First of all I wonder how you turned into music. I have read that you have an engineering education and built by your own hands many of the instruments and devices you use to create sounds... But what does attract you in such works?

I've always been attracted by this kind of things (At age 15 I built my first analog/digital synthesizer). I think music history has a direct connection with the history of musical instruments and so, in the same way, musical experimentation is also experimentation of new "musical" devices (hardware or ...software).

Have you any favorite instruments/synthesizers created by your own hands? Could you describe it(them) in briefs - in technical and acoustic aspects/characteristics/principles?

I like to recover scientific and military electronic devices from electronic surplus shops. Then I try to modify their electronic parts in order to obtain some weird signals. Sometimes these devices and instruments are rather old: e.g. I've got a vacuum tube sine wave oscillator of the '50. Sometimes I try to feed signals from standard synthesizers into them, obtaining weird and unpredictable results.

In the forthcoming CD I used a (Russian!) digital Geiger counter and some radioactive matter (Radium). I used the resulting impulsive signals as a rough sample and also as a trigger for building computer generated pseudo-rhythmic structures. Also, I usually work with audio treatment software I wrote by myself, especially for treating small vocal samples.

For those who are familiar with computers "bad sector" associates with unreadable or damaged sectors on HDD or FD. Is it the origin of your project name really?

Yes. When I did the first recordings of the project, I've got only diskettes as a the mass storage for my computer, and its frequent "bad sector" message, with consequent loss of hours of work, was my real nightmare.
In some way, defects in technological devices are fascinating: you cannot have a real control on them, and they have always unpredictable, terrible, results. So I choose that name for the project.

Your web-site tells that your "early performances were made in collaboration with the Computer Music Lab of CNUCE/CNR (National Research Council of Italy)". Sounds like there exists a structure which arranges serious researches in the field of music. Could you suggest which may be the aim of such investigations? Does they able to reveal certain practical scientific or technical knowledge? Your opinion?

As you probably know, there is a "serious" scene of computer music, as an evolution of the academic electronic music of the 20th century, which has a very old origin (e.g. Edgar Varese, or Pierre Henry in the middle of the century). There are several centers for this kind of researches in the world, the most famous is the IRCAM in Paris.

The Computer Music Lab of CNUCE/CNR is one of them. Its research focuses the attention on both aspects of hardware/software development for audio synthesis and gestural control, and the computer aided composition. Unfortunately, most of times the aesthetic results of these institutes are very poor compared to the ultra-advanced technology used.

How are your live performances going at the present? Could you describe?

Usually I use some of the unusual sound sources used in my recordings (Geiger counters etc.), together with a small and highly treated synth over a couple of background CDs (real-time treated, too) that reproduce sound layers previously assembled in studio. I've always used a background video, too.

What is this background video? Do you shoot it personally or art cut the scenes/pictures from different sources?...

I don't like to shoot "art" videos, I prefer to assemble video taken from unusual sources, e.g. echography or other electromedical sources, internal documentary for electrical companies etc. Only apparently they are "cold" videos. I think they have their hidden "feeling", much closer with the overall atmosphere.

I wonder, where your interest to "dark"-music grows from? Did you ever think about creating some "light" or "normal" ambient music - in the way, for example, of artists around FAX Records (Germany) ?

I do not like "happy" music that much, maybe because I do not believe in a "happy" world. I could try to do it, but that feeling is too far from my vision of the universe.

"Dolmen Factory" is the only BAD SECTOR work I heard so far. Before talking over it, please compare this album with your previous works � from musical and ideological (context) point of view...

�Dolmen Factory� is a reprint of the tape made on a small Italian label, Soffitta Macabra. It's one of my less "experimental" release. It is completed by the �Dolmen� EP, printed by Drone records a couple of years before.

�Ampos�, my first CD (and the �Transponder� CD-R, too) is more "crude" and monochromatic, even if it has minimal "melodic" lines too.

�Plasma� CD is much more experimental, with its use of unusual sound sources for building a dark ambient audio landscape.

I think the other releases stay in the middle between these two points.

Recently Old Europa Cafe has released a CD between BAD SECTOR and CONTAGUOUS ORGASM. I remember second band for rather noisy recordings. Is this release a split or joint work? How does it sound? Is it possible that it is noisy stuff?

It's in a dark-ambient noise style. Hiroshi's "mechanical" loops are merged with a lot of dark drones creating an oppressing but amazing atmosphere. It's very different from �Dolmen Factory�.

Btw, years ago OEC also released a tape compilation called "Manifesto Industriale Italiano" with your participation. Could you emphasize in a few words the principal theses of this Manifesto - as you understand them?

It's just a photo of the Italian underground electronic scene of that year. Most of those projects do power electronics or extreme noise, and they are rather different from Bad Sector.

Also I am quite curious about "Jesus Blood" 10" on Power and Steel. Knowing the label, I suggest that it is not very Christian music. What it is about and what it is like on?

I do not like any kind of religion, and I hate people killing under a religious flag. That release try to explain, using audio terms, my point of view. I've used this criticism on religion also in �Ampos�. For example, its last track is based on the A.C. Clarke novel "nine billion of God Names": I programmed a computer for generating an endless series of god names (or an endless pray).
I like this "scientific" approach to religion, I think it can destroy the worst of it, in some way.

Coming back to �Dolmen Factory". The most striking feature of the CD is it's quite cosmic sound. Like a soundtrack for a sci-fi movie. I cannot explain, but first track for me is an anthem to Supernova birth. This and others create a feeling of infinite space full of sparkling stars, nebulae, comets, pulsars, and so on... From the other side - as you have used samples from echocardiogram machine - the result forces to think about the accordance between microcosm (human) and macrocosm (Universe)... What is the actual conception of this work? And what does "Dolmen Factory" mean by itself?

The link between macro and micro is exactly the concept of those recording sessions. I've also linked the human's life to the life of the whole universe: when you die, the whole universe die, in your mind. In some way, I tried to build audio monuments for imaginary, died peoples (look at the CD titles). (Dolmen are ancient stone monuments). Billions of died people...and billions of died universes too.

On some tracks of "Dolmen Factory" it is possible to hear a lot of sounds which seem to be quite natural - of water, for example, or certain percussion. Have you really used any natural sounds and acoustic instruments - on this or another CD? Or your music is pure electronic - from start to end?

As I said before, beside pure electronic sounds I usually use audio material originated by sound sources related to the concept I try to investigate during recording. In "Dolmen factory" I used a small set of samples of an echo-cardiogram machine. Normally, I do not use samples "only" for their timbre qualities. When I add digitized sounds to the electronic sound layers, I always try to search them in the right conceptual coordinates.

As you have mentioned your forthcoming album already - please make some announcement for it. Is it completed yet? How it sounds?, where and when is to be released?, etc...

Yes, I completed it before the autumn of 1999! But, the American label which prints it said me they had some troubles with the "graphic man" and the CD printing. Personally, I've always had problems with American labels, bigger or smaller.....

I prefer to work with European ones (much more respect for the "musicians"). The CD concept is based on the relationship between modern society and advanced technology in the post-industrial age, in its darker aspect (e.g. military electronics for more devastating effects etc.). It sounds a little more "synthetic" and harder than other works of mine, a sort of ambient electronic music for a nuclear warfare.

A few words about the man behind BAD SECTOR? Please say anything that can characterize you as a personality and artist...

I am a very "fuzzy" person, living a parallel life, far from to the society where I live. The music I make reflect myself at 100%

Anything you wish to add for the audience in Belarus/Russia.

I've always loved your country, and I would be very happy to do a performance there!