Darkwave producer Torba – has released his debut album ‘II’

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.

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.”

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 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.”

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 new 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.

LISTEN TO DEBUT ALBUM ‘II’ HERE

Torba has confirmed an album release show at CSA Arcadia in Schio(Vicenza), Italy on 25th January.