Interview: Mirai No Hagaki

Ambient music often explores stillness, memory, and atmosphere, but for Mirai No Hagaki (Davide Perico), it is also a form of resistance. With more than four decades of musical experience, the Italian composer, sound designer, and multi-instrumentalist has developed a deeply personal approach to ambient music, one rooted in storytelling, nature, cinematic vision, and a profound belief in art's ability to challenge violence and inspire change. Drawing influence from filmmakers such as Pasolini and Leone, as well as the emotional scope of Mahler and the sonic worlds of Pink Floyd, Mirai No Hagaki creates music that is both intimate and expansive. In this interview, he reflects on his creative process, the political and philosophical ideas behind his work, his relationship with technology, and the enduring human spirit that drives his music.

General info

Artist Name: Mirai No Hagaki

Real name: Davide Perico

Location: Arluno, Italy

 

Social Media / Music Links

instagram.com/mirainohagaki
davideperico-mirainohagaki.bandcamp.com
Bandcamp – Where

 

Do you release music under a label or independently?

Independent

 

Creative process and inspiration

What drew you to ambient music in the first place?

Ambient music pulled me in because it feels like emotion without words. It’s intimate, cinematic, and deeply human. It became a way for me to express things I couldn’t explain verbally.

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

My creative process is never the same twice. There is no formula, no ritual, no structure to lean on. Ambient music, for me, is an act of inner wandering — a daily meditation that slowly turns into sound, texture, and breath. Each track begins as a quiet spark inside, and I follow it without knowing where it wants to go. The path reveals itself step by step, like a landscape emerging from the fog, and I simply let the music guide me.

Where do you find inspiration? Emotion, nature, science fiction, or something else?

I’m most inspired by visceral contact with the natural world — animals, weather, silence, the raw pulse of life around me. Even without a defined method, there’s always a deep connection to nature that shapes everything I create. My music begins exactly where life begins: in the quiet, instinctive places where emotion, environment, and perception merge into sound.

How would you describe your sonic identity or the mood you aim to create?

I know it’s not a common answer for an ambient artist, but my music carries a deeply political core. It’s an act of resistance — a stance against violence, brutality, and the systems that feed on them. I try to create an emotional space where a different world feels possible, where sound becomes a form of pure, selfless force. For me, art is a way to heal, to oppose destruction, and to offer a fragile but sincere attempt at making the world a little better.

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

I realized I had truly found my sound the moment I understood I had enough knowledge and technical skill to imagine any sound and then actually bring it to life. That awareness — the ability to translate an inner vision into something real — was the turning point where everything clicked and my voice became unmistakably my own.

How important is storytelling in your work?

Storytelling is absolutely central to my work. My background in film and game composition shaped the way I think: for me, music is narrative. I always begin with a title — it’s the first spark, the seed of a world. A title already contains a story, and that story, in turn, reveals the music. Everything I compose grows from that initial narrative impulse; it’s all already there, waiting to be uncovered.

What makes a track feel “finished” to you?

A track feels finished when I’ve removed everything that wasn’t essential. When the music stands on its own — bare, honest, and free of anything that doesn’t serve its core — that’s the moment I know it’s complete.

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

Two filmmakers have shaped my artistic vision in very different but equally powerful ways: Pier Paolo Pasolini and Sergio Leone. Pasolini influenced me with his raw humanity, his poetic realism, and his ability to reveal the sacred inside the ordinary. Leone, on the other hand, taught me the power of atmosphere, silence, and myth — how time can stretch, how a single gesture can become epic.

Musically, Gustav Mahler and Pink Floyd have been essential. Mahler for his emotional vastness, his ability to hold fragility and grandeur in the same breath; Pink Floyd for their sense of space, experimentation, and the way they turned sound into a living environment. These influences continue to shape how I listen, imagine, and create.

 

Gear and setup

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

I use a hybrid setup. I work with a wide range of instruments: piano, keyboards, electric and classical guitar, electric bass, violin, and various percussions. Alongside these acoustic and electric sources, I rely heavily on virtual instruments and advanced sound-design techniques. Blending physical performance with digital experimentation allows me to shape textures, atmospheres, and details that would be impossible to achieve with a single approach.

