“Caring About Something Utterly Useless” is FLeUR second album, out in February on Bosco Rec. The music of the experimental duo, formed by the Turin-based Enrico Dutto and Francesco Lurgo – the latter moved to Milan long ago – focuses on the dialogue between electronic programming and the human warmth of the hands playing guitars and keyboards, which blend together to the point where the two components become symbiotic and their respective edges merge, so that the digital sounds turn into breaths and the electric walls raised by the strings become synthetic roars. The seven songs on the record become a coherent whole thanks to the production of Emilio Pozzolini, member of port-royal (small, great heroes of Italian dreamy electronics).

What They Say: “Music is, in fact, useless, especially when it has no human voices to cling to, yet we care so much about music, because it helps us to tell what cannot be told”

Their Mixtape:

FRANCESCO LURGO’s Mixtape:

Sonic Youth – Shadow Of A Doubt

This is the band that started it all for me. I’ve discovered them 18 years ago when I was 15 and it was like being struck by lightning. They influenced all my further research of new sounds and my attitude as a musician, from them I got the will to always try to be unorthodox and experiment with weird timbres and techniques but at the same time maintain a certain immediacy and easiness. It was hard to choose a track and I chose this one because it seemed to fit better with the others and also I like to choose one sung by Kim Gordon.

Patrizia Oliva – Cosa Sono Le Nuvole

This one is what I consider a hidden gem and the one that fits the most the concept of “something old, something new”: taking a classic song by Domenico Modugno and reinventing it completely as an extremely minimal synth pop jewel, basically keeping almost only the lyrics, written by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Patrizia is a jazz singer who experiments wildly with ambient, electronics and free impro contexts: despite not being very much into traditional jazz besides a bunch of records, I always had a great admiration and fondness for what people with a jazz background are able to do in a contemporary experimental context.

Autechre – Vi Scose Poise

Autechre I would say are the most important, even if obvious, influence for us in pursuing the electronic route and delve deep into software experimentation.
I tried to choose a not-so-obvious track which highlights what is one of their characteristics that I love the most: a synaesthetic experience that involves tactility rather than visualization: even if the sounds are completely generated digitally, I almost feel like I can touch the non-existing object that is producing them.

Daniele Brusaschetto – Dicètecelo

We have been fans of Daniele’s music first, then we became friends and we collaborated in several ways: we toured together, I have been a live session musician with him and he sang on one track of ours and both our albums are published by his label Bosco Rec.
What we love in his work is the way he blends various genres to achieve something very personal and his being always a little “oblique”, a certain taste for weirdness.

ENRICO DUTTO’s Mixtape:

Franco Battiato – Prospettiva Nevski

Franco Battiato is the only musician that I listened to as a kid and is still a reference point to me nowadays. Its ability to mix up classical and pop music elements, and its relationship with duality in general, has always fascinated me and affected me deeply.
The track “Prospettiva Nevski” is one of my all-time favourites and one of the only musical constants of my life.

These New Puritans – V [Island Song]

The first time that I listened to this one I immediately thought of how brilliant it was in its unique way of mixing up contemporary music and indie-pop. I also appreciate a lot how this band is able to change style drastically from one album to another, even if the melancholic elegance of “Field of Reeds” remains my favourite.

Portishead – Hunter

This is one of those songs that made me say “I wish I have written it myself”. Fortunately, this kind of jealousy had a positive effect on me and I think it contributed a lot to our experimentations with sounds and structure. This album has a lot of beautiful tracks in it, but I choose this one particularly for the influence it had on me as a musician.

Blonde Redhead – Misery Is A Butterfly

This one is more important to me as a person than to me as a musician. The dramatic tone of “Misery is a Butterfly” accompanied me in some of the toughest moments of my life and made me feel much less lonely, helping me understand how powerful music might be, especially when it’s so good.

“Caring About Something Utterly Useless” is out now on Bosco Rec.
Look HERE for more information on FLeUR.