Sound Room
Aki Onda (b. 1967)
Transmissions from The Radio Midnight Part I, 2023
Stereo audio recording, 18 min 16 sec
Released by Dinzu Artefacts
Transmissions From The Radio Midnight was recorded from AM/FM radio broadcasts across four continents between 2006 and 2018, scanning frequencies to capture the unexpected juxtapositions of different languages—like spontaneous text-sound compositions.
Aki Onda (b. 1967)
The Little Girl in Tangier, 1988/2023
Stereo audio recording, 6 min 58 sec
Released by Improvised Music
Annea Lockwood (b. 1939)
For Ruth, 2023
Stereo audio recording, 9 min 40 sec
Released by Ergot Records
Over the course of their nearly 50-year partnership, sound artist Annea Lockwood and the pioneering electronic composer Ruth Anderson collaborated on a number of significant releases of early electronic and tape music. Although Anderson passed away in 2019, the composers’ dialogue continued through For Ruth, in which Lockwood weaves together field recordings from Anderson’s resting place with recorded excerpts of their conversations.
Ruth Anderson (1928–2019)
Conversation, 2023
Stereo audio recording, 18 min 36 sec
Released by Ergot Records
Conversation was originally recorded in 1973, after Ruth Anderson met Annea Lockwood. It consists of segments from phone conversations between the two that Anderson secretly recorded over the span of nine months. Anderson collaged fragments of the conversations with snatches of old popular songs like Yes Sir, that’s my baby (1925). The recording was gifted privately to Lockwood in 1974.
Carl Michael Von Hausswolff (b. 1956)
Get Down With Me (dedicated to Peter Rehberg), 2022
Stereo audio recording, 42 min 11 sec
Performed live at Cafe OTO
Get Down With Me (dedicated to Peter Rehberg) was originally performed at Cafe OTO, London at a memorial for Peter Rehberg (1968–2021), an artist known as PITA. The performance incorporated Electronic Voice Phenomena, Tibetan kangling flute, and recordings from a performance that Hausswolff collaborated on with PITA prior to his passing.
Meredith Young-Sowers (b. 1944)
Spiritual Questing 1, 1985
Spiritual Questing 2, 1985
Stereo audio recording, 30 min 40 sec
Reissued by Important Records in 2024
Spiritual Questing is part of Agartha, Personal Meditation Music—a monumental boxed set originally released on cassette in 1986, at the height of New Age, as an aid for meditation and alignment. Young-Sowers is the author of several books on the topics of healing and spirituality.
La Monte Young (b. 1935)
Studies in the Bowed Disc, 1963
Stereo audio recording, 17 min 01 sec
Performed by La Monte Young, Charles Curtis and Jung Hee Choi on November 03, 2024
La Monte Young is one of the most influential figures in the landscape of contemporary experimental music. Studies in the Bowed Disc is written for a four-foot diameter gong, gifted to Young by the American artist Robert Morris, and extends the avant-garde composer’s interest in natural harmonic systems. Known for its elongated durations and sustained tones, the work is considered a foundational piece in minimalist music.
Jung Hee Choi (b. 1969)
The Tone-field: Perceptible Arithmetical Relations, Sunset on the Summer Solstice, New York, 2017
Stereo audio recording, 21 min 01 sec
The Tone-field transforms space into a musical scale. The listener’s body is enveloped by sound, and any movement causes a modulation of the chords. The Tone-field was originally written as a time-and-space-specific sound environment, and the full 24-hour version recalibrates daily to correspond to the movement of the sun through the sky.
Jocy de Oliveira (b. 1936)
Raga in the Amazonia, 1987
Stereo audio recording, 14 min
Performed by Jocy de Oliviera, Sang Won Park and Joseph Celli
Raga in the Amazonia is a composition for synthesizer, voice, ajaeng, piri, mukha veena and reed. This work engages ecological themes, sonic memory, and intercultural collaboration, aligning with the spirit of séances and transpersonal communication. While it is not a Raga in the traditional sense of Indian music, it uses the sentiment of Raga to portray colors and emotions. This work is an ode to the immensity and profoundness of the Amazon rainforest.
Yara Mekawei (b. 1987)
El Qibla, 2025
Stereo audio recording, 39 min 30 sec
Rooted in Yara Mekawei’s field recordings of Sufi celebrations across North Africa, El Qibla transforms captured moments into an intricate and immersive composition. Through the interplay of traditional Sufi sonics and rich textures, Mekawei creates a dynamic soundscape that orients the listener, much like the Qibla (the direction which all Muslims face when performing their prayers) directs spiritual focus. This performance embodies the idea of alignment—both sonic and metaphysical. The Qibla, as a central concept, symbolizes orientation and convergence, reflected in the way the compositions bring disparate sounds into harmony.
