Released by Tripticks Tapes (TTT 017). 
Developed and recorded between 2020-2022,
mostly in Brattleboro, VT and Greenfield, MA.

Concept and production by Weston Olencki.
Lovingly mastered by Alan F. Jones (Laminal Audio).

With Anna Webber, tenor saxophone (track 1).

Cover photo by Ginevra Shay.

Notes on each piece in track comments. 

//

Following the conceptual avant-hillbilly trajectory of their previous SUPERPANG release "Verd Mont", "Old Time Music" is composer/improviser Weston Olencki’s newest collection of historically-driven sound works. The album’s three pieces are rooted in the specific intersections between musical instruments, their associated genres, and broader cultural/material histories: the tenor saxophone with jazz and recording studio technology (tenor madness), the banjo with bluegrass and the mechanized modernism of the Carolinas (a vine that grew over the city…), and the pump organ with Sacred Harp hymnody and the aging marble industries of Olencki’s home in Vermont (Charon guiding the weary…). “Old Time Music” explores just that: sound that binds itself to remembrance, futurism, (nonlinear) time, and the living musical traditions of America.

Old Time Music

please go to Bandcamp for LPs and full liner notes! 
https://westonolencki.bandcamp.com/album/broadsides

OT005

Written and produced by Weston Olencki from 2023-2024 between Berlin, Germany and Spartanburg, South Carolina
Track 6 features Henry Birdsey on pedal steel guitar
Released in 2025 by Outside Time, Washington, DC
Art by D. Norsen & Weston Olencki
Audio Finalized by Andrew Weathers

Broadsides

full version available on Bandcamp! 
https://westonolencki.bandcamp.com/album/verd-mont

//

Recorded April 2020 - July 2021 in/around/from Brattleboro, Vermont.
Headphones recommended (as track 2 is mixed binaurally).

All artist proceeds from this album will be donated to the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association (abenakiart.org). The development, materials, and sites which I engaged with for this project are located on and within the still occupied, unceded lands of the Abenaki Nation. I acknowledge the Abenaki people as the original inhabitants of this land and their ongoing relationship with their territories, and I am thankful for their continued stewardship of this extraordinary place.

//

about:
[Vernon, L.M.]
Antique Estey pump organ, Sacred Harp tune “Vernon” with combinatory tones transduced via organ body, field recording of VQA’s industrial gang saw (Danby, VT); all material processed via custom convolution reverb software using handmade impulse responses of local barns, grain silos, train stations, discarded sheet metal, slate roof tiling, covered bridges, milk bottles, churches, beer tankers, frozen lakes, & more.

Special thanks to Peter Prvulovic at Vermont Quarries Association for authorization & clearance to record in the active quarry.

[witched windows]
Site specific conceptual work engaging with cultural, material, and geological histories of the place we now know as Vermont. The piece consists of fourteen short tape collages made from sounds endemic to various local vernaculars. These cassette loops were then buried for 3-8 months through the winter within their original source locations. Additional material for this presentation consists of electromagnetic field recordings taken at each site and VLF audio of ambient ionospheric activity.

More information, including full source lists, burial sites, etc. may be found below.

www.westonolencki.com/witched-windows

witched windows [excerpt]

Vernon, L.M. [excerpt]

for two flutes (C, C/bass). 
written for myself + laura cocks. 
full recording "Music for Two Flutes" releasing later in 2022. 

From the Kilberry Book of Ceol Meadhonach, published in 1908 by Captain John Campbell and Archibald Campbell: 
"The music of the Highland bagpipe is usually said to be divided into three categories: Ceol Mor, the "big music" or Piobaireachd; Ceol Beag, the "little music," that is quicksteps and dance music, and Ceol Meadhonach, the "middle music" which lies between the other two, and consists of such tunes as are neither constructed in the measure of Piobaireachd, nor adapted for the quick march or dance."

ceòl meadhonach [2021], excerpt

written for and performed by Laura Cocks. 
recorded July 2021 in Brattleboro, Vermont. 
Full recording coming in 2022. 

