Costin Chioreanu is a Romanian complete visual artist (worldwide renowned graphic designer, painter, illustrator and video artist) and a multi instrumentalist musician / composer.

On top of having a brilliant career as a visual artist, Costin Chioreanu is also a prolific musician, being one of the very few highly acclaimed visual artist who have a powerful and instantly recognizable signature in music as also in art. His musical work is vast: dozens of albums, singles, Eps and countless collaborations with iconic musicians from all over the world (Aaron Stainthorpe (My Dying Bride / High Parasite), Attila Csihar (Mayhem / Tormentor / Void Ov Voices), Rune Eriksen (Ex-Mayhem, Vltimas, Ruim), David Tibet (Current 93), Tomas Lindberg (At The Gates), Mat McNerney & Kimmo Helen (Hexvessel), Mirai Kawashima & Dr. Mikannibal (Sigh), Anabelle Iratni (Veile, Ex-Cradle Of Filth), Mr.Clandestine (Ex-Dodheimshard), Sofia Sarri, Charis Pazaroulas  were produced in the last 20+ years.

Costin is also known for pushing the live music productions towards the highest realms of coherence with artistic vision, no matter was about a huge stage featuring 100 actors in the center of Timisoara, combining rock, prog and horror with dancers, screenings and full live band in “The Temple” – Athens, creating live soundtrack for H.P. Lovecraft stories featuring the Norwegian Painter Kim Holm as storyteller, during one of the largest music festivals in Oslo, Norway, playing music from another dimension deep in the heart of a huge cave in Transylvania or creating only by himself a live soundtrack for the darkest movie ever made in the most intimate night club.

 

Audial Phantaforms is the most sophisticated Costin Chioreanu’s musical work to date. The project is a new form of post musical expressionism, which through intuitive chanelling various manifestations of a chosen presence are being translated into sound and image. The procedure is based on  self monitoring of Costin’s explorations of his inner world and the results are being expressed and recorded in real time. Every Audial Phantaforms session is a spontaneous live act but with a specific subject of focus, expressed through an artwork / poster showing the chosen intention, prior to the performance.

How does it work?

Through the gate of the inner world, Costin is mentally and spiritually accessing “The Field” – the unseen infinity space of creation. Once connected with this space, the subject of focus is found and the information starts to be downloaded through the channels of the musician and translated into hearable sounds and musical structures, rhythms and melodies.

The core of the setup is a loop pedal, which is making possible the real time recording in layers. Spiral is the symbol which defines the best an Audial Phanatforms recording, as with every loop, the compositional information evolves gradually, till the moment the download from the subject of focus is completed.

The main root of this project is the belief that everything has a presence, with infinite types of manifestation and this presence can be accessed in connection with any other energetical parameter.

Audial Phantaforms is a part of understanding, exploring and appreciating the experience of life, in a way which is ethically, musically and universally updated with the frequencies of present.

Before becoming music, there is truth and energetic information to be expressed.

 

Themes

Subjects of focus can be thematically larger or extremely precise. The subject can be the translation of energetic imprint of a place, of a myth, of a memory, of a feeling, of an idea, of a person, of a moment in history, of a natural element or natural formation. The list of subjects is as the medium itself: infinite.

Here are the published Audial Phantaforms works, together with the chosen themes / subjects of focus:

“The Garden of Thoughts”

In this session the subject of my focus was the presence of thoughts in the mind: the way they appear, the way they look, the way they interact and vanish. I felt the mind as a garden where thoughts were appearing as different types of beings, living, radiating vibrations, reacting to each other, sometimes even having dialogues, transmitting an unknown type of information – and all this forming an entire fascinating landscape. My mission was to monitor all this experience and express in real time what I “saw”, to express through my instruments and sound what are the forms of expressions of these entities, which we generally label as “thoughts”.

“Shadows’ Rebirth At Dawn”

This session split into 2 songs gathered under the name “Shadows’ rebirth at dawn” is inspired by the magic of the passing from night to day and how this process is charging and influencing the tone of all sounds, processes of interaction, of all shapes and dialogues between. 

The first song which is giving also the name of the session and release “Shadows’ Rebirth At Dawn”, is translating into sounds what I felt when I connected with the moment between night and day – that moment when the darkness stars to get weaker, and objects are starting to be defined by shadows. The energetic imprint of this moment unveiled an entire ecosystem of manifestations . I saw contours, shapes, spaces between volumes as unexplained forms of reality animation, influenced by the power of shadows. All these entities were forming this ecosystem inside the presence of this moment, called Twilight. Everyone has a voice here, even the shadow’s molding process over various volumes had a sound, more than a vibration. 

The second song of this chapter, entitled “Idle Crush On Color’s Eve” is the result of my focus over the chromatic context of my connection with the Twilight’s presence. This was like a parallel universe of my experience, where colors, saturation, contrast and various intensities of tones were forming a completely different ecosystem, with completely different kind of beings than the one consisting in forms, volumes and shadows, which I was connecting with in my previous song. The way colors and tones were vibrating, forming such sensible nuances, was producing sounds, somehow like a bird song (in terms of liberty and apparently chaotical patterning). Every color was a being, with it’s own particularities of manifestation and the interaction with the rest was a diverse and informational complex profound dialogue. Towards the end of my connection, I realized these are 2 different dimensions of the same spectrum, and by following both, at the same time, you can really catch the state of the whole they are forming: The Twilight.