Blu Ritual - Insects (2021)

Formerly known as Nan Kolè, the early advocate and pioneering A&R of the Gqom sound, Francesco Cucchi is set to re-emerge from a brief musical hiatus with a 7-track EP offering under his new moniker - Blu Ritual.
After months of studio experimentation and influenced by a desire to expand his consciousness through his creative practice, the Blu Ritual project sees the London-based producer re-birthed and reinvigorated by the pure joy of creating music.
Letting feelings and intuitions guide his production style, in this piece of work titled Insects Francesco inspiration was his last trip in Brazil, in the Amazonian state of “Acre” where he recorded sounds of the forest while experiencing the sacred Amazonian plant medicines.

A large catalyst for Blu Ritual’s change in musical direction was ditching the classic laptop + DAW setup and swapping it for a ‘live jam’ workflow centered around the powerful Teenage Engineering OP-1.
Tracks like Purple Summer, Second Death and Insects exemplify this new process; freed from the avalanche of synth presets and sample banks we associate with laptop-based composition and, crucially, without the flexibility of the endless ‘ctrl-z’ undo - these tracks are like living, breathing creatures that Francesco has shaped and tamed using his hardware, his psyche and field recordings from the Amazon.


“ I couldn’t think about the importance and the massive presence of insects especially in terms of sounds during the nights I spent in the enchanted forest, they were powerful organic oscillators synthesizers, I fought hardly at the beginning until a shaman told me to accept the process and the help they were giving me recycling my blood. One night in “altered state of mind” their sounds guided me and accompanied me on a journey back and forth through the cosmos.
Then, while back in London, I decided to create some new works starting from the recordings of those nights, some of them (the more soothing ones) I released with my other alias FR4NCESCO with the purpose of using them for ayahuasca ceremonies, others like those one in this ep represents more the “shadow works'' and the mystery of the nights in the forest. I tried to play around the sounds of the animals in a flawless way, being guided by this incredible unique magical orchestra of Mother Earth”.


Insects is a sonic sound design experience as well a dance floor oriented experimental electronic music and some of those tracks are also including messages for expanding our consciousness with the aim of having in the clubs not only the important moments of simple fun but also, especially these times we are living, having an opportunity to rethink the reality and the beliefs that need to be destroyed to reconstruct a new way of living and a new way of experiencing life on this planet earth.