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

My favorite “piece of gear” is actually my DAW, Nuendo. It’s so complete on every level — from workflow to editing to integrated multichannel immersive audio — that it feels like a creative space without limits. When I’m working in Nuendo, I feel completely free, never having to wonder “will I be able to do this?” Everything I imagine can be built there, and that sense of possibility is priceless.

What piece of gear completely changed your workflow?

Using an iPad to control VSTs or effects in real time via OSC completely transformed my workflow. It opened up a new level of immediacy and expression in my live performances — many of my tracks are actually built on those performances. That tactile, dynamic control changed the way I interact with sound and made my creative process far more fluid and intuitive.

 

Challenges

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

Honestly, the biggest challenge has been finding an audience. Not because I’m trying to make money, but because I want my message of change to reach more people. My music carries a purpose, and sharing that purpose — expanding its impact — is the hardest and most important part of the journey.

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

I rarely work on a single track for too long. Every day I move between at least three different projects, jumping from one to another without any strict logic. Hyper-focusing on one piece can make you feel trapped, so shifting constantly keeps the creative energy open.

But more importantly, after many years I’ve learned that a creative rut isn’t a failure — it’s part of the process. It’s the moment when you’ve exhausted everything on the surface, and the only way forward is to dig deeper. I don’t treat it as a drama. When I notice I’m in that state, I simply step away: I clean my home, spend days in nature, draw. Doing something else resets my mind and lets the music find its way back to me.

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

To be honest, I have a difficult relationship with streaming platforms. I stopped releasing full albums on DSPs a long time ago and now publish them exclusively on Bandcamp. On streaming services I only release a few singles, mainly in the hope of directing listeners toward Bandcamp.

From an ethical and philosophical standpoint, I would prefer not to release anything on DSPs at all. But since music is my only source of income, it becomes a necessary compromise — one I accept in order to keep creating and sharing my work.

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?

I can’t even place the words “AI” and “art” side by side. To me, they represent two completely opposite concepts. Art is the expression of a lived experience — a fragile, human act shaped by memory, emotion, intuition, and the imperfections that make us who we are. AI, by its nature, has none of that. It doesn’t feel, it doesn’t remember, it doesn’t suffer, it doesn’t hope. It can only recombine what already exists.

For this reason, I see AI as the negation of the very essence of art: the absence of a self, the absence of a story, the absence of a point of view. I’ve never used it in my creative process, because my work is rooted in experience, in the world, in life — and that’s something no algorithm can replicate.

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?

I honestly don’t know how AI will evolve — to me it feels like another wave of hype driven largely by speculation, something we’ve seen many times before. I can’t speak for others, but I can speak for myself: I won’t use these tools, just as I don’t use weapons. That’s the level on which I place the distinction.

Not everyone sees the world the same way, of course. But I’ll keep doing everything I can to defend the idea that a piece of software should never be called an artist in the same sense as Bach or Van Gogh. Art is a human act.

What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on two very different projects: a new ambient album that is extremely meditative, and an album of trailer music for a major record label. These two worlds coexist in my workflow — one rooted in introspection and stillness, the other in intensity and cinematic impact — and moving between them keeps my creative energy balanced and alive.

What advice would you give to new ambient artists?

Spend less time watching tutorials on YouTube and more time truly learning your instruments and your software — day and night, as deeply as you can. Mastery comes from exploration, repetition, and curiosity, not from shortcuts. The more intimately you know your tools, the more freely and honestly your music will speak.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I’d like to briefly speak about my album His Black Orbit Never Ends. With this album, I tried to break away from everything ambient music is usually expected to be. it’s a fierce act of protest against warlords, corrupt politicians, and the dark forces that treat human lives like their personal ATM. I didn’t “compose” these eight tracks; I survived them. They came out of months of nightmares, insomnia, and sleepless nights shaped by the reality of war.

Sonically, the album is built on microtonal structures and a sound‑design approach meant not to comfort, but to disturb. This is music for those who refuse to close their eyes — for those who still believe that listening can be an act of resistance.

davideperico-mirainohagaki.bandcamp.com/album/his-black-orbit-never-ends

 

The sound of Mirai No Hagaki