Areum Lee (b. 1989)
Event Horizon, 2022
Stereo audio recording, 10 min 03 sec
Inspired by the biblical phrase “wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever,” Areum Lee conceived this work as a meditation on the fate of souls at the threshold of a black hole. Lee’s work focuses on metaphysical concepts from everyday life and the inherent power of the word, which she integrates with her own intuitive and religious interpretations.
Areum Lee (b. 1989)
herunter, 2019
Stereo audio recording, 10 min 25 sec
Areum Lee (b. 1989)
Wunder, 2021
Stereo audio recording, 10 min 36 sec
Matana Roberts (b. 1975)
Jump at the Sun, 2018
Stereo audio recording, 3 min 19 sec
Matana Roberts’ practice aims to expose the mystical roots and spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression. Their work examines new approaches to storytelling and political expression within improvisatory structures, particularly channeling personal ancestry and the experience of the African American community. Jump at the Sun is a richly textured, abstract composition that immerses listeners in a layered sonic environment. Built from fragmented tones, ambient noise, and shifting rhythms, the work resists linear narrative.
Laurie Spiegel (b. 1945)
A Harmonic Algorithm, 2022
Stereo audio recording, 20 min 30 sec
This piece is the third incarnation of A Harmonic Algorithm–a computer algorithm that composes music first coded by Laurie Spiegel, the pioneering electronic music composer, in 1980 on an Apple II computer. “It had occurred to me,” Spiegel has said, “that if […] instead of composing individual, finite length works, a composer could encode in computer software their personal compositional methods, preferences, processes and ways of making musical decisions, and somehow their aesthetic sensibility too, then they could go on composing and generating new music long after the biological human had ceased to exist.”
Jerry Hunt (1943–1993)
Song Drape 1, 1999
Stereo audio recording, 4 min 30 sec
Released by Tzadik Recordings
Jerry Hunt was a friend of Jack Ruby, a pianist in strip clubs, a student of the occult and the founder of his own mail order church at the age of 13. A modern-day shaman, he designed most of his own equipment and used it in unique ways to create backdrops for his magical performances that referred to, among many other things, exotic ritual, the esoteric traditions of Rosicrucianism, Aleister Crowley, and modern science.
Walter Smetak (1913–1984)
Tijolinhos, Material De Construção “Audição Espontânea Do Silêncio, Violão Eólico, 1974
Stereo audio recording, 2 min 30 sec
Originally released by Philips, reissued by Bruh Records
Walter Smetak was a Swiss composer who developed his career in Salvador, Brazil, and became an emblematic figure of the Bahian avant-garde and a key part of the rise of tropicália. His discovery of theosophy aided him in the construction of his own unconventional instruments, made with materials ranging from PVC pipes to pumpkins and polystyrene foam. Around 150 of these plásticas sonoras were created by Smetak, many of them resembling surrealist sculptures.
Walter Smetak (1913–1984)
Áquas, 1974
Stereo audio recording, 8 min 22 sec
Originally released by Philips, reissued by Bruh Records
Breyer P-Orridge
(Genesis P-Orridge [1950–2020] and Lady Jaye Breyer [1969–2007])
Breaking Sex, 2003
Stereo audio recording, 28 min 52 sec
For more than a decade, Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye Breyer developed the concept of Pandrogeny. In protest against the limitations of DNA, and as an homage to true love, they underwent numerous surgeries in order to resemble one another, while also pursuing “psychological resonance,” hoping to transcend the binary world into a place of pure union and possibility. This work was created in the same year as their first surgery, and is perhaps the most literal document of their intentions.
Antonina Nowacka (b. 1992)
I Found You in the Cloud, 2024
Stereo audio recording, 6 min 39 sec
Antonina Nowacka is a sound artist and vocalist inspired by Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy. Captivated by his detailed descriptions of nature spirits in his lectures (collected in Man as Symphony of the Creative Word)—especially of sylphs, the spirits of air—Nowacka has developed her vocal technique to incorporate more air sounds, embracing the inhaling and exhaling of her voice.
Li Chin Sung (Dickson Dee) (b. 1969)
Dream On & Tibet Sound Journey, 2025
Stereo audio recording, 17 min 44 sec
Li Chin Sung is a sound artist whose work is deeply shaped by Buddhist thinking and spiritual architecture. Dream On & Tibet Sound Journey combines field recordings from Barkhor Street in Lhasa with various Buddhist temples: the Dazhao Temple, Ramoche Temple, and the Woeser Monastery in Mangkam. Created across two cities and different periods in his life, the work reflects his continuous investigation of the sonic characteristics of Tibetan Buddhism.
