There’s a strange, electric hush in the opening seconds of ‘Fac Me Cruce,’ the debut single from experimental trio ELECTRIO.

Then—metal on wood. Nails driving into the cross. It’s not a metaphor, it’s not ambient filler. It’s the sound of ritual, of weight, and of the painful gravity that pulls this project together.

The group—a collaboration between guitarist Francesco Rista, electroacoustic composer Simone Giordano, and Icelandic soprano Sandra Lind Þorsteinsdóttir—melds the sacred and the synthetic, the classical and the contemporary, into something deeply haunted and, at times, brutally beautiful. Their debut album, ‘STABAT MATER,’ is set to arrive in September 2025 on Fresh Ribes, and if ‘Fac Me Cruce’ is any indication, it’s going to be one of those records that doesn’t just challenge expectations, it burns them to the ground and rebuilds from the ash.

The track draws its bones from Marco Rosano’s interpretation of the medieval Stabat Mater, a devotional text traditionally credited to Jacopone da Todi, but this isn’t about dusty liturgy. ELECTRIO bends time by threading Renaissance-era pieces from Dowland and Monteverdi through a gauze of contemporary electronics and eerie vocal arrangements. The result feels less like a performance and more like an exorcism of modern grief through ancient language.

Þorsteinsdóttir’s voice isn’t just technically precise…it’s emotionally devastating. Her delivery of the Latin phrase ‘Fac me cruce’ (“Let me share the cross”) isn’t a plea, it’s a surrender. Rista’s guitar is all shimmer and silence, letting each note bloom and dissolve into Giordano’s tectonic electronic textures. It’s music that demands stillness, not inaction.

This is chamber music for the disenchanted, sacred music for the post-sacred. And while it’s rooted in tradition, ‘STABAT MATER’ doesn’t pay homage, but it deconstructs and reanimates, creating space for a spiritual reckoning that feels urgently now.

‘Fac Me Cruce’ is streaming everywhere now. Approach with reverence.

Headline photo: Victoria S. Elmas

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ELECTRIO