about

Studio Sayo is the union of illustrator and songwriter, Paolo Sayo's creative projects, blending his love of the macabre with modern romanticism. Sayo has been creating oil paintings rooted in dark art and pop-surrealism since 2017, while releasing his first musical records in 2025 as 'ment_apart' (all lowercase); a name derived simply from mixing tracks at his girlfriend's apartment. A native of Los Angeles, Sayo laments of a decaying city with a once vibrant past. A city of transients, where friends, loved ones, and heroes come and go. This world of abandoned and overgrown, sun-bleached buildings with its vagabond inhabitants still holding onto their dreams are reflected throughout his work. 

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As worldly troubles increase around him, Sayo aims to maintain and reaffirm his humanity, shunning generative artificial intelligence in his work, while decrying the actions that inch us closer to becoming machines and monsters. Sayo takes a DIY approach to his work, relying mainly on traditional methods to art, while writing, recording, and mixing tracks himself. He is inspired by a multitude of visual and musical artists that portray a darker tone, particularly from the East, spanning from the brutalism of former Soviet-bloc states to the specialists of 'bijin-ga' paintings and Shoegaze music in Japan.

The result is a dreamy Darkwave, Post-Punk, romanticist tone within narratives where the characters of Sayo's work question their own identities, struggling between making peace with their bleak reality or seeking retribution from it. Sayo's visual compositions and lyrical themes both represent the cognitive trauma witnessed from those around him as a result of the paradigm of today's inhumane, end stage-Capitalist societal structure. Through his dark compositions, Sayo attempts to shine a light onto the challenges of mental health, rejection, grief, and finding closure towards healing.