NTS Radio

Remnants

Born of the Sea (EP) is Lara Sarkissian's new solo body of work since her 2018 EP, DISRUPTION, released on CLUB CHAI and 2019 EP, PENINSULA, released with All Centre. Born of the Sea is an electroacoustic experimentation of downtempo, glitch, and ambient. Sarkissian sequences instruments such as kanun, shvi woodwind, dhol percussion, along with field recordings, film samples, electric guitar, in a lush electronic atmosphere where her own imagination of a thriller, and stories of Tsovinar - the goddess of water, sea and rain from Armenian epic tradition, meet together in one place. The EP includes a feature from Locust (Mark Van Hoen), British electronic music artist and collaborator with members of Slowdive, Seefeel, Lush and more.
The EP is released via Pop Can Records in Los Angeles, and limited CDs are available via larasarkissian.bandcamp.com and Lower Grand Radio.

꧁

Lara Sarkissian is an electronic musician and sound artist born and raised in San Francisco; currently based in Los Angeles. She is a broadcaster on NTS Radio, and formerly co-founder of experimental dance label CLUB CHAI.

As a composer, Sarkissian's electronic music takes on experimental approaches - sequencing acoustic instruments and samples underscored with an electronic rhythmic pulse that draws from a deep appreciation for dance, club music, atmospheric ambient and noise. She has created her own unique process of synthesizing Armenian woodwind as percussion, bass and voice. Sarkissian’s approach to music is to create immersive and sonic landscapes, inviting listeners into the intersection of her worlds, fantasies and stories. She makes use of: field recording, writing, voice, digital audio, analog synth hardware, drum machines, film samples and collaborations with performing musicians. Her beginnings in music production are from experimental filmmaking and video editing, producing her own sound collage and scores to her footage. Sarkissian scores video, film and immersive AV installations that have exhibited across museums and art centers in Europe and the US, such as Martin Gropius Bau Berlin, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, and John Michael Kohler Arts Center. In April 2018, Sarkissian joined the Institute for Sound and Music in Berlin as an artist in residence, producing a 360 degree immersive installation piece in collaboration with visual artist Jemma Woolmore for the ISM Hexadome, alongside residents Brian Eno, Holly Herndon, Thom Yorke, and more.

Sarkissian has released music with labels Tresor, Knekelhuis, Silva Electronics, All Centre, CLUB CHAI, Rocky Hill Records, and TT. She has performed nights for Tresor, Hyperdub, Unsound Festival, MoMA PS1, Roskilde Festival, Boiler Room broadcasts and more. In 2021, Sarkissian was published in the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, The Soundscapes of Our Elsewheres: A Conversation with Lara Sarkissian authored by Ethnomusicologist Sylvia Alajaji. In 2022, she was published in Norient’s This Track Contains Politics - The Culture of Sampling in Experimental Electronica, with a research chapter on Sarkissian’s methods of sampling Armenian instruments, music and voice. She has taught sound design for film courses at Stepanakert and Yerevan’s TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, producing youth film projects, and currently guest lectures Ethnomusicology courses at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music.

꧁

Composition, Production, Music Arrangement:
Lara Sarkissian

Mastered by:
Jason Adams

Mixed by:
DAVE N.A.

Additional mixing:
Armand Kambourian

Track 2, “Ages Pass, No Tidings Come”
Electric Guitar: Jaymes Moore

Track 3, “DBM” featuring a collaboration with Locust (Mark Van Hoen)

Track 3, “DBM” featuring a sample from Girl from Moush (1993) by filmmaker Gariné Torossian

EP and Campaign Artwork:
Ash Allen

Photography:
Joe Hodali

Additional Imagery:
Lara Sarkissian

CD Design: megmik

Born of the Sea [EP]

Lara Sarkissian - Releases

wanted to finally share this film score, I was initially thinking of sounds around drone music and post rock when writing "Passage Sustained", particularly wanting to synthesize duduk, distort tar and create drone effects out of santur in parallel with these genres. 

I further developed and finished composing this as the score for Memories of Loitering (2021), a film by Gelare Khoshgozaran. Digital video (16mm film, super 8 family footage, and digital video), color, sound, 7:30 min.  https://larasarkissian.bandcamp.com/track/passage-sustained-film-score

"Memories of Loitering intimately brings moments from the artist’s past and present together through a spatiotemporal experience of mapping and slow burn. In its overlaying of images and sounds, the piece meditates on the dislocation and accumulation of the residues of a past, which continue to form an embodied understanding of the disjointed present.

A central element of the work are excerpts from a written transcript of a conversation Khosgozaran had with her grandmother in 2016, right around the time she began to lose her memory and most cognitive abilities. In this conversation, the artist’s grandmother repeatedly asks the same questions from Khoshgozaran about returning, her current place of residence, and inquiries about the possibility of her “visiting home,” as if in an act of refusal to consolidate the fact that Khoshgozaran has left to what she refers to as “those places” or آنجاها (ānjāhā). Charting the slow decay of the mind, which inhibits the ability to console and make sense of the artist’s immigration, Memories of Loitering contrasts the slow drift of one’s life as an immigrant, inhabiting multiple realities, spaces, and desires, with the slow building of a new life in the empire as a diasporic subject, a labour that is ever going and never-ending."

