Yair Etziony - ENXIO (2021)

“I was listening to the “Berliner Philharmoniker” playing a requiem while my smartphone was getting a message every minute about our dead production systems. Later that night, I started writing the first piece of the lament”.

In his 11th release, the veteran composer creates what seems like his most emotional album to date: life, death, unsustainable capitalism, and the crushed hopes of hypermodernity are all mixed into a narrative that examines desolation and demise.
In the last couple of years, Berlin started to become one of the main hubs for startups in Europe. Some people coined the term “Silicon Allee” and claim that it’s the new Silicon Valley. As a veteran IT expert, Etziony started working in a relatively famous startup in the summer of 2018. From the moment he entered the office, it was evident to him that something was wrong.

A failed startup has a particular spirit. If you have been to one or two in the past, you can sense it all around you, the decadence, the cynicism, those who are always on phone calls outside the office, gossiping, and some other recurring patterns. For a couple of months, he recorded and wrote music about what he has seen, how an organism or phenomena is slowly stopped, and what it means for many aspects that are its building blocks: technology, business, people, and last but not least, the culture.
The track titles represent the same theme, and it's either technical commands to close and shut down the systems, quotes from other workers, or maybe the feeling and the happening in a dying startup. Etziony is asking, what is the soul of a startup or an organization? Is it just mere capitalistic phenomena? Or does it convey much more when you become part of it? Can you feel the crashed hopes of hypermodernity? In that aspect, he might look at this album as a “requiem for a dying startup.”
Using a plethora of analog and digital instruments, Etziony would be back from work and write a new part based on his day’s experience. Each day would expose more of the demise and the ruins he would see. Some were technical, and some were humanistic or cultural. Darkness is looming almost in any corner over the records. It seems that Etziony took his dystopian compositions further down the line into an even darker and desolate place than usual.

“Git remote rm all” brings to mind works of artists such as Thomas Koner and Deathprod with its dark glacier drones that slowly turn in lush emotional strings. “Kubectl delete pod” feels a bit like an industrial version of Tangerine Dream Zeit with hints of My Bloody Valentine’s “To Here Knows When.” “Init0'' might be the most emotional tune fusing 80s horror movies soundtracks, with a bit of “Moon” OST from Clint Mansel.
In ENXIO, Etziony is leaning towards modern composition with lush string arrangements that sound very crisp with analog modular synths. Deep inside the desolation and the demise that he usually presents, one can find a bit of acceptance and even consolation.
ENXIO — “No such device or address.” Error code #6
All music by Yair Etziony at The Handwerker Raum, Neukölln Berlin 2018.
Yair Etziony: Modular Synths, Roland SH101, Roland MC202, Spectrasonics Omnisphere.