The piano toward the end 💔❤️‍🩹

JAMES K
"ELEKTRA (Scream Through the Eyes of a Statue)"
CD in jewel case w OBI strip
Edition of 250
Release 19.01.2024

“Why is female sound bad to hear?” - Anne Carson

ELEKTRA (Scream Through the Eyes of a Statue), is a multimedia performance broadly conceptualizing the female voice as an “X-ray to the bones of sound.” It was commissioned by Issue Project Room and performed April 26th, 2018 in Brooklyn, New York.  Taking poet, essayist, and Classics professor Anne Carson’s translation of Sophocles’ tragic play Elektra as a point of departure, James K monstrously externalizes the inner sonic world of female vocalization through a scored collaborative framework interpreting each of Elektra’s “screams” in the Greek tragedy.

The piece develops unique methods of screaming through musical and non-musical objects -- performed through manipulated text, videos, and live contributions from James K (voice, electronics, violin, video) Brooklyn-based musician Eve Essex (alto saxophone, various winds and electronics), electronic producer and performer Dylan Shir (electronics), composer and cellist Leila Bordreuil (cello), and poet/artist Eli V Manuscript (textual alchemy, projections).

Within this collaborative framework, James K scores “the scream” to express the various relations between hysteria and the “gender of sound” -- a blurred and overlapping feminine sound defined by its fragmentation and resistance to scripted narrative. Elektra’s presence is emblematic of a radical alienation that occurs as a standing discrepancy to tragic convention. Amongst society, she is the anti-dialogue, a symbol of protest.

‘my cries are wings, they pierce the cage’

Elektra’s vocalizations pierce through language, revealing a shattered interior of multifaceted reflections constructed against habitual linguistic or vocal expression. In tragic convention, such habitual vocalization takes the shape of the often terse, patriarchal voice of the Greek philosopher -- a didactic, conceptual container in opposition to the expressive “becoming” of Elektra’s cries that riot against fixity. As a tragic character, Elektra is radical and alien for Sophocles and his audience -- an ever-present conviction that demonstrates how female shame has constructed a life-size funeral urn around her.

Through translating a text within layers of translations, a fragmentation of the firsthand into traces, James K mirrors Elektra’s deconstruction of reality into siren shards, offering an experiencing of female sign language as a means of sabotage to the world of normal utterances. By sliding on the edge of convention to sharply abandoning rational speech and sonic construction, K’s piece aims to embody Elektra’s strained and stretching screams, as cuts against the glass; her sabotage bound within the blanket loop. In response to rigid vocalization and fixed sonic understandings, ELEKTRA (Scream Through the Eyes of a Statue) takes the scream as an unruly, emotive sonic experience projecting outwards into objects and audience: to the very bones of sound.

This is a live recording of its single performance. Recorded by Bob Bellerue at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY. Mixed by James K. Mastered by Jack Callahan. Performed by James K, Eve Essex, Via App, and Leila Bordreuil. Conceived and scored by James K for four players, and written in collaborative improvisation with the performers. Textual alchemy by Eli V Manuscript. Design and layout by Nicola Tirabasso and James K.

JAMES K - ELEKTRA (iDEAL225 CD excerpt)

Dijit - Layali El Shouk (Feat. Lella) - ٢ - ليالي الشوق

Releasing December 6, 2024 Via Second End Records 

SER002 // VA : COLLAGE
A.D : Jonnnah 
Graphic Design : Tiphaine Voix, Lucas Dupuy 
Mastering : kick21
https://secondendrec.bandcamp.com/album/ser002-va-collage

SER002 // VA : COLLAGE

Atami

A phone call with a past mentor who at age 95 is still teaching piano, a memory of giggling at her transfixed mother photographing swans, a feeling of being floored whilst unearthing letters from her parents’ relationship. Exploring her most personal narratives to date, Laenz’s album ‘88 keys’ is suffused by the power of unwavering devotion - both towards others and towards lifelong study of music. Leaving behind the guilt of adolescent indignation and deviation from classical music towards fascination with leftfield dance music, the release circles back: a reverence to former piano teachers and the nurture they instilled in her.

