Album release date: 02/28/25

Details

Pipe organ, electric organ, viola, vocals, prepared piano, brass sound sculpture (consisting of found objects and instruments welded together then percussed, trumpeted and activated with transducers and contact mics), field recordings featuring: sea caves (temporarily transformed into walk-in cellos via wire and bow), ambulating sea stars, feeding hagfish, stridulating beetles, chorusing frogs and toads, braying penguins, respiring tortoises, echolocating bats and chorusing cicadas.

Pipe organ recorded at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles. Moving imagery featuring hagfish and moray eels was projection-mapped onto the interior walls of the church, as well as onto the carved wooden organ case.

Brass sound sculpture welded at the Okada Sculpture and Ceramics Facility, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.

Visual album features performances on pipe organ, piano, viola, and sound sculptures at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California, Mount Allison University Chapel in New Brunswick, Canada, and sea caves along the coast of southern California.

Track List

1. Overture 10:50
2. Can You Hear the Sea Caves Breathing? 01:41
3. The Sea Cave Has Gills And It Is Breathing 03:19
4. Bruised Piano 01:46
5. Piano Plucked and Bowed 02:10
6. Please Hold On 04:17
7. Foghorns 02:03
8. Kafele and the Pipe Organ 02:59
9. Golden-Headed Lion Tamarin and a Brass Marching Band 01:22
10. The Bats Are Listening 01:00
11. There Used To Be Frogs Here 02:04
12. Frost In The Fen 01:16
13. Graeme’s Roadkill Organ Is Resuscitated 03:16
14. This is Oscillating Breathing 01:25
15. The Sea Cave Growls 00:42
16. The Pipe Organ Has Gills And It Is Breathing 02:13
17. Dirge For The Insects 01:35
18. Cave Drips 01:08
19. The Swainson's Thrush Migrates at Night 01:42
20. Sea Star Walks on Glass 02:56
21. Flood Tide, Aperture Shift: The Cave Darkens 00:27
22. The Sea Cave Has Gills And It Is Breathing (Reprise) 05:22
22. Epilogue: The Sounds of Hagfish Feeding 02:47

Credits

Audio mastered by Michael Southard.

Vocals performed by Mary Edwards, Leah Crosby, and Jacob Frost. Trumpet performed by Kafele Williams at The Church / Art House in Omaha, Nebraska (“Kafele and the Pipe Organ”).

Organ music performed by Julia Edith Rigby on the historical pipe organs at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, the Mount Allison University Chapel in New Brunswick, and The Church / Art House in Omaha, Nebraska. Piano recorded by Julia Edith Rigby at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. Viola, 1978 Yamaha Electone B55 electric organ, and sampling keyboard performed by Julia Edith Rigby. Sound sculpture (welded from sousaphones and found brass objects) performed by Julia Edith Rigby. Field recordings feature radios, tape cassette recorders, starfish tube feet, sea urchins, bats, beetles, penguins, a Swainson’s Thrush and The Wrinkles in Time marching band in Omaha, Nebraska).

Special thanks to Grand Central Center for Art in Santa Ana, California for your support in the beginning phases of this work, to Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts for offering me the time and space to begin recording this album, and to Sitka Center for Art and Ecology for offering me the time and space to edit. Thank you to Okada Sculpture and Ceramics Facility in Omaha, Nebraska for sharing welding materials so that I could fabricate the brass sound sculpture of assorted sousaphones and horns (which is featured on the track “Foghorns”). Many thanks to Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, Bodega Marine Laboratory and Chapman University, where I recorded sounds made by hagfish, sea urchins, sea stars and more.

Thank you to the OneBeat Fellowship and Found Sound Nation for introducing me to an incredible community of musicians, and CAMPBIENT for expanding my sense of play in the world of sound art. Thank you to The Church Art House in Omaha, SAPPYFEST and Mount Allison University in New Brunswick and Immanuel Presbyterian Church for sharing your pipe organs. Thank you Graeme Patterson for sharing your sound studio and your 1978 Yamaha Electone B55 electric organ, which you found abandoned on the street with its power cord cut and somehow resuscitated back to its former glory. And thank you to all my friends and family for all your support along the way.