Liri SM is a word play between ‘liri’, the Albanian form for ‘freedom’, and ‘SM’, the widely used short form for ‘sadomasochism’ (which is a paradox of freedom). They melt together in the form of ‘lyricism’ (lirismo in Italian). Yet the first letters of ‘SM’ also hint at the Italian form ‘senza male’ (without harm, innocuous).

The idea is to explore the concept of freedom as something that sometimes scares, or rather terrorizes, petrifies people. Our daily freedoms are often a form of content, a mere protection from jumping into the void. Yet it is precisely in the void that freedom blossoms, as much as other related feelings, such as love. A situation where a whole nation, Albania, finds itself, when it is suddenly freed from the chains that once represented the only available form of freedom. In this very moment the act of jumping into the void finally becomes not only acceptable but also feasible, without too much thinking or feeling guilty, as we only have one life.

In Italy, Catholicism has heavily chained our behaviors, injecting the concept of ‘sin’ into our mental hard-disks, and surrounding this life of hypocrisy. The only way to set ourselves free is to rely on the void, to trust the risk of the void. In a word,the absence of freedom.

for the recording of Liri Sm a simple but effective system was used: In the first track the lyrics are a mix between SDT and Jonida. Jonida, in addition to a microphone with a digital effect, uses a mic triggered to the white noise of a vintage synthesizer, starting the sounds simply from the on - off of the microphone itself. While SDT deals live with the control of parameters and events.

In the second track the lyrics are entirely by Jonida: in this case his voice runs thru a vocoder and SDT, on the synthesizer, interprets her vocal inflections on the keyboard trying to imitate them. Everything was put into the digital effect, which expresses the digital vacuum vs. the analogical freedom that lives in its heart. In fact it has been recorded on two track analog tape recorder.

Acchiappashpirt is a collaboration between the Albanian poet Jonida Prifti and sound artist SDT – a sound and video poetry/poetronic project formed in 2008. Inspired by the ouija board concept “Poetry pilots the electronic sound through wirings and feedbacks and so turns it into poetry itself. Their concept is inspired by the ouija board, which is oral communication as a path to paranormal activities that passes through the linguistic Babel, used to free the sense”.(Mapo magazine/Albania).