Unai Urkola Etxabe (1999*, Anoeta, Basque Country) is a composer, sound artist and music editor, strongly influenced by virtual culture and phenomena that usually remain on the fringes of society. He graduated in composition at the Music Conservatory of Catalonia (ESMUC) with Mauricio Sotelo, Fèlix Pastor and Christophe Havel. In 2022 he moved to Cologne to complete an MA in electronic composition with Michael Beil at the HfMT Cologne. In the meantime, in 2020 he started studying anthropology and human evolution at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC).
Today, with a strong visual approach and in combination with an emerging liminal aesthetic, he creates immersive –sound and light– and performative environments that provide insight into his complex and referential inner universe, playfully exploring the uncanny, the uncertain, the strange, the grotesque and the bizarre. In recent years he has launched the “Backrooms Resonance Project”, a series of immersive works inspired by the lore of the backrooms.
He has received awards such as the “Young Musicians of Euskadi Contest” and the “International ACHT BRÜCKEN Composition Competition” and has participated in various composition and improvisation courses such as Synthesis in Warsaw, Mixtur in Barcelona and Relay in Crete. He has also worked with Ensemble Musikfabrik and Bonner gkg. In addition, he has engaged in professional photography, costume design and stage direction, and has been freelancing as engraver, editor and proof-editor.
