Unanswered (EP) – The full story
Unanswered (EP) – official music and video streaming link
Unanswered brings together progressive electronics, organic instrumentation, psychedelic textures and cinematic storytelling to contemplate some of life’s biggest questions. Wonder, mortality, ephemeral joy, absence and loss move through the record without simple resolution, reflecting the mystery at the heart of its title.
Central to the project is its division into two distinct halves: Outside and Inside. The first looks outward, finding beauty and vertigo in nature, space and existence itself; the second turns inward, confronting adolescence, melancholy and the void left behind by someone we love.
Opening instrumental ‘Eternity’ establishes that scale immediately. Conceived as an allegory for existence, the track places the instinct to live against the inevitability of death, with sparkling waves of electronics interacting with organic textures to suggest a connection between Earth and the stars. From there, ‘Over The Clouds’ continues the journey through a more serene and luminous dreamscape, gradually darkening into uncertainty before resolving through comforting, ethereal piano.
The perspective shifts dramatically with ‘Teenage Sunday Sadness’, the opening track of Unanswered’s inward-looking second half. Brightness and carefree energy slowly give way to inexplicable melancholy, capturing the emotional contradictions of adolescence and the strange sadness that can emerge without an obvious reason.
Closing track ‘Negative Space’ is the EP’s sole vocal composition and features Alison Thom, singer, songwriter and composer of Australian band Howlite. Set against an ethereal electro-pop foundation and delicate orchestral arrangements, Thom’s haunting vocal gives form to absence, grief and the empty space left by a loved one. A whispered French phrase, “l’attente d’un retour” — the waiting for a return — distils the song’s sense of longing into a single thought.
01 — Eternity
A journey through the cosmos, between the instinct to live and the inevitability of death.
02 — Over The Clouds
A dreamlike passage through beauty, uncertainty and the fragile comfort of light.
03 — Teenage Sunday Sadness
When carefree moments give way to the inexplicable melancholy of growing up.
04 — Negative Space (feat. Alison Thom)
A visual meditation on absence, longing and the space someone leaves behind.
The Story Behind the Tracks
1. Eternity
How do we live when we know that everything must eventually come to an end?
Opening the EP, Eternity explores the tension between our instinct to live and the inevitability of death. Sparkling electronic waves intertwine with organic textures, evoking a dialogue between the Earth and the stars. Both intimate and vast in scale, the track reflects on our place in the universe and the fragile beauty of existence.
2. Over The Clouds
A journey between serenity and uncertainty.
Over The Clouds unfolds like a luminous dreamscape, offering a moment of escape and contemplation. Beneath its apparent tranquillity, however, a darker feeling gradually emerges, unsettling the initial sense of peace. The track eventually finds its way back to a more comforting atmosphere, carried by ethereal piano tones. Light and shadow coexist, reflecting the uncertainty that often lies beneath moments of apparent calm.
3. Teenage Sunday Sadness
Sometimes, sadness arrives without a reason.
With Teenage Sunday Sadness, the EP turns inward, exploring the contradictions and emotional turbulence of adolescence. Brightness and carefree energy gradually give way to an inexplicable melancholy, capturing those moments when everything seems fine on the surface, yet something feels strangely out of place. It is a reflection on the emotions we experience as we grow up, and on the quiet sadness that can emerge without an obvious cause.
4. Negative Space (feat. Alison Thom)
The absence of someone can become a presence of its own.
Closing the EP, Negative Space is its only vocal track and features Alison Thom, singer, songwriter and composer from the Australian band Howlite. Set against an ethereal electro-pop foundation and delicate orchestral arrangements, her haunting voice gives expression to grief, longing and the emptiness left by someone we love.
A whispered French phrase — “l’attente d’un retour” — captures the heart of the song: the waiting for a return, suspended between memory, hope and the impossibility of knowing what comes next.
Unanswered (EP) – The full story (end part)
The collaboration reunites Alison Thom and Francesco Virgilio following mokroïé’s previous electro-orchestral remix of Howlite’s Blood Type. The reimagining transformed the original through dramatic musical swells and renewed electronic energy, prompting the band and its publisher to describe it as “the soundtrack to the next John Wick!”
Just as important as the music is the world surrounding it. Each of the four tracks on Unanswered is accompanied by a music video, with Virgilio shaping the visuals as extensions of the compositions themselves. Cosmic dust, human figures, vast skies, rain-soaked landscapes and fragments of everyday life turn the EP into a synesthetic experience in which sound and image continually inform one another.
This relationship between music and visual storytelling has long defined mokroïé. Virgilio approaches the project as a sonic director, shaping rhythm, atmosphere and narrative simultaneously while moving freely between electronic, rock, pop and industrial foundations, with elements of jazz, soul and music from around the world. Familiar instrumentation meets unexpected textures, allowing each release to become its own borderless sound laboratory.
Collaboration has also played an important role in mokroïé’s evolution. Previous projects have brought Virgilio together with musicians, vocalists and visual artists, including spoken-word artist Allonymous, drummers Dave Collingwood and Cyril Atef, and Pulitzer Prize-winning and World Press Photo-winning photojournalist Sergey Ponomarev, who collaborated on the multidisciplinary 2017 EP GLOBAL – SYSTEM – ERROR.
Across releases including Machines & Soul, WORKS2K21 and Moving Forward, mokroïé has continued to explore the meeting point between electronic experimentation, human emotion and visual narrative. Unanswered takes this philosophy into a particularly introspective space.
Rather than attempting to resolve the questions it raises, the EP embraces uncertainty. From stardust and the inevitability of mortality to teenage melancholy and the lingering absence of a loved one, Unanswered moves between the immense and the intimate, searching for the vital energy that persists even when answers remain out of reach.