"Rana Plaza (EP)"

Year: 2023

Type / context: Two‑track EP and live electronic set for a festival against waste culture and fast fashion, dedicated to the memory of the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh.

Partners, institutions and production:

• Artist / project name: Secret Compound – electronic music project by sound and multimedia artist Andrea Santini (Venice, Italy).

• Release: Digital EP on Bandcamp (and streaming platforms), self‑released (℗ Andrea Santini).

• Performance context: festival focused on waste culture, fast fashion and labour conditions in the textile industry (live set for which the EP material was originally created).

Role: composition, sound design and performance: creation of all sound material from original recordings and samples of sewing machines and related textile‑industry sounds; design and performance of the live set including live electronics and an amplified sewing machine.

Short description:
“Rana Plaza (EP)” is a two‑track digital release (The Bobin, Rana Plaza) derived from a live electronic set created for a festival against waste culture, with a specific focus on fast fashion and labour exploitation in the textile sector. The sonic vocabulary is built almost entirely from recordings and samples of sewing machines and associated mechanical sounds, transformed into dense rhythmic patterns, drones and textures that evoke both the hypnotic productivity and the violence embedded in industrial textile production. Conceived as a tribute to the workers killed in the Rana Plaza collapse in April 2013, the project uses sound to hold together memory, critique and material traces of the machines at the centre of the disaster.