why we love this

A noir detective, deep in thought, leaves a cassette tape on a car dashboard. It melts in the sun allowing its magnetic imprints to warp into wonderful impressions of defying gravity, suspending wide-eyed tones in the air.

about the record

Giving form to a broad personal project of deep contemplation and quiet emotionality, Happy Floating marks the debut album of South Tyrol-born, Leipzig-based musician Damian Dalla Torre on Munich imprint Squama Recordings.

This rich collage of field recordings, brass instruments, synth-strings and delicate sampling techniques oscillates between gentle familiarity and dreamlike distortions, inspiring a warmth that extends across time. Visually, this is underscored by Maximilian Schachtner’s uncanny cover artwork pairing a cotton-candied sunset with playful hand-drawn clouds next to an image of rustling plastic texture, applying the record’s theme of ambivalence to the vinyl sleeve.

Throughout the record, Damian Dalla Torre seeks to explore a state of Happy Floating: in this pursuit, he remains self-aware of the fickle nature of carelessness, powerfully concentrating it in sonic form.