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.”

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.

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