiates and Hermès Trismegistus or Giordano Bruno’s books.
If you’re curious about Pythagoras but you don’t know where to start because he didn't leave any writings behind, I kindly suggest you to start with a very clear and well written book by Kitty Ferguson titled The Music of Pythagoras which treats the topic from a historical perspective giving to the reader a clear image by interweaving several text of writers and researchers in chronological order.

[Read our Lawrence English interview]
[Read our Lawrence English interview about sound]
[Read our Laura Masotto interview]
[Read our Laura Masotto interview about the Mediterranean Refugee Crisis]

If you enjoyed these thoughts by ATŌMI and would like to find out more about his work, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, and Facebook.

To keep reading, head over to our first interview with ATŌMI about his personal history in sound.



Working predominantly with field recordings and sound can be an incisive step / transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

I often look for new challenges and different approaches that can bring me new and unexpected points of view. Field recordings and poetry are very close to one another, something that I love doing but that I preserve carefully, a very intimate act. At least until now, I’ve mostly used field recordings for installations and sound design.

Recently I started composing a meditation album and field recordings are helping me a lot finding my way through sounds and moods.

How would you describe the shift of moving towards music which places the focus foremost on sound, both from your perspective as a listener and a creator?

Working with sounds and frequencies is like going towards the core of hearing perception, and like smell or flavor, it drives you directly through your deepest self, bringing you into your subconscious and ancestral or collective memories.

It’s a powerful act that we should be more aware of.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and working with sound? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage when it comes to your way of working with sound?

I don’t feel myself part of any lineage but of course I’m influenced and probably most of the time also driven by being born and raised in a Western culture. Even if I often try to experience different cultures, philosophies and mentalities, I know that on a physical level my body perceives things in a particular way. Or I should probably say it translates all these inputs according to its trained senses.

I love to play with what we call reality in a “psychomagic” (Alejandro Jodorowsky) way, because I know very well that I perceive nothing but a subjective fraction of what it really is, like watching a narrow part of the stars through a telescope. So questioning reality is certainly one of the key ideas behind my approach to music.

Also, to go deeper inside and to explore my own and collective subconscious doing “psycho-physical” experiences that I can then bring back and translate into sound, it’s a key approach that characterizes my way of working with sounds.

But I don't want to define myself as well as my approach too much, because both are continuously morphing and evolving.

What are the sounds that you find yourself most drawn to?  Are there sounds you reject – if so, for what reasons?

The sounds coming from the most remote and extreme places on Earth are those that mostly fascinate me. As well as the whole tradition of harmonized singing. Sirens and vehicle horns are probably the only sounds I really can’t stand.

As creative goals and technical abilities change, so does the need for different tools of expression, from instruments via software tools and recording equipment. Can you describe this path for you personally starting from your first studio/first instruments and equipment? What motivated some of the choices you made in terms of instruments/tools/equipment over the years?

My first analog synth was an MS-404 by Doepfer, bought for a few Euros from a well known Italian producer I was working with.

From that point on I have always just followed / believed my ears and instinct as well as needs of course. My second instrument was the Nord Drum 2 percussion synthesizer, that I widely used in both electronic and hybrid drums setups, then came Tetr4 by Dave Smith, that I explored the many potentialities on my debut EP ARMØNIA. This was followed by the semi modular Erebus V3 by Dreadbox and Lyra-8 by Soma Synth. The latter two are amazing soundscapes makers and drone machines. Especially the second one, and it helped me widen my horizons of approach to synths, thanks to its very unique way of being played as well as the peculiar circuitry routing make me understood how much I was missing the “acoustic” approach.

I also use several boutique pedals such as: AMA v1 by Ac Noises, Bit Quest by Dr.Scientist, etc etc. and more on a live show basis a DIY kalimba, thanks to Yuri Landman’s workshop.

But the point for me is limitation. My goal is to push the boundaries of my limits as well as of the tools that I use, that’s why I’m definitely not an obsessive or compulsive buyer of the new models / software or the new galactic product. Rather, I would describe myself as a patient explorer of the inner core and potentiality of the few that I do have. Sometimes it can be difficult because this process can be very frustrating for the constant challenge between yourself and your expression on the one hand and your creative tools on the other hand. But at least it’s worth it.

Even if I mostly use and enjoy using analog and hardware synths as well as acoustic instruments, I found myself very surprised by how enjoyable it is to play with and to explore a completely new software instrument that I'm currently developing on ableton/max msp for a multi-screen performance.

Ultimately, I think that curiosity and the capacity to put ourselves out of the comfort zone or at least to stretch its edges to the max is definitely what we need to move a step forward in the desired direction.

Where do you find the sounds you're working with? How do you collect and organise them?  

I generate them mostly with synths emulating natural or acoustic sounds. But I love the field recording approach too. I’m pretty minimalistic and I don't produce / record that use many sounds. Mine is a surgical approach, striving to find the best possible mixture of elements that I'm able to produce or capture in that specific moment in space and time. If I get it, I collect it by date and place.

But I have to say that to balance my minimalistic craziness, sometimes I just open a microphone in the studio and record the session with both the direct input and the sound recorded by the microphone capturing what’s coming out of the speakers as well as everything else that is happening in that place.

I feel this approach is a very “true” or should I say “old school” method, compared to the capabilities of a clean digital recording. It's a way of recording a moment, pretty close to photography, that brings more life into electronic music. And with “life” I mean any sounds that can accidentally happen in a space like: noise, breath, footsteps, blip and blops, creaking and whistling, or any sort of mostly anthropogenic contamination, that in the end adds something to the mix of a track.

If I would have to define that “something”, I would say that are all those ancestral or contemporary sounds that awaken a memory inside the listener, making him or her feel like he or she is there with me experiencing everything like I did after I pressed the rec button.

From the point of view of your creative process, how do you work with sounds? Can you take me through your process on the basis of a project or album that's particularly dear to you?

I can take you through Little Floating Oracles, my latest album released on Lady Blunt Record the 7th of Oct.



This work started as a commissioned Sci-fi soundtrack, morphing then into an exploration of the various states related to perinatal existence. I've been a big fan of sci-fi novels and movies since I was a kid and this request obviously sparked my imagination giving me the chance to embody through sound one of my biggest creative inspirations.

Then I was asked to perform a live set that would be transmitted as live streaming during the Covid lockdown and I decided to build up an experimental set merging electronic semi modular equipment (Erebus V3) with a cello, layed down on the floor and played in different ways than usual. I enjoyed that performance so much that I decided to produce a track out of it, which is “Oneiros”, one of the singles off the album.

[Read our feature by Clarice Jensen about the cello]

All the rehearsals and experimentation needed to combine electronic and acoustic instruments for the live set helped me focus and define my ideas about the album. I decided to ask Laura Masotto and Giulia Bernardi, respectively violinist and opera singer, to perform some parts on the tracks “Eidola”, “Oracles” and “Anemos”.

[Read our feature about the violin]

I had fun making electronic instruments like Lyra-8 by Soma Synths or Erebus V3 by Dreadbox sound like wind or string instruments on the other hand. I played with the recorded parts of both Laura and Giulia making them sound closer to “artificial” or electronic instruments, fading the borders of our perception on sound recognition.

The possibilities of modern production tools have allowed artists to realise ever more refined or extreme sounds. Is there a sound you would personally like to create but haven't been able to yet?

The sound of smells.

How do you see the relationship between sound, space and composition?

Vast as the universe, interwoven as the multi-realities.

For a few years now I've been fascinated by spatial audio and the interaction between frequencies and space as well as resonances of certain materials and their harmonic relation with environment / cultures. I’m planning work on a new project regarding this topic with a focus on the correlation of the previous concept with “silence”, contextualized in an anthropogenic environment.

We can listen to a pop song or open our window and simply take in the noises of the environment. Without going into the semantics of 'music vs field recordings', in which way are these experiences different and / or connected, do you feel?

Music has always been part of the environmental “noise” for me. Background sounds / noises like: birds singing, wind blowing through the trees’ canopy, sea waves breaking on the shore, falling leaves and any sort of animal or vegetal sound, are the threshold sounds / music over which we have been building up the anthropogenic “sound barrier”.

Listening to both: music and environment, bring to the listener a direct stimulus to his / her subconscious. I often find myself questioning how much we’re not used or educated to an active listening compared to how easier it is for us to filter out sounds, most of the time without even placing our attention on which ways that peculiar sound is affecting us and why we are filtering it out.

This reflection brings me to another topic: how we are consciously or unconsciously building up a “deaf society”. What I mean by this is a society that is based on the cyclical act of emitting / producing increasingly louder sounds on top of existing ones. Their specific aim is to be recognized by our body-mind as music and not perceived as “background noise”. And the solo reason for this process is because our body-mind is constantly protecting itself from and rejecting these anthropogenic sounds, filtering them out.

I can see in this a similitude with the overproduction of goods and appliances as well as music and art or the well-known 90s “loudness war” (has it ended?).

That said, for me there aren’t many differences between a pop song and environmental sound coming from an open window. Both are layers of sounds as well as an arbitrary definition of what we perceive as “reality”. The accuracy and awareness of the listener makes the whole difference.