UVCORE is the Italian producer Andrea Guidi, who grew up in a small post-industrial town near Milan. When he was a teenager, his parents bought him a battered second-hand PC to help with schoolwork, and it still had softwares installed on it from the previous owner. One of them was the music production program Fruity Loops. “From then, I barely left the house,” said Guidi. Thanks to artists like Gigi D’Agostino and Mauro Picotto, a wave of melodic dance music known as ‘Mediterranean progressive’ was washing through the clubs and raves of Italy, and he started making his own bootleg versions. “I had a friend who was organising small raves in an industrial area close to where I lived,” said Guidi. “I remember we were driving around one day, in a modded Lancia Delta – dark blue with golden wheels – and I was playing my music on the CD player. She told me I needed to learn to DJ and play them at her parties. She gave me two Pioneer 500s and a crappy mixer – pretty soon I was playing tracks at her raves.” 

Over the years, Guidi has released numerous tracks under different guises, and performed DJ sets at clubs and house parties around Europe. But it’s since becoming UVCORE that his music has crystallised. His track “Tirrenia” featured on the 2020 compilation ‘SPF Infini’ by the Canadian electronic artist, TDJ, and another track, “Positive Messages”, was released on Tremors in 2021. Recent live shows include a set at London’s Electrowerkz, as well as a performance at Pitchfork Music Festival 2021 as part of a night curated by PC Music.

UVCORE’s music is defined by pleasurable contrasts. The psychedelic and fairy-like fantasies that inspire the album seem to be at odds with the highly technological basis of the music itself. Guidi is studying a PHD in music technology, and his studies go deep into the automation of music creation. His productions are done mostly on Ableton Live, with melodies born on the piano. “When it comes to live shows, I wouldn’t do anything on stage that a machine or a computer can do,” he said. In 2020 he even created a novel music instrument, UVTOWER, that was triggered by interactions between mirrors and lasers. And yet despite his hyper rationalist and logical background, his music is infused with a magical and whimsical feel: it’s romantic, ecstatic and sometimes intensely melancholic.