All electronics were generated via Google's ddsp timbre-transfer neural synthesis engine. I compiled a digital model of the members of TAK ensemble using a corpus of audio samples they provided. Then, I passed individual voices of a pre-recorded quintet of Lauras (aka flute sounds, mostly multiphonics) through a different model of each player. The resulting monophonic audio attempts to both learn the characteristics of the respective virtual performers and "mishear" the polyphonic harmony as a single line. Itself a poorly rendered model of this original material, Laura's 6th solo part (performed live) essentially "puppeteers" digital phantasms of her friends, weaving live and simulated flutes through an AI's approximation of a classical chamber ensemble. 

Huge thank you to Marina, Charlotte, Madison, & Ellery for your sounds & for your virtual presences!

virtual chamber music (for flute and ensembles) - II. Runciter Assoc. (shadow music, for TAK)

written for and performed by Laura Cocks. 
recorded July 2021 in Brattleboro, Vermont.
Full recording coming in 2022. 

Electronic and acoustic material generated via Open AI Jukebox neural synthesis engine. A predictive machine learning algorithm attempts to auto-complete a mainstay of the classical flute repertoire. Two diverging vectors are used - one for the accompaniment (realized electronically) one for the solo (transcribed and reinterpreted by Laura). Title generated from a text-based RNN trained on the complete concertos of W.A. Mozart.

Not quite your senior year conservatory jury requirement, but close enough to fall into an uncanny valley.

virtual chamber music - IV. Flute Cnncerto o. 1 inn Gmaair, K. 45 i1nn2(“7t. m ,K. 97221 cinn nfruuu

For four computer-controlled electric reed organs, rural field recordings, household lamps, telephone pickups, photodiode amplifiers, Vermont “Imperial Marble”, Sacred Harp tune “Windham”, cassette deck loaded with hydrophonic recordings made of the Connecticut River transduced through found slate roofing tiles, two “VT Copper” coins (minted as the currency of the sovereign Vermont Republic (1776-1791)), exposed speaker cones filled with debris found on CT river watershed, and an antique missionary-style Estey pump organ (made in Brattleboro, VT, ca. 1915)

Film version made in collaboration with Jack Langdon. Footage taken in the now-abandoned Freedleyville Marble Quarry; East Dorset, Vermont. (Film commissioned and first presented by the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9g9lKFJ_vE&t=232s

//

Released by Tripticks Tapes (TTT 017). 
Developed and recorded between 2020-2022,
mostly in Brattleboro, VT and Greenfield, MA.

Concept and production by Weston Olencki.
Lovingly mastered by Alan F. Jones (Laminal Audio).

With Anna Webber, tenor saxophone (track 1).

Cover photo by Ginevra Shay.

Notes on each piece in track comments. 

//

Following the conceptual avant-hillbilly trajectory of their previous SUPERPANG release "Verd Mont", "Old Time Music" is composer/improviser Weston Olencki’s newest collection of historically-driven sound works. The album’s three pieces are rooted in the specific intersections between musical instruments, their associated genres, and broader cultural/material histories: the tenor saxophone with jazz and recording studio technology (tenor madness), the banjo with bluegrass and the mechanized modernism of the Carolinas (a vine that grew over the city…), and the pump organ with Sacred Harp hymnody and the aging marble industries of Olencki’s home in Vermont (Charon guiding the weary…). “Old Time Music” explores just that: sound that binds itself to remembrance, futurism, (nonlinear) time, and the living musical traditions of America.

Charon guiding the weary 'cross the Long River (or, how to care for a dying instrument)

For two electro-mechanically controlled banjos, homemade magnetic resonators, solenoid motors, AM radio transmitters, vintage transistor and tube radios, railroad spikes, mason jars, carriage bolts, South Carolina red clay distortion unit, 60Hz ground hum, field recordings, and neural net re-synthesis of seminal old-time repertoire and Markov-driven Scruggs-style banjo picking. Various additional samples drawn from the field recording archive of photographer O. Winston Link, Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians, and miscellaneous historical tapes, cylinders, records, and wire recordings made in the Carolinas.

