Fabio Golfetti is Brasilian musician and producer active since 1978. He is the most notable and left important mark on Brasilian scene as founder of his band Violeta de Outono. Since 2007 he is the member of influental European band Gong as well.

Of course, this is just a small part of his activities and prolific work. But to our Balkan readers he could be interesting as the member of Angel's Breath project. Fabio was one of the musicians that spent his time in playing and hanging around with Mitar Subotić Suba and Milan Mladenović. During that time he actively took part in Angel's Breath creative process. He spent more time with Suba than with Milan since Milan came afterwords. But no matter what, it was enough for Suba and Milan to make strong impression on Fabio.

The world is a small place and we got in contact with Fabio by chance (or was it - shout to Marko!). Of course, Suba and Milan were our meeting points so in that conversation we asked Fabio to share some memories on time spent with Suba and Milan. He was kind and responsive so we had a chance to see that Suba and Milan had much wider influence than Balkan countries and scenes.

So, without further ado, we'd like to give thanks to Fabio for this fine memories and we'll leave you to them...

My memories about Angel’s Breath and my connection with Suba (Mitar Subotić) & Milan (Milan Mladenović)


Back in the 90’s around 1992-1993, my friend Taciana Barros came to me one day and said, “you have to meet my friend, my boyfriend, Suba. He’s from Yugoslavia and I’m sure you have a lot in common”. She mentioned that because I was always a big fan of things like experimental and minimalist music, rock and avant garde classical/ jazz, and Suba was very much into that. Also he had just come from France, the land of my favourite rock band of all time, Gong of Daevid Allen which I am the current guitarist of since 2007. I hadn’t heard about his work before that, so it was a big surprise.

The first time we met, he gave me a cassette with a compilation of his music. I really enjoyed it and saw some possibilities to play some guitar. We played live for the first time in a festival called Conexao Midi (Midi Connection), in 1993 in São Paulo. Unfortunately I don’t have the recording, just a few photos, but we did a mixture of sequenced music and improvisation.

Suba i Fabio in Sao Paolo, july 1993. Photo from Fabio's personal archive
Suba was both a great musician and a creative sound manipulator and at that time in the beginning of the popular electronic computer music, he was a pioneer creating new sound textures in a very beautiful musical way. We both shared the same Atari computer systems which was a great tool.

During the time we worked together, which was in the beginning of his career in Brazil, I think he was still developing what he would become famous later. As a foreigner he had a unique vision of Brazilian music catching some relevant aspects that the local artists don’t see normally, and then mixed in a new combination of elements, synthesising in a more international fashion, his works with Joao Parahyba is a good example. I remember that we started a weekly session to explore sounds, and Suba loved to record my guitar sounds to process later. We did several sessions just recording my glissando guitar, which is a technique that I use a lot.

Suba already had most of the ideas of the Angel’s Breath album and we recorded most of the material, and then when Milan came to São Paulo, he brought his guitar and voice and finished the songs. Suba told me how Milan was famous and it was amazing how the album took form after his contribution. During the short period together, we had a lot of plans when he took the masters back to Yugoslavia, and then suddenly we received the sad news about him. Although the album never was released here, Suba continued later working with many famous artists. Few years later a tragedy happened here with Suba in his apartment. Fortunately their legacy remains and Suba became a kind of guru between the producers in Brazil, he pointed some new directions to Brazilian pop music.

Fabio Golfetti
December, 2021
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To follow Fabio and findout more about his work, please visit his website, instagram and facebook.