Based in Belgium, Formatt was founded early 2001, after several years of experimenting and exploring sound and music in various contexts, as the solo-project of Peter Smeekens. Focusing on the creative enforcement of audio, the main goal is to investigate and modulate blends of analog sounds, environmental recordings and digital signals and patterns. Especially intrigued by opposed characteristics of several sources and the actual physical qualities of sound, Smeekens tends to create, rather then tracks, virtual spaces in which sonic identities can find their ways amongst each other, silence and volume become almost tangible and statics emphasize movement. Tied by style nor genre, but with an healthy interest in many aspects of experimental expression, motifs range from musique concrète and manipulated found sounds to improvisation, loopbased programming, soft noisy blankets, minimal environments of ambient tones and vast, whirling drones. Next to arranging tracks on physical or virtual releases, in a tradition of not trying to take the most obvious paths all the time, Formatt's output is often presented in the most varied of settings, as there are installations, collaborations with other artists and artforms such as architects, writers and poets, graphic designers, photographers and videasts, as well as performances in venues ranging from art-spaces to squatted industrial sites. Past projects included, amongst others, research in the fields of sonic and environmental transparency vs density, glitches and artificial mistakes vs personal warmth and domestic intimacy and a suggestive setting based on the rebirth of the human mind during less comfortable periods. Individual varieties of sensory perception and conceptual contradictions are often found leitmotivs in his work.
