GIGI
MASIN
gentle echoes of the
Venetian landscape
Gigi Masin is 70 and making his most courageous move yet. A trail-blazing composer and multi-instrumentalist whose sound has evolved through landscapes of ambient, jazz and electronic dance music, Masin is confounding expectations on a new album that looks back with pride and forwards with renewed purpose.“It may seem a little strange that I have made a record called Movement,” Masin says, “in the same year that I am celebrating 40 years of my debut, Wind.” But change is natural, and this time, Movement is for the feet and the heart. In the end, milestones are just points on the same road, even if sometimes you don’t see the junctions coming.
That was certainly the case for Masin. Self-released in 1986 and given away for free, Wind was meant to be both his introduction and his farewell to music. Masin thought he’d made a jazz record; others called it ambient, but few really listened. Three years later, he released Les Nouvelles Musiques De Chambre Volume 2 with This Heat’s Charles Hayward, which would go on to be sampled by Björk and Nujabes, but at the time, it hardly registered. No matter. Masin had moved on, working as a postal manager, living with his wife and kids and making music at the edges of the day for theatre productions and poetry readings.
Then in 2014, Masin was approached out of the blue by Amsterdam-based label Music From
Memory to release a compilation of his music – selections from Wind and the handful of
recordings from the intervening decades that displayed the breadth of his talents, from zither
and trumpet to synthesizers and radio sampling. When Masin listened back to the tapes he
was surprised to hear how much his voice had changed. He has always been sensitive to
the passing of time, aware of the gains and losses along the way.
​
Talk To The Sea, as the collection was called, changed Masin’s life. Widely celebrated, his
music caught a wave of renewed interest in the origins of ambient music and helped push forward the form among younger producers and musicians drawn to the spectral melancholy
of his compositions – the sense of space, like an expanse of water, not cold like so much
environmental music, but generous, open-hearted, unafraid of its emotions.
​
A fresh swell of opportunities followed. Alongside Jonny Nash and Marco Sterk, he formed Gaussian Curve, a trio of like-minded artists who became friends through shared musical language, bringing new shades to Masin’s inherently Mediterranean sensibility.
“When I was on the radio or in the theatre, I worked alone,” he remembers. But I am very open, I love to work with other people, because you have something to learn from others. It's not even about music, it's about the human touch.”
Perhaps this is why Masin’s music speaks to so many people. Although often described as ambient, his influences are as wide as the ocean. In the 1980s, Masin knew Brian Eno only as the keyboard player for Roxy Music. He listened instead to John Martyn, Nick Drake and John Coltrane, blasted Motown in the car, and developed an obsession with history that has surfaced at times in the origin myths of tracks and albums. Throughout, his sound has been grounded in this fundamental humanity, a belief that even in darkness there might be light.
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By 2017, Masin had begun working with his now close confidant and manager, Alessia Avallone, quitting his day job to focus on music full-time.“Sometimes in life you have to make a decision in two, three minutes,” he says, ignoring those around him who thought he
was being reckless. Masin saw it otherwise.“It was one of the best moments of my life.
​
”Further collaborations with Tempelhof, Jonny Nash and Greg Foat followed, as well as a number of commissions for film and TV. Already synced on several moving pictures, Masin produced the score Azzura, which aired on Italian television in 2024, and 2025 series Dallas,
2019. Ephemeral and visually evocative, it’s no surprise Masin’s compositions have found new expression on screen, with many more on the way.
innovation
"His music is representative
of the entire
spectrum of
emotions"
However, it was on new solo records that his sound began to crystallise once more. 2020’s Calypso arrived during the pandemic and was an ode to the Mediterranean. Two years later, Vahiné was conceived as an homage to his late wife and her love of dancing - a cathartic, deeply personal album that laid the foundations for where he is today.
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Movement, released on US-based indie label Sacred Bones, is his next act. The tracks here are dynamic, draped in ambient hues but propelled by the vitality inherent to all great dance music. He describes it as “music for moving the body” or rhythm music for the romantic soul,reintroducing Masin on his own terms, comfortable on festival stages and in club booths
alike - a nod to his skills as a DJ, where his musical journey first began.
​
“I am so happy making music and playing live,” he enthuses. In an industry that equates youth with innovation, Masin has flipped the script - an inspiration to anyone who feels like they’re running out of road.
​“Maybe one day I'll wake up and say ‘OK, the game is over’, but for the moment I feel full of passion. This is like a dream, and I want to stay in the dream for as long as possible".