Locked Ground by Copycat Department

Locked Ground is an acoustic-semiotic construct in which Alexander Chiesa’s biographical transition from Italy to Russia is articulated through a polylingual body of voice samples. Latin and Russian fragments, including decontextualized Catholic hymns, form a sacred-industrial sound field where the artist’s name (Chiesa — “church”) becomes a medium between memory and speculative futurity.
The album consists of six tracks structured as a binary cycle: three focus on the voice as an autonomous sonic object, while three explore its interaction with rhythm, alternating and shaping a pulsating perceptual flow. The title Locked Ground functions as a metaphor for fixed identity and a potential sonic territory awaiting excavation. The project name Copycat Department and the disappearing cat on the cover operate as a linguistic figure, playing with the word copycat and pointing to simulation, loss of origin, and endless reproduction. Created over six months using 12-bit samplers, the album marks a shift from synthesis to lo-fi discretization, where digital erosion becomes a method of reconstructing an industrial imaginary oriented simultaneously toward the dancefloor and the archive.

Tracklist

1.	Locked Texture	5:27

2.	Locked Ground	5:45

3.	Hug Me	3:58

4.	Lavander Rave	4:47

5.	Me I Me Meine	4:22

6.	She Has To Copy Herself	5:03

Credits

released May 22, 2026

License