On your signalSolo performance at the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, New York, NYJune 2024
On your signal is an exploration of the present through gestures immanently within a room and simultaneously tuned into its outside. Through the interplay of drums, microphone feedback, and radio frequency reception, the piece grapples with what it means to carry the weight of the present in our day to day movements around the spaces we occupy. Listening for the acoustic resonances of our immediate environs, overlayed with regional and global broadcasts, the piece reaches for an improvisatory field that can be startling, surprising, sometimes comforting, and often terrifying. The use of microphone feedback here is conceptually inspired by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s description of ownership as a kind of “feedback loop - the more you own the more you own yourself” (All Incomplete 16-17). When thought of alongside Moten and Harney, playing with feedback, which can amplify itself to excruciating levels if not intervened upon, becomes more than simple sonic play. It brings us to ask: to what extent do our libidinal investments in gradations of ownership feedback into our daily performances of being? What would it mean to tamper with them, in a room full of the outside, in an effort to dissipate their capacity to harm? How can a practice of opening ourselves up to possibilities beyond our “selves” help us mitigate these loops of feedback as self-ownership?
“Thankful for the Dance”Song by Sol PatchesReleased March 2023
“Thankful for the Dance” is a song by Sol Patches (Sol Cabrini), included in their 2023 album Ordinary Delusions.
I performed/recorded the drums for this track.
“feel”
Song by deung, Sider7, and meReleased September 2023
“feel” was a collaboration with artists deung (yoorae, smells, robineggpie) and Sider7, for deung’s album “wheel.” I contributed drum performance/recording/production to the track. putnam forest (instrumentals)Album (work in progress)Unofficially released January 2023
putnam forest (instrumentals) is a site-specific album, recorded in an apartment at the corner of Putnam Ave. and Forest Ave. in Ridgewood, Queens. Each song is recorded with windows open, recording sounds outside simultaneous to the recording inside. The album blends the sonic environment of the site with the intimacy of a built, enclosed domesitc sonic sphere. Like harttape (below), in some songs you can hear the M train arriving and departing from the Forest Ave stop, and the vent from Bosna Express plays a pretty constant role in the project. Sitting with the concept that “putnam forest” suggests, the album imagines what it would mean for that intersection to one day become, again, forrest, and what life is/would/will be like in the universe of that eventual future.
Many thanks to Jack for allowing this to happen in our shared home.
harttape (instrumentals)EPReleased May 2021
harttape (instrumentals) is an ep recorded in 2018-2019, mostly in my apartment at the time in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with some more sounds I made/found in other parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the East Coast that year.
Appreciation to Michelle, Marissa, Rachel, Olivia, and Alivia for being open to me recording in our shared home as well!
groundswellAlbumReleased March 2019
groundswell was recorded at a time of profound loss and transition in my life, with themes of mourning, departure, stasis, reflection, movement, and emergence into new states of being weaving throughout. Recorded in the basement of my childhood home in the suburbs of Philadelphia (Wynnewood, PA), the album grapples, as well, with what it means to be brought up in an environment and tradition of whiteness, and how to reconcile a desire to support the breaking-apart of whiteness’s hold over our local, national, global conditions, while at the same time remaining grounded in who and where it is that “I” come from. morningvisual/sonic/poemNovember 2016