Our Forgotten Ancestors

Massimo Pupillo is a composer and multi-instrumentalist, mostly known for being a founding members of Zu, with whom he released 18 albums and played more than 2000 shows around the world.He has also kept a very open and multidisciplinary approach that led him to work with some of the most acclaimed figures in today's world of arts: Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Guidi (of legendary avantgarde theatre group Societas Raffaello Sanzio), american choreographer Meg Stuart, french opera star Marie-Agnes Gillot, contemporary dance group Dewey Dell, world reknown dancer Yaman Okur, etc.He has collaborated live and on record with avant-garde musicians and composers such as Alvin Curran ( founder of Musica Elettronica Viva in 1966) , with world-famous piano duo of Katia & Marielle Labeque , with classical music virtuosos such as Viktoria Mullova and Giovanni Sollima. He has also recorded with Canadian soprano and orchestra conductor, Barbara Hannigan. Working with Katia Labeque he has had the huge honour of an album artwork designed by Storm Thorgerson, founder of Hipgnosis , probably one of the most important designers in music.With Katia Labeque, he has played and arranged tracks of an album of Moondog music that was released on the most important classical label ever, Deutsche Grammophon. Also with Katia Labeque he presented a special project at Paris' Philharmonie in 2016, working, between others, with Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Bryce and Aaron Dessner (The National). In the world of electric/ rock music he has collaborated with some of the most important names in the international scene, such as Mike Patton ( Faith No More), Stephen O' Malley ( Sunn O)) ,Thurston Moore, Jim O' Rourke (Sonic Youth), Guy Picciotto & Joe Lally (Fugazi), FM Einheit ( Einstürzende Neubauten) , Buzz Osbourne (Melvins) Damo Suzuki (CAN), etc. In free-improvised music he worked with Peter Brotzmann, Toshinori Kondo,Tony Buck ( The Necks) etc..In the experimental music scene he has collaborated with Oren Ambarchi, David Tibet (Current 93), Thighpaulsandra (Coil) , Christina Vantzou, Daniel O'Sullivan, Andrea Belfi, Abul Mogard,, Mick Harris (Scorn), Gordon Sharp (This Mortal Coil & Cindytalk) etc...Between Zu, solo work and collaborations, he released more than 80 albums and played more than 3000 shows all over the world. As in 2022 he just recorded a collaboration with world famous iconic actor Malcolm McDowell called "Songs Of Stone" that will be released in september on italian label Subsound Records, and is currently working on a sound installation with Roger Ballen, one of the most influential and important photographic artists of the 21st century.

We know it

engraved in our cells

The origin

To feel the primordial song

We need to have

A childish interest

For the universe

Living In a hint of islands

Far and true

Atlantic and remote ones

A hint, that's enough

To find each other

Where time didn't exist

When there was only space

When there were mountains and seas and sky

And unnamed creatures

With roots like plants

Who extracted new forms of language from the force

To make the passage on earth more tender

To find a song that could ease the burden of love

Of this multiform creature that welcomed us

To expand ourselves like jellyfish

And make distance accessible to us

Making a continuous motion

Transforming this perpetual vibrating into our fusion

Since the origin

In a silence

Made sound

And then meat

Swimming on seabeds of ice and fire

A language that dances the dew of dawn

And sings the hidden streams

An origin where we find our ancestors

Timeless faces

Who breathe the depths of the sea and move the mystery

Meet them everywhere

For those with eyes to see

And ears to hear

Lived in the handed-down word

And in the tolling of the sky, that we call hail

On the journey back

Your hand is shaken

And your conscience accompanied

In crowds so endless

And inhabited

By a primordial solitude

Where our home will be a fire of inaccessible glaciers

In the stillness of a love that expands in a restless cosmos

With that hint still clinging

Of distant and real islands

From which the primordial song comes