Passage Sustained

DOWNLOAD

Lara Sarkissian - Passage Sustained (film score)

a collaboration between Maral & Lara Sarkissian
https://ra.co/reviews/34907

"entropy & kindess" represents the light within the chaos


released June 1, 2022
mastered by Dave N.A.

entropy & kindness

Maral & Lara Sarkissian - entropy & kindness

Out June 7th, Born of the Sea (EP) is Lara Sarkissian's new solo body of work since her 2018 EP, DISRUPTION, released on CLUB CHAI and 2019 EP, PENINSULA, released with All Centre. Born of the Sea is an electroacoustic experimentation of downtempo, glitch, industrial and ambient. Sarkissian sequences instruments such as kanun, shvi woodwind, dhol percussion, along with field recordings, film samples, electric guitar, in a lush electronic atmosphere where her own imagination of a thriller film, and stories of Tsovinar - the goddess of water, sea and rain from Armenian epic tradition, meet together in one place. The EP includes a feature from Locust (Mark Van Hoen), British electronic music artist and collaborator with members of Slowdive, Seefeel, Lush and more. The EP is released via Pop Can Records in Los Angeles, and limited CDs will be available via Lower Grand Tapes.

꧁

Lara Sarkissian is an electronic musician and sound artist born and raised in San Francisco; currently based in Los Angeles. She is a broadcaster on NTS Radio, and formerly co-founder of experimental dance label CLUB CHAI.

As a composer, Sarkissian's electronic music takes on experimental approaches - sequencing acoustic instruments and samples underscored with an electronic rhythmic pulse that draws from a deep appreciation for dance, club music, atmospheric ambient and noise. She has created her own unique process of synthesizing Armenian woodwind as percussion, bass and voice. Sarkissian’s approach to music is to create immersive and sonic landscapes, inviting listeners into the intersection of her worlds, fantasies and stories. She makes use of: field recording, writing, voice, digital audio, analog synth hardware, drum machines, film samples and collaborations with performing musicians. Her beginnings in music production are from experimental filmmaking and video editing, producing her own sound collage and scores to her footage. Sarkissian scores video, film and immersive AV installations that have exhibited across museums and art centers in Europe and the US, such as Martin Gropius Bau Berlin, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Wexner Center for the Arts, and John Michael Kohler Arts Center. In April 2018, Sarkissian joined the Institute for Sound and Music in Berlin as an artist in residence, producing a 360 degree immersive installation piece in collaboration with visual artist Jemma Woolmore for the ISM Hexadome, alongside residents Brian Eno, Holly Herndon, Thom Yorke, and more.

Sarkissian has released music with labels Tresor, Knekelhuis, Silva Electronics, All Centre, CLUB CHAI, Rocky Hill Records, and TT. She has performed nights for Tresor, Hyperdub, Unsound Festival, MoMA PS1, Roskilde Festival, Boiler Room broadcasts and more. In 2021, Sarkissian was published in the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, The Soundscapes of Our Elsewheres: A Conversation with Lara Sarkissian authored by Ethnomusicologist Sylvia Alajaji. In 2022, she was published in Norient’s This Track Contains Politics - The Culture of Sampling in Experimental Electronica, with a research chapter on Sarkissian’s methods of sampling Armenian instruments, music and voice. She has taught sound design for film courses at Stepanakert and Yerevan’s TUMO Center for Creative Technologies, producing youth film projects, and currently guest lectures Ethnomusicology courses at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music.

꧁

Composition, Production, Music Arrangement:
Lara Sarkissian

Mastered by:
Jason Adams
Mixed by:
DAVE N.A.
Additional mixing:
Armand Kambourian

Track 2, “Ages Pass, No Tidings Come”
Electric Guitar: Jaymes Moore

Track 3, “DBM” featuring a collaboration with Locust (Mark Van Hoen)

Track 3, “DBM” featuring a sample from Girl from Moush (1993) by filmmaker Gariné Torossian

EP and Campaign Artwork:
Ash Allen

Photography:
Joe Hodali

Additional Imagery:
Lara Sarkissian

Release date:
7 June 2024

Lara Sarkissian - DBM ft. Locust

Born of the Sea

Ages Pass, No Tidings Come

Flow Serene

Like an Ocean Is This World

Spirit as Fire

Unraveling (Interlude)

Miracle

The Crane Has Lost Its Way Across the Heaven

Heaven, or Paradise; and Hell (feat. Adrien Soleiman)