Across ’88 keys’, loosely tethered memories and the intricate yet unpredictable sonic turns Laenz is known for are grounded through bass frequencies. On ’’11’ which samples recordings of Laenz’s last public performance of Bach’s ‘Chaconne in D minor’ arranged by Busoni, sustained solemnity is beset against misty, dubbed-out percussive explorations of piano acoustics. ’’24’ reminisces on lazy walks by Berlin canals, basslines ebbing hazily below spiralling hi-hats and caliginous melodies. ’9-30-91’ delicately re-casts one of the many love letters written by her father to her mother when they began dating, into a sonically distinct, tenderly stripped back vocal track. The lyrics read: ‘My dear, I miss you so much, I miss you deeply, from the bottom of my heart. Thoughts of you, occupy my whole heart, and every corner of my mind’.

Conversations, past performances, and archival recordings are run through iterations of radio transmission-reception, audio becoming irreversibly lost or altered into ambiguity. Each titled after a year, though not emotionally bound to it, the tracks are an aggregate of Laenz’s desire to calibrate them actively in her current memory—resisting any inevitable, obsolescent effects of time’s passing. In Laenz’s words ’88 keys’ ‘though a fraction of the appreciation I have for my parents, Carolyn Shaak, and Larry Graham, this project was from start to finish an ode to their impact. 

The singles ‘’11’ and ‘‘24’ are out on the 2nd and 9th May, ahead of the full album release on 16th May 2025.

Artist Bio:
Laenz is a producer based in Brooklyn, NY, working within radiophonic textures and caliginous dance music. Her work explores the sonification of indeterminate spaces, saturating abstract musical forms with intensely tender and personal observations. She uses vocals, radio equipment, and live processing in her performances, sonifying unknowable sounds into unsuspecting ears. She holds a Lot residency, and has released projects under Woozy, Early Reflex, Dance Data, and more.


@violentquandonaime
On the outskirts of the Parisian sprawl, we drift through the evening hush, our steps tracing the edges of a world half-lit.
The air crackles—charged, restless. Somewhere, we hear the city hums, a distant, roaring tide.
And there is this stranger, curious, starry-eyed, looking at us.
We stop, tilt our heads together, a faint smile :

« I scream, you scream ! Everyday is a new *silence*
It was all paradoxical
Fullness in the crisis

Silence is priceless »

helen island - Forever starts today

The Land is Coming Back to Me and Music is My Companion 
Grief doesn’t wait for the right time. Neither does pleasure.

In this hour-long transmission, Berlin-based performer and DJ Nas Tea moves through the echoes of loss, memory, and joy. An hour of deep percussion, club heat, and raw reflection. Grief and pleasure collide through broken rhythms and bass-heavy meditations. This is not an escape — it’s a return. Tune in for a set shaped by feeling, movement, and memory.

NAS TEA @ Kiosk Radio 02.05.2025

@rouuoa

sounds, thoughts, hesitation
which make up a whole life
we’re all gardeners
and all we have

Philip Koutev Ensemble - Вечеряй, Радо
Building Instrument - Rett Ned
Gori Women’s Choir - Chorali (Ioseb Kechakmadze)
Philipp Glass - Glassworks Opening
Mcpeake Family - Eileen Aroon
Dean Blunt - Moet Lean
Pedro Martins - String Quartet in F (second part)
Jeff Graсe - Mееks Cutoff, Eոdiոgs aոd Titles
Tarxun - Ya Bahariya یا بحریة / دریا-دُخت
Elischa Heller - hugs xx
from ozu - Banshun
Alice Coltrane - Yamuna Tira Vihari
Helen - Tardid (in a taxi)
Tiger Flames - Book of Woe
Hydroplane - Oregon Snow
Folk Ensemble Gurna - Nana
aaber -     ·≈·⋮)∴)·ƪ)) (feat. vanya & Yeda Zweifel)
Ludwig Wandinger - Rot
Arthur Rubinstein - Chopin Mazurka, Op. 17 No. 4
Junge Eko - Maybe Moon
Roui - Hype Spears (unreleased)

1 Walnut (We Just Borrowed The Earth From) - Roui

✨Live on ddr June 21 w/ wren, h + finn✨

MirrorWorld W/ wren (21/06/25) - ddr

Guitar-Yourney

A journey through a whole range of human emotions.
Close your eyes and try to feel what it creates within you.
Let the waves invade you and focus on yourself.

1 Walnut (We Just Borrowed The Earth From) - Roui

SagSāhāb

Recent comments

User 112695130

Related tracks