VI.BE

22 for Silicon Alone is a space art rock project, led by Alexis Pfrimmer, singer/songwriter, producer & audiovisual director, based in Brussels. Inspired by artistic gestures such as Mike Patton to David Bowie including The Mars Volta, TOOL, David Byrne, Tom Waits, Pink Floyd, Salvador Dali or even David Lynch.

In 2021, he released a ten-track LP called ‘Only Dark Matters’ with the label Lachesis Records. He takes us with a high-flying team on a journey full of twists and turns. Each song has its own atypical combination of styles largely rock-influenced from heavy metal to light jazz, through Drum'n'Bass or even EDM, its singularity remains on the spotlight and gives us the impression to be the soundtrack of a film without images.

To interpret his compositions he gathered an amazing cast of players : the drummer Luca Glausen, the violonist Joachim Baumerder, saxophonists Marti Melia Marganon & Vincent Thekal, the clarinettist Matteo Pastorino, pianists Maria Delicado & Alberto de Juan and guitarists Niels Borrey & Soheil Tabrizi-Zadeh.

As he was looking for a name to encapsulate this project, he stumbled upon those four words '22 for Silicon Alone' on NASA's official website. They were music to his ears. Apparently related to the composition of a space suit, 22 mm of silicon is the thickness from which you would be fully protected from rays in outer space. He added up a very personal meaning to it : 'what happens when we stop protecting ourselves and we start sharing and connecting ?'

Equally influenced by cinema and music, he committed himself to a set of rules, in the vein of Lars Von Trier & Thomas Vinterberg's Dogma 95 to elaborate the plot and conditions of his concept album. Such as replacing the conventional guitar/bass combo with a violin and baryton saxophone, avoid being confined within a genre, leaving space for improvisations and imperfections or even recording altogether. For him, creating is all about offering to see the invisible whether it's a matter of emotions or sensations..

As the project grew, he met François Vinsot, former reporter who worked for BBC & AFP, who’s now writing fictions, together they co-wrote the lyrics for the whole album in only 10 days.

He recorded at Studio de Meudon, close to Paris (Avishai Cohen, Zaz, etc...) with engineer Clément Gariel, and later on all the vocals at the Haekem Theatre in Brussels. The whole album was mixed by Angelica Roca (Lous and the Yakuza, Admiral Freebee) and mastered by Tom Baker (David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails).