We recently connected with Sam Genovese and have shared our conversation below.

Sam, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Like many people I was self-taught for many years. Electronic music is full of composers and performers who are autodidacts, so nothing unusual with my story. While I found the exploration fascinating, I was exploring and learning alone in the absence of any music community. That changed when I was accepted to the graduate program in electronic music at Mills College. While there, I gathered a tremendous amount of confidence in what I was doing and was introduced to a community of music makers committed to pushing sonic boundaries. I wouldn’t do anything differently, as I’ve come to trust the natural unfolding of life’s journey.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

The pathway to composing electronic music was via frustration with filmmaking. Specifically, how slow the process to make a film was, the required pile of gear, the organizing of crew, and so on. Music was something I could achieve solo and that was a gift. However the love of cinema didn’t go away and is even directly in the music. My passion for film and the influence of European and experimental cinema is evident throughout all my sound and video work, this perhaps no more evident than in his 2020 film and experimental electronic opera, Entanglementing. Whether or not visuals are provided, cinematic techniques and imagined narrative structures play at the heart of my process, offering throughlines that guide both compositional decisions and the listening experience. 2014’s album Night Path explored pacing choices informed by the long take of Bela Tarr and Andrei Tarkovsky. 2021’s SKYMYTH imagines a ceremony of the ancients beginning at the foot of a holy mountain. Priestesses gather to ascend a peak where secret rites effect collective rebirth and open glittering paths to new futures.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My mission is one of exploration and invention. Don’t repeat what I’ve already done — stretch into new territory. Part of that is inventing new ways to write — yes write — with music, text, sound and image where each is equal to and can complete the function of the other.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

My view on NFTs is that NFTs are yet another data point that culture and markets are dying. NFTs ask a single person to pay — often huge sums — for a product that lacks true scarcity, only exists on a computer and can be experienced equally by people who did not pay for it. No thanks. Maybe the withering branches will be cut away in time. I hope that is the case. There’s one good thing — only one! — that I see about NFTs and that’s the ability to watermark the product with the artist’s name and other relevant data such that the artist can receive payment each and every time the product is sold. That’s a great idea that should be implemented for physical objects.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.samgenovese.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samgenovese_projects/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoghtESrBiOSLUu1l8kaljQ

Image Credits

Photos by Sam Genovese