Our Dead Can't Rest (Old Jugha Flute Dance)

btwn Earth+Sky is Lara Sarkissian's conceptual platform in which sound and music are prioritized across visual art realms and immersive experiences. Sonically, the label encourages collaboration between electronic music producers and musicians, to create ephemeral, once in a lifetime recordings and live performance.
Lara Sarkissian is a sound artist, electronic composer, filmmaker and former cofounder of label CLUB CHAI. Emerging from multidisciplinary practices, she invites you into her world of music spanning across genres and regions which inspire her production; sounds encountered from film, archives, the dance/electronic underground and Armenian, SWANA performance communities. 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/lara-sarkissian/episodes/lara-sarkissian-20th-november-2024

btwn Earth+Sky: Lara Sarkissian's Remnants Album Special 201124

btwn Earth+Sky is Lara Sarkissian's conceptual platform in which sound and music are prioritized across visual art realms and immersive experiences. Sonically, the label encourages collaboration between electronic music producers and musicians, to create ephemeral, once in a lifetime recordings and live performance.
Lara Sarkissian is a sound artist, electronic composer, filmmaker and former cofounder of label CLUB CHAI. Emerging from multidisciplinary practices, she invites you into her world of music spanning across genres and regions which inspire her production; sounds encountered from film, archives, the dance/electronic underground and Armenian, SWANA performance communities. 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/lara-sarkissian/episodes/lara-sarkissian-15th-january-2025

btwn Earth+Sky: Lara Sarkissian 150125

Lara Sarkissian - Flow Serene

Lara Sarkissian - Like an Ocean Is This World

Lara Sarkissian - Ages Pass, No Tidings Come

Lara Sarkissian - Spirit as Fire

btwn Earth+Sky is Lara Sarkissian's conceptual platform in which sound and music are prioritized across visual art realms and immersive experiences. Sonically, the label encourages collaboration between electronic music producers and musicians, to create ephemeral, once in a lifetime recordings and live performance.
Lara Sarkissian is a sound artist, electronic composer, filmmaker and former cofounder of label CLUB CHAI. Emerging from multidisciplinary practices, she invites you into her world of music spanning across genres and regions which inspire her production; sounds encountered from film, archives, the dance/electronic underground and Armenian, SWANA performance communities. 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/lara-sarkissian/episodes/lara-sarkissian-12th-march-2025

btwn Earth+Sky: Lara Sarkissian 120325

btwn Earth+Sky is Lara Sarkissian's conceptual platform in which sound and music are prioritized across visual art realms and immersive experiences. Sonically, the label encourages collaboration between electronic music producers and musicians, to create ephemeral, once in a lifetime recordings and live performance.
Lara Sarkissian is a sound artist, electronic composer, filmmaker and former cofounder of label CLUB CHAI. Emerging from multidisciplinary practices, she invites you into her world of music spanning across genres and regions which inspire her production; sounds encountered from film, archives, the dance/electronic underground and Armenian, SWANA performance communities. 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/lara-sarkissian/episodes/lara-sarkissian-6th-may-2025

btwn Earth+Sky: Lara Sarkissian 070525

Selections from a special personal archive of mine, from a USB drive I thought I had lost — 
In 2016, I was staying in Stepanakert, Artsakh for a couple of months. An Armenian Stepanakert local named Saro, had been running this tiny music store there for 20 years (which was also a GIF/wedding photo animation business on the side). It was my birthday that day, and we got to listen and pick hundreds of tracks from his computer. He burned these for me onto CDs or dropped them on this USB drive. Tracks range from Armenian, Uzbek, Tajik, Iranian, Russian, Lezgin, Georgian, Greek, Soviet — pop, trance, EDM, early 2000s ringtones, and more. 



As Stepanakert and the rest of Artsakh faced occupation post-2020 war, this resulted in the displacement of indigenous Armenian families, local businesses and l... 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/lara-sarkissian/episodes/lara-sarkissian-2nd-july-2025

btwn Earth+Sky: Lara Sarkissian, The Forgotten USB - Stepanakert's Music Store 2016  020725

now on vinyl for Rocky Hill Record's Armenian White Label EP:
https://rockyhill.bandcamp.com/album/various-artists-armenian-white-label-ep

track art: Ali G,
photo: Lara Sarkissian

featured @factmag: http://www.factmag.com/2016/06/02/for-club-use-only-foozool-smutlee/

Lara Sarkissian - lezginka dance scene

@LaraSarkissian & @Niharb 'Ofelya' 
FREE DOWNLOAD

Ofelya

Lara Sarkissian & Nihar - Ofelya

Lara Sarkissian's DJ set on Boiler Room TV System Restart Festival for the DIRECTIONS radio segment. 02/25/21. Full program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOF34FECUFQ

Hosted by Lucia Kagramanyan  
Curated by Lara Sarkissian & @8ULENTINA

DIRECTIONS Radio takes us through an audiovisual world inspired By video games, sci-fi and bodily abstraction. billieocean's visuals immerse us into a virtual landscape, showcasing her distinct video style.

Visuals, post production and editing: billieocean

Boiler Room System Restart Festival:  Lara Sarkissian DJ set

all music on www.larasarkissian.bandcamp.com
www.btwnearthandsky.bandcamp.com
Electronic Composer | founder @btwn-earth-sky | formerly @clubchai 
Broadcasting on NTS radio

scoring/film/music direction:
contactlarasarkissian@gmail.com

Lara Sarkissian

Pinned to spotlight

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