Name: Alessio Scozzaro aka VRAELL
Occupation: Composer, multi-instrumentalist
Nationality: Italian
Current release: VRAELL's debut album Once a blue hour is out March 28th 2025 via Nettwerk. Pre-save it here and pre-order a physical copy on vinyl directly from the artist.
Recommendations on the topic of sound: I read a lot of fiction at the moment, so I don’t have a lot of book recommendations for these topics, however there is one book that I was a fan (The Weird and The Eeries) that delves into liminal spaces, which is where most of the art I connect to occupies. I’m big into escapism and I think liminal spaces play into that, as well as fictitious spaces that we create from our own spaces.
But I also listen to a lot of Dr Gabor Mate. He’s been a great source of comfort about understanding myself as an artist and a person. His youtube talks and podcasts I couldn’t recommend enough.

If you enjoyed this VRAELL interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud.



When I listen  to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I’m very visually led when it comes to music, either picturing scenes I can imagine the piece to, or scenes that already exist with the music. It’s often an inseparable experience and I think it genuinely brings you to a closer understanding of your own art, mind and body.

This has helped a lot with the tracks on the album, especially the more instrumental ones. I’ve often sat there leaving video games on in the background or movie scenes with no sound just to see what steers the creation and where it steers it.

For example one of the songs on the album ‘Fever Call’ was directly inspired by Red Dead Redemption and No Country for Old Men, whilst others were influenced by Indie game menus like Ori and the Blind Forest. Such as ‘Léo’s Waltz' and 'In The Blue Hour.’

One piece I wrote, ‘Lull,’ was written whilst I was playing a lot of ‘The Last of Us 2’ and I wanted to honour the composer and how much the game resonated with me. I think half of the upcoming album has strings in it, and I think that's probably due to me leaning towards cinema as inspiration.

When I’m at home or in transit I love to experience music with my eyes closed, it brings connection to colours that I wouldn't normally see in the everyday world. Closing my eyes allows me to escape into these colours and fictitious montages that I wish existed.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

Headphones are a much more insular experience than stereo systems. I mix pretty quietly and record 99% of the time on headphones so my ears get tired of the music so close.

So when I’m home I listen to music on stereo systems. It feels like you're establishing the energy and vibe of your space, and that’s really important for me. Headphones only let you vibe with yourself, just my opinion.

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

Burial – Untrue: This album is, for me, the only real sonic work that sums up living in London. Even though it was written in the 2000s it still has such a sonic and cultural resonance over me.



The messy stereo bass that cuts out on some beat 4s are so tastefully done, and it was the first time I found an artist who loved video games and their soundtracks and tried to incorporate them into his music. I love the glitchy nature of the warped garage samples, it brought a whole new darkness to these original songs, and I love the lack of drum quantisation.

To be an electronic producer, no matter where you are - you have to acknowledge this album as one of the best electronic albums of all time. I think it really communicates those 2am nights we all have with London waiting for a bus - when we are with our thoughts, walking through spaces and never quite being on the inside.

But I love that though, I love that music doesn’t have to be felt inside every space, but on the outside, in the ambience and adventure of self, no matter how small  that adventure might feel to you.

RY X – Dawn: First time I heard this album was when I watched the ‘Beacon’ video. I didn’t really know you could do music like this cathartic and sensual and it was that moment where I was like ‘Fuck, it is possible to do it, and do it so well like this’



I was deeply moved at the meditative way of building an idea and swirling textures around it into the purest payoff and climax. I think that’s what this album does so well. It takes core hypnotic ideas and just pulsates them around  until you just get lost in the sonic world. The blend of European electronica and folk sentiment really got to me, along with the use of live drums and samples.

I never knew it could all blend so well and the result still be considered a folk record. It was a real awakening for me as a musician because I realised the music I wanted to create did exist.

Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

I like deep, rounded sounds. My mixes tend to be very mid heavy because those are the sounds that hit me, it feels like the beating heart of any record. There’s a lot of big plummy synths in the album, specifically ‘Watercolour Blush’ and ‘Halfway Crest’.