Samples from O. Winston Link's "Sounds of Steam Railroading" (Vol. 1 "Self-titled" & Vol. 3, "Thunder on Blue Ridge") [1957] expressly used with permission from the O. Winston Link Museum, in Roanoke, VA. Archival preservations made of the steam engine's final months of operation throughout the Appalachians.

“the by and by” was compiled by generating predictive audio models using OpenAI's Jukebox engine. The script learned a Carter Family classic and regenerated its material with the virtual and digitized voices of Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Charley Pride, Elizabeth Cotten, Jimmie Rodgers, Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn, Uncle Dave Macon, Willie Nelson, etc.

The reanimated voice of Roscoe Holcomb was made using Google’s DDSP timbre-transfer algorithm passed through a corpus of voice samples made by Charlotte Mundy.

//

Released by Tripticks Tapes (TTT 017). 
Developed and recorded between 2020-2022,
mostly in Brattleboro, VT and Greenfield, MA.

Concept and production by Weston Olencki.
Lovingly mastered by Alan F. Jones (Laminal Audio).

With Anna Webber, tenor saxophone (track 1).

Cover photo by Ginevra Shay.

Notes on each piece in track comments. 

//

Following the conceptual avant-hillbilly trajectory of their previous SUPERPANG release "Verd Mont", "Old Time Music" is composer/improviser Weston Olencki’s newest collection of historically-driven sound works. The album’s three pieces are rooted in the specific intersections between musical instruments, their associated genres, and broader cultural/material histories: the tenor saxophone with jazz and recording studio technology (tenor madness), the banjo with bluegrass and the mechanized modernism of the Carolinas (a vine that grew over the city…), and the pump organ with Sacred Harp hymnody and the aging marble industries of Olencki’s home in Vermont (Charon guiding the weary…). “Old Time Music” explores just that: sound that binds itself to remembrance, futurism, (nonlinear) time, and the living musical traditions of America.

a vine that grew over the city and no one noticed

With Anna Webber, tenor saxophone

For tenor saxophone with real-time concatenative synthesis and machine-listening software environment. The patch granulates and redistributes a 60 minute corpus of individual samples onto a live input source using a closest-match sorting algorithm. The corpus is a collection of short extracts from over 300+ albums - all spanning the entire recorded history of the (improvising) tenor saxophone from 1939 to the present. Additional Wekinator-driven Language-Music identification training interpolates global patch presets and adjusts formal interaction between live input and resynthesized output.

The piece makes audible the often-heard (& likely paraphrased) maxim: ‘to freely improvise is to play (with) everything one has ever heard’.

//

Released by Tripticks Tapes (TTT 017). 
Developed and recorded between 2020-2022,
mostly in Brattleboro, VT and Greenfield, MA.

Concept and production by Weston Olencki.
Lovingly mastered by Alan F. Jones (Laminal Audio).

With Anna Webber, tenor saxophone (track 1).

Cover photo by Ginevra Shay.

Notes on each piece in track comments. 

//

Following the conceptual avant-hillbilly trajectory of their previous SUPERPANG release "Verd Mont", "Old Time Music" is composer/improviser Weston Olencki’s newest collection of historically-driven sound works. The album’s three pieces are rooted in the specific intersections between musical instruments, their associated genres, and broader cultural/material histories: the tenor saxophone with jazz and recording studio technology (tenor madness), the banjo with bluegrass and the mechanized modernism of the Carolinas (a vine that grew over the city…), and the pump organ with Sacred Harp hymnody and the aging marble industries of Olencki’s home in Vermont (Charon guiding the weary…). “Old Time Music” explores just that: sound that binds itself to remembrance, futurism, (nonlinear) time, and the living musical traditions of America.

tenor madness

for ten brass 

written for Apparat, for the program GVILD MVSIK (September 2023). 

tpt: Paul Hübner, Mathilde Conley, Chloë Abbott, Florian Baccuet
hn: Samuel Stoll, Morris Kliphuis 
tbn: Wojciech Jeliński, Weston Olencki, Maxine Troglauer 
tba: Max Murray

more information: www.westonolencki.com/sonata

Sonata pian e forte [2022-23]

commissioned by and written for TAK Ensemble. 

live recording from first performance at Roulette Intermedium: May 21, 2024 (Brooklyn, NY) 

Laura Cocks, flutes 
Madison Greenstone, clarinets 
Charlotte Mundy, voice, amplifier, tesla coil 
Marina Kifferstein, violin 
Ellery Trafford, percussion 

much more information here: 
www.westonolencki.com/when-the-great-fires

when the great fires were lit on the other side of the ocean [2022-24]

for the cosmic winds of the Harmonic Space Orchestra. 
recorded live at KM28 by Sam Dunscombe. 

