The Best Guide

The Sound Brewery Project: Awhyl featuring Nastro Azzurro Beer ingredients

The Nastro Azzurro Beer brand takes further emerging Italian talents involving a crew of young music producers in a visionary project that explores new ways to produce electronic music from natural produces. The project wants to prove that from a collaboration between talented people always comes out something extraordinary.

The Sound Brewery is a conceptual machine for generating music from the ingredients used in the Nastro Azzurro brewing process. Water, Hops, Barley and Corn were manipulated in a unique method to create an audio looping system based on organic input.

Water was piped through 8 km of tubing and 1800 custom valves to create a water based touchscreen. The DJ’s finger movement was tracked using Leap Motion, this information was used to control 2 custom designed turntables.

The turntables consisted of Interchangeable vinyl-style palettes, these were held in place by neodymium magnets that were attached to custom designed speakers on a rotating mechanism. Audio was generated by interpreting data from a high-spec laser (accurate to 0.001mm) that was used to read the characteristics of the ingredients. The DJ manipulated the sound by: moving and changing the ingredients, changing the rotation speed of the turntables and adjusting the position of the laser arm.

The solid ingredients were placed on a specially designed Chladni-style plate that was developed for the machine, namely a circle in favour of the common square design. The corn, hops and barleys contour and arrangement generated the drum track and synth lines as they interacted with the laser and DJ. Water was poured onto flat pressed vinyl palettes, creating a liquid record. Audio frequencies were fed into the rotating liquid records to generate a unique visual and audio effect from the surface of the liquid.

A four track EP has been released from Awhyl, the young producers’ crew involved in the project. The project has been created to launch the new Nastro Azzurro digital platform - http://nastroazzurro.it/ tiportalontano - that offers to their users the chance to release their potential by submitting their ideas choosing between different application areas, such as sustainability, music, media, photography, fashion, food and lots more. The platform will allow the young participants to develop their talent in collaborations with mentors picked from the same industry they’re applying for, in order to create effective and solid project ready to be implemented.



Creative Credits:
Creative agency: xister
Creative Director : Sarah Grimaldi
Art director: Sarah Grimaldi
Copywriter: Ludovica Botti
Digital strategist: Matteo Trabattoni
Account manager: Valentina Fazi, Silvia Marinucci

Installation: Ten Hertz
Production Company: Loki
Director: Sibling & Rival
DOP: Benjamin Todd
Music: Awhyl
Interaction design & Engineering: Felix Thorn Jon Sly