Interview: Glinca

For nearly four decades, Catania-based artist Glinca has explored music through abstraction, experimentation, and chance. Blending tonal elements with noise, field recordings, modular synthesis, loops, and subtle variations, he creates open sonic spaces for listeners to explore on their own terms. In this interview, Glinca discusses stripping compositions down to their essential elements, rejecting major streaming platforms and AI, and finding beauty in the unexpected.

General info

Artist Name: Glinca

Real name: Tazio Luca Iacobacci

Age: 50

Location: Catania, Italy

How long have you been making music? I've been making music for about 40 years.

 

Social Media / Music Links

glinca.bandcamp.com
subvert.fm/glinca
instagram.com/glincamusic

 

Do you release music under a label or independently?

Label

 

Creative process and inspiration

What drew you to ambient music in the first place?

Actually, it's a bit complicated to say, because I only realized later that some of the things I was producing could somehow fit into the broad world of ambient music, even though it's only in the last 5 or 6 years that I've consciously focused my production on something we could define as “ambient.” But to answer the question, I can say that at heart I have a tendency toward abstract composition rather than song form, and that I'm attracted to unconventional sounds and field recordings. I think it's really a kind of natural predisposition toward this kind of music.

Can you describe your creative process when starting a new track?

I don't really have a precise pattern I follow when composing.

Often I start from a sound, which can be an environmental recording or something created with software or modular synths, and from there I improvise a few notes just to hear what happens. Quite often, in a totally random way, I take samples or noises, layer them together, listen, and start removing elements until only what I want to hear remains, then I add more and begin layering the sound again.

Usually my compositions are, or at least aim to be, “open,” without any precise direction. My greatest and most rewarding goal when composing is to create small sonic spaces and allow the listener to enter them and become part of them.

What kinds of experiences or environments tend to inspire your work most?

I'm not sure if this is what you mean by your question, but lately most of my work has come from focusing on timbre rather than on the notes themselves. I'm very attracted to the blending of tonal elements and noise, and to the way a new timbre, a kind of sum, can emerge from that interaction.

Beyond that, I'm a lover of repetition, loops, and the micro-variations within a pattern.

What atmosphere or emotional space are you trying to create with your music?

I think I may have already touched on this in previous questions, but I could add that I'm not the kind of composer who writes to “communicate” my emotional content or to convey my feelings to the listener—nothing could be further from what drives me to write. What interests me is the possibility that whoever is listening can “enter” a sonic space and explore it through their own sensitivity, move within it, and then each person should be left free to experience whatever they feel.

What moment made you feel like you had truly found your sound?

Great question, because it comes at a moment when this is actually happening in a very striking way. I think I've found a key, a way of working that perhaps has never been so clear and illuminating in my musical life until now, and it has to do with a method—like I mentioned before—of intertwining tonal material with noise, combined with another process I started even earlier, which leads me to progressively strip down my compositions, working with just a few elements.

How important is storytelling in your work?

Here again, as I said before, I don't need to communicate anything. I'm a lover of abstraction, of open-ended languages that can be interpreted subjectively, where everyone has to bring something of themselves and actively take part in experiencing it. So if there is any storytelling in my music, it is completely open—there are no directions. Of course, inevitably, whoever writes music lays out certain paths, but the way of walking them and exploring them is done by the listener.

What makes a track feel “finished” to you?

I would say that when my attention starts to fade while listening, I understand that I need to bring it to an end, as long as the piece already has its own integrity.

Which artists (or even non-musical influences) have shaped your artistic vision?

A lot, I would say Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, Arvo Pärt, Arovane, Taylor Deupree, Phonem, Aphex Twin, Khonnor and many others.

 

Gear and setup

Are you using hardware instruments, software, or a hybrid setup?

I use a hybrid setup made up of a Eurorack modular system and various VST software instruments, mainly including Pigments by Arturia. For live performances, in addition to the modular setup I bring an Elektron Model:Samples and a Boss loop station, the RC-500.

What's your favorite piece of gear or plugin, and why?

Let's say I'll tell you my favorite hardware: my Eurorack modular system, with Rings as my favorite module, because it's a very “physical” module and highly malleable.

Favorite software: Pigments, without a doubt—a wonderful piece of software that I use to build sounds, really extremely complete.

What piece of gear completely changed your workflow?

My modular Eurorack system.

 

Challenges

What's been the biggest challenge so far in creating ambient music?

For me, the challenge is: to have fun, to enjoy the process of composing, to try to create a listenable sonic space, to avoid being banal, and to surprise myself.

How do you stay motivated or inspired when you're in a creative rut?

I don't really suffer much from these creative blocks, honestly. For me, it's a physiological need to sit down, write, record, and experiment. Of course, I end up throwing away a lot of things, but to be honest, I don't really find myself sitting with my instruments not knowing what to do.

How do streaming platforms affect the way you release music, or what is your relationship with those platforms?

Here we are… so, for a few years now I've removed all my music from Spotify, Amazon, etc. They no longer exist for me.

My music is only on Bandcamp and Subvert.fm, which is an online marketplace structured as a collectively owned cooperative that enables the direct sale of digital music and merchandise, with 100% ownership reserved for the community that uses it.

It's a new paradigm, with the hope that people understand we need to start freeing ourselves from these big corporations.

What are your thoughts on AI's impact on music and art? Have you, in any form, used it in your approach to creating and shaping ideas?

Here too… eheh, I have completely eliminated artificial intelligence from my life. At first, a few years ago, I used to play around with generating images, back when the first Midjourney and similar tools were released, but today it simply doesn't exist for me, for several and very different reasons—both political, and because of the negative impact it is having on our abilities and on our attention.

How do you see AI evolving in music and art? Are you cautious about it, or do you think it will increasingly function as a tool within creative workflows?

In my opinion, it would be better if no one used it, and even less so in an artistic context.

What are you currently working on?

A small live set, and at the same time I collect new ideas for the next album.

What advice would you give to new ambient artists?

The only thing that comes to mind is to experiment as much as possible; often the beautiful things come from chance and from “unplanned” ideas.

 

The sound of Glinca