Scuba Death

Experimental Electronic Music Project

Ricardo Donoso is a composer, percussionist and electronic musician from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil who currently resides in Boston. After having studied composition at Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory he has participated in a slew of projects over the years, most notably playing drums for avant-death metal unit Ehnahre and being one half of the ever morphing experimental electronic duo Perispirit. Ricardo's musical vocabulary draws as much from contemporary composition, drone, to techno and noise. Whether on his multifaceted albums or in live performance Donoso's main interest lies in building and manipulating an immersive sound world that blurs the line between light & dark, hope & despair and the past & future – creating a truly timeless & transcendent experience. He has released music on esteemed labels such as Digitalis, Further Records and Hospital Productions and has toured throughout North America, Europe & Asia. His first three albums – Progress Chance (2011), Assimilating The Shadow (2012) and As Iron Sharpens Iron, One Verse Sharpens Another (2013) – were widely celebrated by specialized vehicles such as FACT, Clash and Resident Advisor. His music has been described as a sort of "anti-techno" where polyrhythmic structures and meticulous textures blur any semblance of a bar line, instead collapsing in on itself for moments of striking isolation. His moniker Scuba Death refers to his experience of nearly drowning in the Atlantic ocean when he was young. It's based on themes of fear and death-anxiety and the music he makes under the name is a more somber, with a focus on analogue sound, percussion, sampling and location recordings.