Joe McKee Releases Ultra Letizia Album On Salmon Universe

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Over his varied career Californian-based Australian Joe McKee has been an ever curious sound-traveller, from singer to field recordist and conceptual sound artist. Here he has created the other-worldly musical experience of ULTRA LETIZIA - a cargo ship, on which he crossed the North Pacific ocean from Japan to Vancouver, Washington.

As Joe says: "The sounds you are hearing were collected from me 'playing' the ship like a giant gamelan. I hit, scraped, listened and spoke to the strange industrial beast." Every sound collected is turned into a musically engaging and spiritually elevating piece, reflecting an experience of isolation but in turn revealing a connection to the vessel, it's workers, and the vastness of the ocean itself.

Ultra Letizia is available now on bandcamp and soundcloud. Watch an excerpt of the accompanying film below


Watch The Premiere Of "Dedicated To Pooch" By Very Nice Massage

Very Nice Massage are back with their sophomore album, Based On The Data. Released on all streaming platforms as well as cassette tape by Baby Race Records, the album maintains their signature dream-like approach to song structure steeped in post-algorithm schizophrenia, yet there has been a complete overhaul of their palette. This new sound brings their spacey ambitions into full fruition. Very Nice Massage have created a mysterious world that refuses to be solved and the endless pleasures of investigation that keep you coming back for more. Follow @verynicemassage and @babyracerecords on Instagram, stream them on your platform, or better yet, get yourself a limited-edition cassette.

Read Our Interview With Interdisciplinary Artist Eric Parren on Genetically Manipulating E. Coli For the Sake of Art and How Rave Culture Inspired His Practice →

Eric Parren on the swell of a new wave of artists that are borrowing from the forces of science to create major artistic statements. Parren, an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, combines facets of art, science, technology and investigates the human connection with deeply complex notions about the technologies that shape our future – often without our knowing – such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and space exploration. The works are often deeply sensory experiences dealing with modes of perception and the physics of light and sound. For instance, Parren has genetically manipulated the e. coli bacteria, which are naturally occurring in the intestine, to light up red, green and cyan – he then filmed them with a time-lapse laser-scanning confocal microscope. With the visuals of dancing bacteria, like microscopic ballerinas, he played an algorithmically composed composition based on the biosynthetic pathways of the e. coli’s genome. Click here to read the full interview. 

Sound and Vision: Read Our Interview With Eskmo On His New Album That Was Inspired By The Sun →

Brendan Angelides, better known by his stage name Eskmo, is one of those rare musical artists and composers that can combine the natural sounds of the earth and digital elements with a romantic, alchemical simplicity that is orchestrally abstract, but also extremely beautiful - like a soundtrack for a flying dream. Eskmo has used samples of field recordings from Icelandic glaciers, the rain falling in Berlin, tour bus fan noises while passing through the American Midwest, and parking garage construction in San Francisco. Indeed, Eskmo is a constant diarist of sound and vision. His latest album, SOL – which was released back in March – takes a slight departure from his previous albums, but still holds true to the lineage of using samples and drum beats – it is also rife with Eskmo’s discernible aural brush strokes that are cinematic and otherworldly. Click here to read the full interview. 

Read Our Convo With Composer and Musician Holly Herndon on The Future Of Dance Music →

Photograph by Maria Louceiro. 

Many people are quick to label San Francisco based musician and composer Holly Herndon a “futuristic” artist, but the truth of the matter is that she may actually more present than many other artists that are working in electronic music genre. Present in the sense of her intentions and her use of the tools of our time. It is the music of the future imagined ten or fifteen years ago when composers were still primitively discovering and harnessing the power that computers can offer in terms of the construction of music. Moreover, Herndon is coming to the electronic music genre with a scholarly background and a deep understanding about the processes of music – after leaving Tennessee for the Berlin club scene where she immersed herself in the sounds of that culture, she received her degree from Mills College in Oakland. She studied under the likes of John Bischoff, James Fei, Maggi Payne, and Fred Frith. This year, Herndon saw the release of Platorm on the 4AD label. It is her second official album and it is being lauded by critics across the board. Autre was lucky enough to catch up with Herndon for a convo – she discusses the state of club music, her early experiences as a choir girl growing up the South, and her blurring of the line between academia and pop music. Click here to read the full conversation.  

After & Again with Betsabee Romero: Public Art Installation Launch @ The Hollywood Forever Masonic Lodge

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