Lisa Lerkenfeldt's 10 nightlife companions
Lisa Lerkenfeldt is an Australian composer and multidisciplinary artist working in sound and performance.
In this mood list, she revisits the long play albums that have moved and informed her in the lead up to producing her albums Collagen, A Liquor Of Daisies and A Garden Dissolves Into Black Silk. Each reveal a dedication to analogue manipulations, field work, the cinematic and long form minimal composition.
This is what she shares: “Prior to recording Collagen, working in an archive handling objects from many centuries and locations informed my thinking about everyday object histories such as the hair comb which dates back over 5000 years. Between life as an artist, field recordist, producer and travelling by road to distant places as a museum technician, listening is one of my most foundational and connective practices. It is only through listening that we can begin to reimagine world building.”
Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto - Glass
Arresting site-based improvisation by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Carsten Nicolai featuring digital processing of a glasshouse’s walls, designed by the modernist architect Philip Johnson. True artistry taking on architecture as instrument.
Èliane Radigue - Feedback Works (1969-1970)
Archival works of slow forming beauty, total discretion and weightless instinct. Infinitesimal variations and shifts in microtonal harmonics are often felt rather than heard. The ultimate transgression.
Carter Tutti Void - fX
My eternal mood. Reimagined industrial music. Notable 2015 collaboration between Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Nik Void. Big admirer of the subtlety, circuitry and technical prowess of Chris Carter. Highly recommended nightlife companion.
Gabriel Salomon - Movement Building Vol. 1
Music for contemporary dance or perhaps lovers. This 34-minute piece questions bodily limits with surges of ecstasy and control on guitar, strings and percussion. Long tone, minimal and free. Originally composed for ‘Re-marks on Source Material’, a dance choreographed by Daisy Karen Thompson.
Ellen Fullman - The Long String Instrument
With no desire to play a traditional instrument, Ellen Fullman made her own, drawing on a background in sculpture and performance art. She talks about The Long String Instrument project as her own personal music school through which she developed her interest in tuning systems and just intonation. It’s played with finger tips coated in rosin. I resonate with this spirit of alternate means to new ends. Sounds like rusty air.
Felicia Atkinson - A Readymade Ceremony
This album is like an intimate phone call between friends. Unlike anything I had ever heard but always desired. A post-digital reflection on the poetics of the everyday. Bringing grace to what is already made. My first introduction to autonomous sensory meridian response. Highlight: L’Oeil.
Alva Noto - Xerrox Vol. 1
Tonic for media saturation. Incredible on trains and in transit. Carsten Nicolai’s full length studio album blurs reality over 14 tracks of data manipulation. Employing a sample transformer (developed with artist Christoph Brünggel), this work defamiliarises collected everyday audio by processing it into subliminal static, organic arcs and moments of orchestral warmth. The first album in the five-piece Xerrox Series. Highlight: Haliod Xerrox Copy 1.
Merzbow - Dolphin Sonar
Powerful work about interspecies communication and the problem of human domination. Full length protest album against the annual brutal slaughtering of thousands of dolphins in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture Japan. Artwork by Jenny Akita, Masami’s life partner. Recommended at a low volume on Sunday afternoon or for trauma processing in general. It is impossible to do anything else to this record. A critical source of inspiration.
Divide and Dissolve - Abomination
Spellbinding experimental duo based in Naarm/Melbourne. Eight tracks for indigenous sovereignty, black and indigenous liberation, water, earth and land. Intended to dismantle and destroy the white supremacist colonial framework. Best served with friends. Highlight: Reversal.
Time Machines (Coil) - Time Machines
Inspired by the long form ceremonial music of Tibet and other religions, this four track draws titles from the chemical compounds of hallucinogenics. Aspiring to create temporal slips in time and space, Drew McDowall, John Balance and Peter Christopherson draw this out with delicate shifts and mutations.
