Irene Bianco Kronblade

Irene Bianco is Italian-born percussionist, free improviser and composer based in Copenhagen. Starting playing drum-kit at an early age and then trained as a classical percussionist, her music influences span from baroque and orchestral music to 90s rock and club music.

Other than in solo, she is an active freelancer and a member of Damkapellet collective and Wolfskin Ensemble.

Now Permanent Draft, London based all-female label run by Valentina with Fanny Chiarello, is making this document available worldwide. -- Kronblade, the Danish word for “petals”, is Irene’s debut solo album. The album includes six instrumental electroacoustic tracks recorded in a studio in Copenhagen in November 2023. Kronblade music aims to explore the spontaneous and unconventional, leaving space for unpredictability and whimsicality.

Most of the sounds, rhythms and melodies have been collected and composed over the last years, during traveling around cities, in nature and in Irene’s everyday life. The tracks present layers of flexible forms and have a large use of improvisation.

The acoustic instrumentation includes mainly percussion, from vibraphone and vintage bass drums to metal objects, bells, shakers, paper carillon, wind-up toys and an old zeither. Electronic sounds, effects and field recordings have had a main role in the creation process, not as an opposition but as a fundamental, complement merging component.