Earthset's Bound: A Cinematic Concept Album with Visual Counterpart

The Bologna-based alternative rock quartet Earthset, composed of Luigi Varanese, Costantino Mazzoccoli, Emanuele Orsini, and Ezio Romano, released their concept album Bound in March 2022. The album reverses the typical cine-concert format: instead of creating a soundtrack for images, each of the eleven songs has a corresponding video that together form a unified audiovisual narrative. The band collaborated with visual artists Elide Blind and Simone Tacconelli, who also created the photographs, single covers, and graphic design for the physical release. The project is multidisciplinary, incorporating music, literature, photography, live performance, and visual arts. The videos use a single-shot aesthetic and retro style inspired by 1920s cinematic avant-gardes (particularly Man Ray) and David Lynch, aiming to evoke memory and absence. The result is compared to Bill Viola's work, with fixed cameras achieving sublime poetry, as in the second single The Stranger's Eye. Earthset previously collaborated with the Cineteca di Bologna to soundtrack Italy's first silent sci-fi/horror film, L'Uomo Meccanico.