ZLB, is a project of Miguel Negrão.

I started around 2006, as Zelub, with explorations in space rock which culminated in the first release Through the eyes of a dream. Having always worked alone, I recorded the album on my own, overdubbing each instrument. Later, in order to play it live, Zelub became a group of 4 (me plus Félix, Álvaro, and Gaetan).

In the mean time I started exploring many different musical directions, with my interests focusing mainly on minimalism and drone. Somehow in the last years I drifted from the guitar to the laptop, first through max/msp and more recently supercollider. This last two years I have worked with a system that outputs meditative landscapes, that somehow I find through tweaking parameters, but then appreciate them as much as any listener. The next album I was vaguely aware of something contains the best output of this process.

Recently I have found it refreshing to approach computer music from the opposite pole, that of total control, namely using supercollider to produce all the sounds and structure of the pieces. The use of space in music has also been on my mind in the last few years, and I have worked on that aspect a lot. I find it that drone and continuous sound based music works so much better when it surrounds us, and envelops us, making it easier to drift into the music. Most of my performances and recordings done lately have used some form of surround scheme.

I’m currently doing a Masters in sonology at the Den Haag conservatory, after having done the one year course last year. There I had the opportunity to work extensively on the Wave Field System run by the game of life, which is a unique spatialization system with 192 (!) speakers.