The Longest Song is a concert-piece that brings together HYPER DUO and musician-composer Fernando Manassero, blending sounds from vaporwave, retrofuturism, and obsolete sound devices. The project is created in collaboration with lighting artist Lea Martinez and sound engineer Maxime le Saux.
Composed for vintage analog synthesizers, hybrid drums, floppy disks, turntable, sampler, and reel-to-reel tape machine, The Longest Song explores the theme of technostalgia. It takes place under Technostalgia series, a general conceptual framework which Manassero created to encompass a series of pieces related to retro-futurism, each of the pieces being independent from the others in terms of material and instrumental forces. The concept implies the use of deprecated technology and sounds from the past in the context of new contemporary chamber music.
Technostalgia phenomenon is the manifestation of a profound need to reestablish powerful connections with technology in terms of imagination and freedom. Nowadays the promise of freedom through technology is arguably questionable, there is an ongoing fascination with outdated physical devices that coexist with the new ones. Far from being just a trend, these devices function like time machines, linking the past with the present and even projecting into the future.
The Longest Song features HYPER DUO and Fernando Manassero, with each musician and their own sound system dispersed throughout the venue, arranged so that they surround the audience. The trio sends sonic messages from one station to another, aiming to blend with each other, but also playing against one another. One musician uses vintage analog synthesizers and new sound processors; another uses a drum kit with sensors triggering electronic sounds; the third performs with a turntable, a sampler, and a tape recorder.
The performance offers an imaginary trip into a future where humanity has become inclusive and lived in harmony with nature through technology—a future that never came to be. The trio experiments with sounds from the past and present in an attempt to capture that lost essence.
World premiere on 02.02.25 at Sonic Matter Festival Zürich
Fernando Manassero and HYPER DUO «The longest song – Technostalgia series 4» (2025)
Gilles Grimaître – analogue vintage synthsizers | Julien Mégroz – sensor drums | Fernando Manassero – turntables, samplers and tape recorders | Lea Martinez – light | Maxime le Saux – sound direction
photos © Michelle Ettlin