Torba

Darkwave producer Torba has announced his debut album 'II' will be released on 10th January 2025 via numeronove.

Today, he has shared new single 'PUNTO', a track which balances live performance, brutish drum programming, and surprising lyrics. “Don’t let me be myself”, he sings in the song’s chorus.
 

The video was directed by Jacopo Dall’Agnol, who explains: "'PUNTO' is part of a trilogy of videos where, using artificial intelligence, we have animated disturbing culinary visions. Similar to scenes from the iconic 'Goosebumps' series, our dishes come to life, transform into human-like figures, and nervously sing words they are not conscious of. The selection of dishes and the visual style are influenced by retro cookbooks and television commercials from the '80s and '90s, enhancing the viewer's immersion into Torba's unsettling environments."

The new single comes after the previously released 'WIRE', a dark inversion of a dance tune, in its blown-out kick, wailing feedback and crushed percussion.

The Italy-based producer (aka Luigi Pianezzola) and The Soft Moon touring musician makes stark electronic tracks that pull from punk, industrial and club music while retaining a modern grit of his own and creating a distinct and destructive sound.

The forthcoming debut album follows a self-titled EP released in late 2023, where Pianezzola discovered his signature approach with the help of producer Maurizio Baggio (The Soft Moon, Boy Harsher). The pair continue their partnership on this new record, which was written fully by Pianezzola outside of the song ‘DARE’, co-produced by Riccardo Menin (A.K.A. Cantona from the band Mont Baud) and Edoardo Pellizzari of Overdrive Studio.

Luigi Pianezzola arrives with a distinct and destructive sound on his debut record, II. The Bassano del Grappa-based producer and The Soft Moon touring musician makes stark electronic tracks which pull from punk, industrial and club music while retaining a modern grit of his own.

Torba began as a lockdown experiment, and a creative outlet for Pianezzola as he recorded for other artists. Whilst at home, he tinkered with drum tracks and patterns every day, following his nose to find inspiration. “It was a space to do whatever I wanted,” he explains. “It felt good to do something ‘wrong’, because when recording somebody else, you have to work with the cleanest sound. When I'm doing my stuff, I try to push it as hard as I can to do everything wrong.”

You can hear that delightful wrongness on the lead single ‘WIRE’, in its blown-out kick, wailing feedback and crushed percussion. The song is a dark inversion of a dance tune, inspired by the wild nights out Pianezzola would find himself in. “I was thinking about how much time I’ve spent in a club in a super deep situation. I’d ask myself why I do it - and then I’d do it again.” He translates that pull to hedonism with mysterious and minimal lyricism, voice hidden behind effects (“I’ll lose it when it’s time / I’m here and I don’t mind.”)

II follows a debut self-titled EP released in late 2023, where Pianezzola discovered his signature approach with the help of producer Maurizio Baggio (The Soft Moon, Boy Harsher). They worked for an intense week at La Distilleria studio. “He gave me another twist on my stuff, and we changed basically everything,” Pianezzola says. The pair continue their partnership on this new record, which was written fully by Pianezzola outside of the song ‘DARE’, co-produced by Riccardo Menin (A.K.A. Cantona from the band Mont Baud) and Edoardo Pellizzari of Overdrive Studio.

Pianezzola’s process is instinctive and reactive, often working with rough takes and out-of-tune instruments to give songs an off-kilter feel. “That's very important”, he says. “I see it every day - people not making extreme decisions anymore. They record the stuff clean, and then they try to find the tone during the production, I always try to do the opposite. I try to look for the sound immediately. If it works, it works. Otherwise, I take it off.”

The urgency comes through on ‘LIES’, a propulsive track built on sour synths and frenetic production. The song morphs into a distorted blast of guitar in its second half. ‘PUNTO’ similarly balances live performance, brutish drum programming, and surprising lyrics. “Don’t let me be myself”, he sings in the song’s chorus.

Pianezzola sees his time with Jose Luis Vasquez as a source of inspiration. “That changed everything for me, playing with The Soft Moon and knowing Luis most of all,” he says. “He really shared a lot about everything…he always wanted us to feel like family and a band before being just tour musicians, so we were always talking about music.”

“It opened my mind, because he didn’t care about the music itself. He cared about the feeling and the energy connected, not about the technical stuff, so I took it a lot from him.”

The record works in two modes. Torba flits between angry and energetic offerings like ‘PUNTO’ and more reflective instrumentals. ‘SIDES’ and ‘ONDA’ are built on slow-moving climaxes, rhythmic playfulness and an enveloping nocturnal atmosphere. Giddy curiosity connects the two sides, as does a sense of danger. “I like to use acoustic sounds or samples and then I over-process to destroy it one piece at a time,” Pianezzola says. “I love to use bit reduction and digital distortion to keep just the tone and try to destroy everything else, to get to the very essence of the sound.”

The sound might be destructive and unruly, but there’s life and energy in what Torba makes.