On Repeat: “play at low volume”

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

▰ There’s a gorgeous collection, six sound installations, of installation soundtracks — all looping, gestural, atmospheric audio — by the late Steve Roden (1964-2023) out on the Line label. The exhibits where these works were first installed were at such places as the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, UCLA Hammer Museum, e/static gallery (Torino, Italy), and Henry Museum (Seattle, WA), as well as at the Mercosur Biennial (Porto Allegre, Brazil), among others. Roden was a master of — and originator of — lowercase sound. Fittingly, the album, which is 3.5 hours long, includes the instruction “play at low volume.”

[bandcamp width=640 height=406 album=3360276691 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 artwork=small]

Steve’s friend, sometime collaborator, and now archivist, Stephen Vitiello, wrote an essay about the ongoing archival process of Roden’s audio work for thekitchen.org.

▰ Infinity Gradient is an hour-long collaboration between composer Tristan Perich and organist James McVinnie, in which McVinnie’s instrument intertwines with 100 speakers playing sounds resulting from the Perich’s fascination with low-fidelity 1-bit audio. The music is a symphony of precious — sometimes vibrant, sometimes fragile — minimalism.

[bandcamp width=640 height=406 album=2514366264 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 artwork=small]

▰ Beautiful solo performance by Kenta Kamiyama at the venue Shibasaki Mod in Tokyo. Billowing, lightly glitchy sounds from processed guitar.