There are artists who deliver a song, and there are those who build an entire world. Federico Ariu clearly belongs to the second category. Revealed with « Il paraît que l’on naît de la folie », his first track, the Belgian artist has never stopped expanding his creative universe since. With « Les Garçons perdus », he takes a new step into a body of work that extends far beyond music alone, as Slash Music reveals.
Accompanied by a stripped down, striking music video, « Les Garçons perdus » pays tribute to an entire generation of young soldiers cut down by war, told through the eyes of a survivor haunted by the absence of his brothers in arms. The result is an intensely human piece, a reminder of just how deeply Federico Ariu‘s work draws on cinematic storytelling. This track is, in fact, only one fragment of a far more ambitious fresco.
That fresco takes the form of a complete trilogy: « Cataclysme Intérieur », turned inward toward human fragility (solitude, the longing for freedom, spirituality, the urge to walk away from it all); « Cataclysme Extérieur », which observes the world through its political fractures, its injustices, and the growing difficulty of staying human; and « Engrenage », which turns instead toward the future, exploring artificial intelligence, collective memory, and questions about humanity’s place to come. Three albums, thirteen tracks each, released in French, in Italian, and in orchestral versions. Over a hundred recordings that ultimately form the pieces of a single story, one where music, film, and writing constantly intertwine.
With « Les Garçons perdus », listeners don’t just step into a song, but into a universe in constant motion. The artist’s CDs and vinyl records are already available online, as well as on Apple Music.
This unity runs through every detail of the project’s artistic direction. Album covers, color palettes, videos, and musical variations all come together to form a visual world that’s instantly recognizable. A director for more than thirty years, Federico Ariu puts that expertise to work by directing his own videos, conceived as true short films rather than simple promotional content. That same rigor carries into his writing, where, through novels, psychological thrillers, and award winning fantastical tales, he explores the very same questions that fuel his music: the mechanics of the human mind, society’s failings, and the thin line between reality and fiction.
At the helm of the association Artfusion for over a decade, Federico Ariu also develops audiovisual projects, workshops, and editions of the Expressions Mixtes festival, guided by a single idea: bringing different forms of expression together to tell the human story.
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