Lorenzo Senni, an Italian experimental musician and visual artist, gained recognition for breaking down the soaring builds and euphoric arpeggios characteristic of 1990s trance and hard techno, a method he labeled “pointillistic trance.” His initial breakthrough arrived with the 2012 album Quantum Jelly, after which he sharpened the approach across later efforts including Persona in 2016 and Scacco Matto in 2020.
Early exposure came through punk and hardcore, where he first handled guitar before shifting to drums. Subsequent interest in experimental rock and noise led him into the improvisational ensemble Le Harmacy, whose 2007 split cassette paired them with the then-unknown Talibam!. He next turned toward glitch-oriented laptop electronics shaped by the aesthetics of Raster-Noton and Mego. His debut, Early Works, appeared as a split release on his own Presto!? imprint and Kesh Recordings, the latter operated by Simon Scott of Slowdive. The follow-up, Dunno, surfaced in 2010.
Thereafter Senni began examining trance components without their rhythmic foundation. The 2012 12-inch Hexplore Superfluidity, issued under the Stargate alias, marked an initial move in that direction yet retained a stronger pulse than preceding material. Quantum Jelly, his 2012 debut for Editions Mego, centered fully on deconstructed trance; it was produced solely on a Roland JP8000 and captured entirely in single live takes. The record earned widespread praise, after which two EPs issued through the collaborative project One Circle preceded the 2014 album Superimpositions on Boomkat Editions, an expansion that deepened the Quantum Jelly framework and drew further acclaim.
In 2016 Senni joined the Warp roster—home also to fellow Editions Mego alumnus Oneohtrix Point Never, whose output has at times touched on similar territory—and delivered Persona, an EP whose melodies, architecture, and song forms exceeded earlier work in refinement. The 2017 12-inch XAllegroX/The Shape of Trance to Come appeared next, followed in 2018 by The Shape of RemixXxes to Come. That same year an EP collecting Senni and Francesco Fantini’s orchestral score for the film The Challenge was released. Scacco Matto, his first full-length for Warp, arrived in 2020.