When a bass is deliberately stereo and wide I love it, and when the sine waves have slow attacks and a bit of chorus and saturation, it just becomes a deep, velvety synth. I feel like the mids always hit because it's the sonic underbelly that's the most important thing on a record. The vibe has to be deep and velvety for you to notice sprinkles up top.

Even in tracks like ‘Ladybird Prelude’ which is pretty organic, there will still be wide stereo basses pulsing underneath and soft texture going on in the mids.

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we would gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

I need to listen to certain music at certain points of the day, otherwise my internal compass is completely off.

Drum and bass in the morning? No thanks. Every noise has its place for me, but if it’s at the wrong bit, I’m fucked. Oh I guess ambient music really gets to me in the morning too, I love Brian Eno’s "An Ending (Ascent)".



Feels like something that's tapped into the other side. I don’t know what that is, but it just feels like that. Feels like you’re in a sonic hammock.

I could listen to hang drums for hours, especially woven into electronic productions, along with emotional bleeps and bloops with noise gates. It just moves me so much to know that electronic music can sit in your head and embrace you like that.

Sounds I hate are brushing past plaster and the sound of ice cracking of ice lollies. Can’t deal.  

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

I love churches and cathedrals - there’s a holiness about them that I think you just can’t escape from, regardless of your beliefs. And I think as artists we really try to honour these spaces when we’re in them with new forms of self expression.

I love a 4pm festival stage where the night hasn’t started yet and you're caught off guard by a sunset and an artist/performance who just understood the mood and where everyone’s head was at.  

Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

I’ve been in a cave before, and that was nuts.

I don’t know whether I was completely overwhelmed or just hated it. But it was definitely an experience. You feel so small and also trapped, but also like you’ve been swallowed by a sonic entity.

What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

My room, I love my space and everything in it. It’s my safe space, and I often struggle bringing it to studios to change things.

Love playing my music in 200 cap venues, enough to find that deep hum and personal connection with everyone and still have the energy of a lot of people sharing the time with you.

I think “Lèo’s Waltz” is a piece that’s a reflection of this space, it’s just a guitar recording that I feel captures that feeling so well.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Always, I have to be sculpting it from somewhere.

I often start with a guitar loop, but then sometimes I’ll reverse some vocals and build the song around that. I always want to shape something the listener can listen to if they wanted, but also shape something to help someone tune out.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

I’ve grown to realise we need sonic health more than ever, especially with us doom scrolling all the time and being lost in our phones. If I can have one moment where one of my pieces on TT can pull someone out of their doom scroll and maybe just go for a walk, it’s a small victory.

I’m still feeling optimistic about the shift a lot of people are taking towards acoustic health. We are seeing a lot of meditative hour-long videos being put out by artists on youtube. It’s definitely having such a positive impact on people's daily lives.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?

When I was 16 my nana in Austin took me to the Mexican free-tailed bat migration in Austin. These huge whirlpools of bats just emerged from the caves and circled you for an hour.

It was an insane sonic experience and I’ve never forgotten it, surrounded by this mirage of wings and sonic immersion of them communicating. Special.

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?  

We’ve seen everywhere videos of cows rushing over to people playing violins and trumpets, to elephants getting excited or calmed when someone next to them is playing music. I think music is just sound, and whoever, or whatever is open to receiving that sound, there will be some kind of reaction.

I’ve yet to move my dog with my music however - he just stares at me.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

I never turn my headphones above half way. And I mix very quietly a lot of the time.

I have always been conscious of my hearing health and I'm always wearing protection at gigs.

We can surround ourselves with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

Silence is scary but a necessary form of deep sonic healing.

True silence is avoided more than I like to admit, but I still believe it's integral to embrace silence so you can come back to music and other sounds refreshed and ready to interact with an open heart.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

We’d definitely be way less insecure and less worried about how we look. Our society has been boiled down to bite size point scoring and unrealistic beauty standards, and it’s affecting how we relate to art and each other.

I’d love a world where we listened more, we might actually feel a little bit more from each other and connect.