KR046: Audrey Chen – Runt Vigor

AUDREY CHEN – Runt Vigor

Format: 180gr LP incl 4c insert, DL code  / download

Release date: september 28th 2018

https://karlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/runt-vigor

AUDREY CHEN’s long-awaited new solo album “Runt Vigor” is an adventurous sonic exploration of the voice, cello and analog electronics.

AUDREY CHEN began her relationship with sound through the cello and voice over 30 years ago and since the past 15 years, her predominant focus has been her solo work, joining together the extended and inherent vocabularies of the cello, voice and analog electronics (with all sounds created without electronic effect or enhancement other than amplification).

More recently, she has begun to shift back towards the exploration of the voice as a primary instrument, delving even more deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. She derives her sound material in continuous process, championing the „in-between“ and overlooked. Regardless of instrument, CHEN’s mode of experimentation touches both the abstractly beautiful and the aggressively unsettling, creating a kind of curiously imagined architecture, non-prosaic song or ritual that reaches beyond gravity or language.

Recent projects, aside from performing solo, include her long running voices duo with PHIL MINTON, duos HISS & VISCERA with modular synth player RICHARD SCOTT, BEAM SPLITTER with Norwegian trombonist HENRIK MUNKEBY NØRSTEBØ, and the “romantic noise duo” AFTERBURNER with DORON SADJA (electronics/light projection). Past projects include work with German conceptual artist JOHN BOCK, a duo with NYC abstract turntablist MARIA CHAVEZ, and a quartet with NATE WOOLEY, C. SPENCER YEH and TODD CARTER that released a LP on MONOTYPE. Her new projects include a double duo/quartet with BEAM SPLITTER and STREIFENJUNKO’s, EIVIND LØNNING and ESPEN REINERTSEN and MOPCUT with LUKAS KÖNIG and JULIEN DESPREZ.

American born but currently based in Berlin, CHEN has performed across Europe, North/South America and Asia at numerous festivals including Festival Beyond Innocence (Osaka, JP), Maerzmusik (Berlin, DE), Klangspuren Festival (Schwaz, AT), Sound of Stockholm (Stockholm, SE), Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Norway, Jazzfest Saalfelden, Color Out of Space (Brighton), Wels Music Unlimited (Wels, AT), 2PI Festival (Hangzhou, CN).

DAVID HARRINGTON of the KRONOS QUARTET has described CHEN’s work as „fascinating and gripping“ and „possessing something extremely vital and vivid….“, and “Runt Vigor” exemplifies these sentiments and so much more!

Recorded by Koenraad Ecker and Roy Carroll (in Berlin 2015 and 2018)
Mixed by Richard Scott
Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin
Cover collages by Id M Theft Able 

Tracklist:  A1. Heavy  A2. In The  A3. Mouth  B.   Heavy In The Hand