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New York based percussionist and composer Eli Keszler is set to release his new album Icons on June 25 via LuckyMe. Icons is an immersive work in perpetual motion, evoking a glorious and dystopian western world. Known as a frequent collaborator to Oneohtrix Point Never, Laurel Halo, Kevin Beasley, and Rashad Becker, Keszler’s latest solo venture offers up a latticework of melodic percussion, drum set, and electro-acoustic instrumentation, built upon fragments of American abstraction, ancient scales, industrial percussion, and jazz-age film noir to achieve its feeling of imperial decay. Keszler’s instrumental performances are framed by panoramic recordings of New York City and the Odyssey Cave, along with other on-location audio from his global travels, defining an expansive music that takes on hyperreal forms difficult to describe outside of the loss and wonderment that defines our age.

“Icons is the music I made during a time where travel and trade were effectively suspended,” states Keszler. “I spent nights wandering around Manhattan collecting recordings of the empty and silent city where a car alarm was audible from blocks away, where the hum of the electrical grid and the clash of bicycle gears suddenly occupied a massive amount of space. I spent the entirety of that year in Manhattan, probably the longest I’ve stayed in one place in over a decade. The island was essentially shut down and running at an erratic pace. The speed of the city seemed to oscillate from intense speed - ambulances, protests, helicopters — to near stasis — a sort of beautiful, strange, serene stillness. I saw something strange and beautiful happening: power cracking and people changing. With Icons, I was working with these mythological tropes that are deteriorating and decaying before our eyes to create a music that finds beauty in our fragile and unstable reality.

Keszler has released music on Shelter Press, Empty Editions, ESP Disk and PAN. His 2018 album Stadium was awarded Boomkat’s Album Of The Year. Most recently, Keszler wrote the original score to Dasha Nekrasova’s feature The Scary of Sixty First (which made its recent premiere at Berlin Film Festival) and contributed to Daniel Lopatin's original score for Josh and Benny Safdie's Uncut Gems. Keszler’s music, installation, and visual work have appeared at the Whitney Museum, Lincoln Center, MIT List Center, Victoria & Albert Museum, Sculpture Center, The Kitchen, South London Gallery, Hessel Museum, Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Luma-Foundation, Barbican, Walker Art Center, and MoMA PS1.

Icons

Static Doesn't Exist

Romancin EP

Somethin Bout U (ft. Yoshe)

Dreamstate

Sunshine

fused (DJ-Kicks)

In Daytona Yellow

Romantica (feat. Kenzie TTH)

Mirror's Edge

All Set Let's Swim

Kill the Future

Satellite

Unknown

New Moon

Rest

infinite

Immersive ambient composer, guitarist, and producer. Co-founder & Director of Envelop. https://christopherwillits.com

Christopher Willits is an artist, musician, and guitarist who creates immersive ambient music. As one of the core artists on the Ghostly International label roster since the early 2000s, Willits has continually evolved his craft, producing one of the most diverse and prolific catalogs within contemporary ambient music. Releases span introspective solo albums, widescreen audiovisuals, and unbridled collaborations. His process is an expression of love, inspired by an international audience of listeners, and the conviction that music can catalyze personal transformation and spiritual awakening.

Willits began his career with a string of critically acclaimed albums on the 12k label. The minimal sound introduced on those recordings remains at the core of his work: warm guitar tones woven into smooth, harmonic surfaces. Willits made his Ghostly International full-length debut with 2006 landmark Surf Boundaries. He’d expand his vision next through collaboration, working with Ryuichi Sakamoto (2008’s Ocean Fire and 2012’s Ancient Future), Zach Hill of Death Grips, Taylor Deupree, and, for 2014 LP Opening, with the whole band of Tycho. He also lent a hand in mastering the latter’s album Awake, composed the original score for documentary The Art of Listening, and continues to lead music production and meditation classes in San Francisco.

In 2017, Willits put forth Horizon, the first ever spatial audio release on Ghostly International. The album’s innovative 3D mix is mapped to surround listeners and align with sleep patterns, meditation, and other mindful practices. Willits is also the director and co-founder of the nonprofit, Envelop; leading a mission to amplify the connective power of music through immersive audio venues and spatial audio production tools. Like Horizon, his 2019 album Sunset utilizes Envelop’s cutting-edge technology to encourage listening from within. The five compositions move from warm to cool designed as a soundtrack to embrace the day's end; a collective letting go. Another skyward, pioneering project from an artist who occupies a unique corner of the electronic music universe.