Milanese experimental label Artetera jumbles traditions and geographies. Two friends, Luigi Monteanni and Matteo Pennesi, started the operation a decade ago when the digital underground was booming with tape labels. Influence from Italian occult psychedelia, a scene led by bands like Heroin in Tahiti, the US hypnagogic pop scene around Spencer Clarke and James Ferraro, and labels such as Sublime Frequencies, brought them to explore post-war exotica and library music.

“My entrance to exotica was Korla Pandit, a fake Indian magician and musician who was performing his music only through American TV. If you’re on the internet, it’s easy to get more curious,” recalls Pennesi. Monteanni continues: “Initially, this kind of humour and tongue-in-cheek approach was a big part of Artetetra.” Eventually, they landed at internet exotica, which invited endless crate-digging.

Artetetra borrows from Jon Hassell’s fourth world – a vision of the hybrid sound Hassell describes as “combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques” – but the label expands Hassel’s vision to ‘quinto mondo’ (fifth world), to include the vast territories of the world wide web that foster “transnational exoticism”, where sounds are deterritorialised and reterritorialised at an unexpected pace. They like to invent their genres, concepts and tags, like memes, which are the building blocks of their universe, and as important as the sounds themselves.

Pennesi and Monteanni assisted in selecting these releases from the Artetetra catalogue and provided additional commentary.

Rainbow Island
“Jesterbus Ride”
From ILLMATRIX (2020)

Rainbow Island is a glitch-dub ensemble from Rome, with members in Norway and the UK. Released just before the pandemic, ILLMATRIX depicts the four members’ impossible sonic communication when they are left adrift in a fictional universe, paralleling their real life isolation with dubby psych rock jams, as in “Jesterbus Ride”. For Artetetra, Rainbow Island has been “extremely influential in how fictive terms and words are created and employed, generating narratives in which the real and the imagined mix seamlessly in an (in)coherent, ever evolving universe,” Matteo Pennasi explains. “Dropzones, obtrusive spawnings and jesterbuses included.”

Nicolas Gaunin
“Huti Ghosts”
From Huti ゲーム (2024)

Nicola Sanguin, also known as Nicolas Gaunin, has been one of the most consistent Artetetra allies, working in various capacities since he was introduced to Monteanni and Pennesi in 2015 while playing guitar in the psych band Lay Llamas. His latest contribution, Huti ゲーム, presents sonic fiction that mixes airy vaporwave aesthetics with epic, fantasy-like strings in organic compositions. “Probably, Gaunin is the one that best represents the original clash of sonic imaginations at play when approaching our digital folklore for the first time,” says Luigi Monteanni and offers his own description: “A hyperreal simulation of a Crash Bandicoot-like soundtrack for mythical tales of far off lands.”

Trans Zimmer & The Djs
“The Adventures Of The SS Romulus”
From Trans Zimmer & The Djs (2022)

Trans Zimmer & The DJs make orchestral compositions with sharp sound design, absurd lyrics, and wild sampledelia, which sounds like a digital fairytale. According to Pennesi, this particular record proves that avant garde art should not lack fun. Trans Zimmer & The Djs are “never scared to embrace a spiralling, vertiginous mishmash of influences and genres going from footwork, juke and schlager to choral pieces and jazzy moves to prove that the apex of avant garde composition might be hidden behind the fun, the daydreaming and entertaining,” Pennesi and Monteanni conclude.

Ensemble Tikoro
“Abus”
From Hell Chamber (2024)

Monteanni recounts the story of how he and Pennesi met Ensemble Tikoro (meaning ‘throat’ in Sundanese) during an ethnomusicological research trip in Bandung, Indonesia, eight years ago: “You don’t see a choir of extreme metal vocalists playing sheet music compositions every day, so we were definitely hooked.” Members of Ensemble Tikoro had only one condition to be fulfilled: before releasing anything with a label, they required a long term collaboration and relationship. “Luckily, after some time, they agreed to release sparse collections of compositions they had amassed over the years. This is the most unique thing you’ll hear in a while,” assert Pennesi and Monteanni.

Marimba
“Side B”
From What is life if you can’t be punched and then get a kiss (2018)

Marimba is the sampledelia duo of Elia Buletti (Delmore FX) and Paul Jones (Cindytalk). Buletti is also a founder of the Berlin-based Das Andere Selbst, which had a considerable impact on Artetetra, as Matteo describes: “It showed us how sound is an elastic substance moving on its own. This Marimba release is a ‘neuro-realist’ collage of various improvisation sessions with an omni mic always recording the room. The manipulation of these recordings gives a unique feeling of audio layers superimposing. It’s like life playing in stereo.”

Kuntari
“Anak Kecil”
From LAHAR (2025)

Lahar is a Javanese term for a deadly stream of burning volcanic material pouring down from a volcano. Bandung power doom duo Kuntari, consisting of Tesla Manaf playing prepared cornet and guitar and percussionist Rio Abror, channel this primal energy on their latest album. “I just thought they were one of the most staggering projects ever made on planet Earth,” remembers Monteanni of the first encounter with Kuntari: “Extreme percussive styles and timbre calculation with these instruments results in something that sounds like nothing else. When Tesla and Rio play, it’s evoking this absolute sonic power.”

Grykë Pyje
“Elixirs Of The Underground”
From Crepuscular Elixirs (2025)

Grykë Pyje (‘forest ravine’ in Albanian) is the German/Finnish duo Jani Hirvonen and Johannes Schebler. Crepuscular Elixirs is another exercise in sonic fiction and world building, featuring the multi-layered soundscapes and imaginative, playful compositions that Artetetra enjoys nurturing. “It is truly a masterpiece of sonic wizardry,” says Pennesi. “Besides narrating a story set in an opaque world of natural magic, non-pulse animal rhythms and alchemical processes, they are the perfect encapsulation of what Artetetra is about.”

Babau & Bienoise
“looongplay #2”
From Looongplay (2023)

Monteanni’s and Pennesi’s joint project Babau was born in the mid-2010s out of a shared fascination with post-rock as a space of endless possibilities for experimentation with traditional instruments and electronics. Their sound has evolved into a blend of imaginary exotica, with heavy doses of psychedelia and improvisation, which is best captured on 2023’s Loooongplay, a joint release with experimental musician Alberto Ricca, aka Bienoise. “Ethnic music and local sounds are created and invented through endless resampling and sound manipulations,” is how Pennesi and Monteanni described their sound practice in one of many essays they wrote together, “so that the internet and technology become a distorting mirror of what it’s like to engage with other traditions.”

Read Miloš Hroch’s full Unlimited Editions report on Artetetra in The Wire 498. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the digital magazine library.