Rebecca Lane - flutes 
Sam Dunscombe, Michiko Ogawa - clarinets 
Weston Olencki, MO Abbott - trombones

it began to rain and so did I [2024]

recorded live in Köln, DE. November 2024. 
written for BONECRUSHER: 

Moritz Anthes, Till Künkler, Moritz Wesp, Anke Luchs, Matthias Müller, Weston Olencki, Matthias Schüller, Adrian Prost, Maria Trautmann, Matthias Muche; trombones 

Etienne Nillesen, Rie Watanabe; percussion

glass [2024], for ten trombones and two percussionists

please go to Bandcamp for LPs and full liner notes! 
https://westonolencki.bandcamp.com/album/broadsides

Written and produced by Weston Olencki from 2023-2024 between Berlin, Germany and Spartanburg, South Carolina
Track 6 features Henry Birdsey on pedal steel guitar
Released in 2025 by Outside Time, Washington, DC
Art by D. Norsen & Weston Olencki
Audio Finalized by Andrew Weathers 

Foggy Mountain Breakdown // Ground Speed

prelude (birmingham station)

interlude (where the water did flow)

Omie Wise // coda (How Great Thou Art)

she left through a storm

all my father's clocks

a short excerpt from 'with sharp bitter lines', by Weston Olencki & Dylan Kerr. 

commissioned Festiwal Luksfery, Gdynia, PL. 
recorded by Tymon Kolubiński & Maciej Müller. 

'with sharp bitter lines' is at its core a set of songs, mostly about loss, coal, and emigration, that trace the unruly tethers between Ireland and Appalachia. Written and performed by Berlin-based artists Dylan Kerr and Weston Olencki, it draws upon their shared interest in the spaces between experimental sound, multichannel synthesis, and vernacular musics. Drawing on the work of folklorists Dolores Keane and Jean Ritchie, 'with sharp bitter lines' uses digital string synthesis, voice, an Appalachian mountain dulcimer and a talkbox to reimagine the future lineages of the ballad tradition.  

‘with sharp bitter lines’ is made from the following traditional tunes:

 Green Grows the Laurel, Two Sisters, Sliabh Geal gCua na Féile, The Shoofly, and Shady Grove. 

with sharp bitter lines (excerpt)

zjw - guitar, fx pedals, synthesizer 
wo + mb - trombones, fx pedals, no-input mixer 

new tracks + studio album coming 2018. 

recorded live - january 21, 2017 @ radius gallery, santa cruz, ca. by andrew c smith + david kant. 

full performance here: https://theessentialindexical.bandcamp.com/album/early-mmxvii

[subscribe for future live releases, support these wonderful people doing wonderful things!]

zachary james watkins + RAGE THORMBONES [live excerpt]

originally for two voices [laura steenberge + julia holter], recorded here by weston olencki & matt barbier [RAGE THORMBONES].

Catherine Lamb - periphery (for two) [2011], trans. Matt Barbier

c.l. - vox
w.o. - synths

recorded live @ H0l0, jan. 16, 2019.

there's a big yuck and a bit of yum (charmaine lee/weston olencki duo: live at h0l0 1/16/19)

for solo xylophone with analog and digital synthesis. 

written for and performed by Adam Bedell. Live(ish) recording from first performance, September 2018.

for xylophone [2018]

plastic trombone with lots of plastic sounds, featuring a 1960s reed organ I found in a pawn shop back home... 

many thanks to Matt Teodori, Adam Bedell, Cullen Faulk for the inspiration and the samples.

Weston Olencki

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