Nervous clicks and clacks accompanied by a seeking glance in a city—and below its surfaces. Emma Charles‘ video loops and Nicola Ratti’s track “W11”, that recently appeared on Where To Now?, seem to be a perfect match. But first things first:

British label Where To Now?—formerly the name of an event series and a radio show—releases material that is researching the fields between club, electroacoustic and fine art since 2011. Its releases—originally cassette-tapes only, now also 12″s and other formats—are housed in beautifully designed casings; and its rooster includes artists like Wanda Group, Helm, December, KETEV, Beatrice Dillon, Natalia Martínez Ordóñez, Moon Wheel, Eugene Ward, Machine Woman, Jesse Osborne-Lanthier—and Nicola Ratti.

Nicola Ratti is an Italian artist, who is working with sound, among other materials, for more than a decade. This said, his compositions and installations include petit fragments of melodies along polyrhythmic arrangements and lightweight drones. Together with Giuseppe Ielasi he has released—under the name Bellows—2012 an album on Entr’acte and 2015 on Boomkat Editions, while his solo-releases have appeared on labels such as Holidays Records and, as mentioned before, Where To Now?.

Emma Charles finally is a London-based artist, who is documenting observations in cities through photography and video—take her film Fragments on Machines as an example. For the video at hand, Charles goes back to footage gathered while shooting said film. The artist puts it that way: “Playing on the syncopated machine-like rhythms found in Nicola Ratti’s ‘W11’, the video draws on the patterns, repetition and electronic nodes and connectors that make up the modern city.” We agree. And we think it’s a wonderful combination: