This piece is a site-specific sound installation originally composed for the MAMA gallery's inaugural exhibition ERECTION in Los Angeles, December 2014. 

It was composed using sound entirely recorded on-site at the MAMA gallery building, in collaboration with sound engineer Ethan Delorenzo. We treated the building as a musical instrument, playing the beams, walls, pipes, rusty fans bathing in it's natural reverb. A piece was then composed entirely of these sounds in their untreated form.

MAMA Gallery Sound Installation (Concrete MAMA)

Sound installation originally created for the public restrooms at Tenants of Trees bar in Los Angeles.

The  listener, while going about their business, is subject to a number of anonymous confessions.

CONFESSIONS

Recorded on board a the cargo ship Ultra Letizia crossing the North Pacific ocean in 2015. I'm using various tubes and hoses to create this wonky horn section.

Ultra Letizia Cargo Vessel TEASER

COSMOS : The Little House

A collaboration with artist Moral Turgeman for her Little House project.

The Little House - Communications

A Double Life

Blue Valeria

An Australian Alien

I Want to Be Your Wife

The track list goes like this:

1. Excerpt from Jean Luc Goddards 'Alphaville'
2. Malvina Reynolds - What Have They Done To The Rain?
3. Arthur Russell - This Is How We Walk On The Moon
4. Excerpt from Jonas Mekas interview
5. Robert Wyatt - Sea Song
6. Excerpt from Maya Deren interview
7. Ivor Cutler - Women Of The World
8. Jim O'Rourke - Women Of The World
9. Excerpt from Tim Hecker - Chimeras
10. The Roches - Hammond Song
11. Excerpt from Stravinsky interview
12. Joe McKee - Burning Boy
13. Sibylle Baier - I Lost Something In The Hills
14. Excerpt from John Cassavetes Interview
15. Charles Mingus - Solo Dancer
16. Robbie Basho - Orphans lament
17. Joe McKee - Darling Hills
18. Fred Neil - Dolphins
19. Selda - Meydan Sizindir
20. Radio Java Excerpt (Sublime Frequencies)
21. Sunda Javanese Gamalan

JOE MCKEE MIX TAPE

"An album of breathtaking vision" ★★★★ MOJO
 
"Mysterious and Hypnotic"  ★★★★ Q

"A near masterpiece"  ★★★★  Rolling Stone 

"An absorbing and accomplished debut"  ★★★★  The Australian
"An extraordinary debut album"  ★★★★  The Sunday Times 

"A compelling and unusual act of musical introspection." ★★★★ - The Financial Times.

"an immersive experience with the power to haunt long after it's finished" - The Guardian (New Band of The Day)

"a poeticised music of reflection, mood and observation" - The Independent

"Intriguing and hauntingly lovely" - UNCUT


JOE MCKEE
The Darling Ranges lie about 35 km's south of Perth. The drive is mostly highway, fairly droll until you start actually ascending the hills themselves, at which point great dips and troughs reveal themselves and the whole region takes on a strange arid quality. The area was on fire for about 4 days in early 2011. Joe Mckee grew up in these hills and, after 4 years under the spell of London, he returned to them. Burning Boy is his debut album.
Joe's previous outfit, Snowman, were significant. They released 2 albums out of Perth - 2006's self titled effort and 2009's violent masterpiece The Horse, The Rat & The Swan. Praise, wide ranging and effusive, came from all corners of the globe. Victory laps beckoned. Stumps were upped and the gang of four headed to London, basing themselves out of a small flat above a cafe in Walthamstow. They pieced together Absence – a magnificent pulsing, wash of a record that would become their parting salvo. Two of them moved to Iceland child in tow, another firmly folded into the arms of Cambridge. Joe, always spinning in his own orbit, landed back in Perth with a collection of songs inspired by this process, by home, by London and by the catharsis involved in returning to a place you've tried so long to forget.
Burning Boy itself is a bold shift for McKee. Gone is the pulsing rhythm section so often omnipresent in his work, replaced by a breathy and somewhat unexpected baritone. Cuts like Open Mine, a loose mediation on Western Australia's recent gold rush, and the brooding title track show a vulnerability and lyrical dexterity seen for the first time here.
Recorded with long-time collaborator Dave Parkin, these 10 tracks move together as an exhilarating whole, acting as a timely reminder of McKee's reputation as one of Australia's finest left field composers. Burning Boy adds a few new strings to the bow though. Once you become immersed in it's gorgeous swells and poignant imagery it becomes immediately obvious that in all the coming, going, leaving and returning; that Joe Mckee has, at least for now, found a melodic home.
Burning Boy is out in MAY
on Dot Dash.

Joe McKee

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