Andrea works in Berlin as a composer, live performer and electronic music producer. Besides his practice under his real name, he operates as 5HT2 and Gondwana. He’s also known for his work with Koenraad Ecker in Lumisokea (Opal Tapes, Alter, Eat Concrete).
His research and interest include the physicality of sound, its tactile quality and implied 3-dimensionality, the gray area between acoustic & electronic sources, the “wholly other”, the disassociative & hypnotic power of repetition, the alchemical dream, the fictionality of recorded audio, its non-referential aspects and the attempt to stretch the cultural borders of (traditional) music instruments
Throughout 2020 and 2021 he started 5HT2, a bass music/early dubstep project which entails studio-based work as well as live performance. Challenging his own experimental/abstract approach to music making, as 5HT2 he composes and performs dancefloor tracks played on-the-fly with hardware instruments—which allow him to maintain their functional nature, while making space for much more flexibility and fluidity.
Andrea is a graduate of the Amsterdam Conservatoire, where he completed a Bachelor in piano and an electronic music program. During his years in Holland he had the chance to dive headlong into free-jazz and radical improvisation, then gradually transitioning to electro-acoustic & electronic music, before moving to Berlin. Nowadays he feels most at ease in the territory of composed music, although the elements of surprise and impromptu still play a big role both in his compositional and performative practices. In other words, he can be best described as a performer and re-worker of his own studio material
He has been a regular guest-composer at renowned research institutes such as STEIM Amsterdam, EMS Stockholm and Willem-Twee Netherlands, where he further developed his investigation in analog synthesis, extended techniques, reel-to-reel tape treatments, recording and composition.
Alongside his music studies, he completed a Bachelor degree in Psychology at the “Milano Bicocca” University, with a thesis titled “The Systemic-Relational Model: from theoretical tenets to modern applications in psychotherapy“, which was partly informed by an internship at a facility for abused children. To this day, the area at the intersection with neurosciences, the arts and the pioneering administration of psychedelics in psychotherapy still occupies his mind and inspires his work
Andrea Taeggi 