Francesco Virgilio’s multidisciplinary electronic project explores existence, wonder, adolescence and loss across four interconnected tracks and accompanying films
Electronic project mokroïé unveils Unanswered, an immersive four-track EP that journeys from the infinite scale of nature and the cosmos into the most vulnerable corners of human emotion.
Created by composer and producer Francesco Virgilio, Unanswered brings together progressive electronics, organic instrumentation, psychedelic textures and cinematic storytelling to contemplate some of life’s biggest questions. Wonder, mortality, ephemeral joy, absence and loss move through the record without simple resolution, reflecting the mystery at the heart of its title.
Central to the project is its division into two distinct halves: Outside and Inside. The first looks outward, finding beauty and vertigo in nature, space and existence itself; the second turns inward, confronting adolescence, melancholy and the void left behind by someone we love.
Opening instrumental ‘Eternity’ establishes that scale immediately. Conceived as an allegory for existence, the track places the instinct to live against the inevitability of death, with sparkling waves of electronics interacting with organic textures to suggest a connection between Earth and the stars. From there, ‘Over The Clouds’ continues the journey through a more serene and luminous dreamscape, gradually darkening into uncertainty before resolving through comforting, ethereal piano.
The perspective shifts dramatically with ‘Teenage Sunday Sadness’, the opening track of Unanswered’s inward-looking second half. Brightness and carefree energy slowly give way to inexplicable melancholy, capturing the emotional contradictions of adolescence and the strange sadness that can emerge without an obvious reason.
Closing track ‘Negative Space’ is the EP’s sole vocal composition and features Alison Thom, singer, songwriter and composer of Australian band Howlite. Set against an ethereal electro-pop foundation and delicate orchestral arrangements, Thom’s haunting vocal gives form to absence, grief and the empty space left by a loved one. A whispered French phrase, “l’attente d’un retour” — the waiting for a return — distils the song’s sense of longing into a single thought.
The collaboration reunites Thom and Virgilio following mokroïé’s previous electro-orchestral remix of Howlite’s ‘Blood Type’. The reimagining transformed the original through dramatic musical swells and new electronic energy, prompting the band and their publisher to memorably describe it as “the soundtrack to the next John Wick!”
Just as important as the music is the world surrounding it. Each of the four tracks on Unanswered is accompanied by a music video, with Virgilio designing the visuals and videos as extensions of the compositions themselves. Cosmic dust, human figures, enormous skies, rain-soaked landscapes and fragments of everyday life turn the EP into a synesthetic experience in which sound and image continually inform one another.
That relationship between music and visual storytelling has long defined mokroïé. Virgilio approaches the project as a sonic director, shaping rhythm, atmosphere and narrative simultaneously while moving freely between electronic, rock, pop and industrial foundations alongside elements of jazz, soul and global music. Familiar instrumentation can sit beside radical textures, allowing each release to function as its own borderless sound laboratory.
Collaboration has similarly played an important role throughout mokroïé’s evolution. Previous projects have brought Virgilio together with musicians, vocalists and visual artists including spoken-word artist Allonymous, drummers Dave Collingwood and Cyril Atef, and Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo-winning photojournalist Sergey Ponomarev, who collaborated on the multidisciplinary 2017 EP GLOBAL – SYSTEM – ERROR.
Across subsequent releases including Machines & Soul, WORKS2K21 and Moving Forward, mokroïé has continued to explore the meeting point between electronic experimentation, human emotion and visual narrative. Unanswered pushes that philosophy into a particularly introspective space.
Rather than attempting to resolve the questions it raises, the EP embraces their uncertainty. From stardust and the inevitability of mortality to teenage melancholy and the lingering absence of another person, Unanswered moves between the immense and the intimate, searching for the vital energy that persists even when answers remain out of reach.
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