On 'Lifeblood Of Light And Rapture,' Los Angeles artist Yann Novak contours a phosphorescent listening experience that shimmers with a hazy glow; like neon in fog. Each piece bares his trademarked sense of patience and unerring harmony, but more so than any previous editions Novak opens up the presence of these elements to create a more absorbing sensibility. 'A Biochemical Cascade' captures the experience in a snapshot, as gentle eruptions of harmony fold and melt over the top of one another, each eruption seemingly more luminous than the wave before it. The result is a wholly consuming sense of tidal ecstasy.

Notes on 'Lifeblood of Light and Rapture' from Yann Novak…

When I began working on 'Lifeblood of Light and Rapture' I was thinking a lot about both my personal and society’s tendencies towards nihilism. When I was in grade school, I was taught that 2020 would be the turning point in our collective fight against climate change—that if we did not change by then, there would be no turning back. After learning this at a young age, I watched helplessly as little was done to save the planet. It made me certain that I would not live to see past 2020. It was this moment in my childhood, along with so many other experiences in the 80s and 90s, that led me to a hedonistic coming of age. I pursued anything that would transport me away from the darkness in the world and its inevitable doom. 

Now that 2020 has come and gone, I have the luxury of hindsight. I can look back and see that so many of my decisions were made not to destroy myself, but in order to self-medicate. In my teens and twenties, the world was a difficult place to inhabit, but I could use chemicals and other distractions to cope. Similarly, as it turns out, this is also the story of the industrial, technological, and digital revolutions. Even though the intention of these eras was to make the world an easier place to live in, most of the progress attributed to them over the last two centuries has directly contributed to the climate crisis. On 'Lifeblood of Light and Rapture,' I wanted to explore this parallel—that so many of the things we do to try and make this world livable also contribute to its destruction.  

Formally, this album follows the path I set out on with 'Slowly Dismantling.' I sought to express myself in a more immediate and honest way through the use of digital and analog synthesis. With 'Lifeblood of Light and Rapture,' I built upon this same path; but I also tried to imagine the listening experience over the process of making it, focusing solely on the pure pleasure of listening. I hope this record breaks that cycle, that it can achieve its intended purpose of bringing light into the world without causing any damage.

Lifeblood of Light and Rapture

Dark, Perplexing, Ruptures of Plane

On REFLECTIONS OF A GATHERING STORM, I wanted to explore the nebulous sense of instability and insecurity that currently seems to permeate our lives. Sonically, I wanted to make something that felt like it was on the verge of collapse.

Simultaneously, I wanted to acknowledge that insecurity and vulnerability often go hand in hand, and so making myself vulnerable on this recording was an important part of this process. To achieve this, I paired synthesized sounds with recordings of my own voice, attempting to sing.

This work is an effort to acknowledge the underlying vague, imbalanced experience that we seem to be trapped within. Both inwardly and in a broader sense, this intangible, underlying turbulence leaves us teetering on the brink. These tracks attempt to echo this delicate precariousness: as if on the verge of collapse. 

REFLECTIONS OF A GATHERING STORM aims to acknowledge this collective state of collapse, with the hope that maybe just holding it all together is enough.

Reflections of a Gathering Storm

The Thrill Of Approaching Destruction

The four tracks that comprise GIVING WATER TO THE DEAD were composed using sound materials originally recorded for the sound installation Histories of the Present, a public artwork commissioned by the City of Berkeley in 2019. But where the installation was about a melding of practices and sounds into a single gesture, Crouch and Novak wanted to take the opportunity of a split release to exploring divergent paths starting from common ground. For GIVING WATER TO THE DEAD, each artist started with the same source material and plotted their own direction without direct influence from the other.  As artists in a relationship and sharing a studio this was no easy feat. Despite the planned divergence the resulting tracks compliment each other, as the artists do.

Giving Water to the Dead

Our Bodies Stirred These Waters Briefly Pt. 1

Our Bodies Stirred These Waters Briefly Pt. 2

Preview from my performance at the AxS Festival 2014.

Now available in full on Touch Radio: http://www.touchradio.org.uk/touch_radio_106_yann_novak.html

'Repose' is a site specific sound and light performance created for Cocky Eek’s SPHÆRÆ. 'Repose' is intended to highlight this unique space through a near gesture-less performance of sound and light.  The piece will consist of purely synthesized sound that is nearly void of compositional elements and a 180º projection of pure color.  The performance will be formed through manipulation of the color, hue and saturation of the projected light.

Photo by Geneva Skeen

Download via Touch

Repose [excerpt]

'Prelude: San Marino' originated as a site-specific performance commissioned by HomeLA to be presented in a private residence in San Marino, CA.  The piece is based from a field recording captured in the back yard of the residence and was performed from the hearth. The performance was intended to create a space where the sounds of the outside and the visitor to the home can commingle during the opening of the event.

'San Marino' appears here as a composite of the three performance from HomeLA: San Marino and is intended for home listening.

San Marino [excerpt]

“I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.

In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Life

Dragon’s Eye Recordings is pleased to announce the release of ‘Idleness, Endlessness’ by label head Yann Novak. ‘Idleness, Endlessness’ is a specially priced digital download to be released on the 10th anniversary of Novak taking over the label from his father Paul Novak. ‘Idleness, Endlessness’ explores labor, leisure and engagement over two hour long compositions.

The source material for ‘Idleness, Endlessness’ was collected while attending the Parkfield Artist Residency in September 2012. Parkfield is a unique retreat where invited artists have no obligation to create work, or anything other then their own meals each day. This creates a unique situation for contemplation and reflection.

The source material consists of synthesized tones and radio static collected on a portable synthesizer, and a single field recording of the wind. From 2012 - 2015 this material was processed in the studio and used in live performances. The final compositions were created through improvisation with the insertion of 5 minute periods of inactivity every 15 minutes to simply contemplate where the piece had come and where it should go.

‘Idleness, Endlessness’ is composed to so that the two pieces could be played back to back and looped creating an all day listening experience divorced from the engagement more traditional music demands.

Idleness [excerpt]

“I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.

In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Life

Dragon’s Eye Recordings is pleased to announce the release of ‘Idleness, Endlessness’ by label head Yann Novak. ‘Idleness, Endlessness’ is a specially priced digital download to be released on the 10th anniversary of Novak taking over the label from his father Paul Novak. ‘Idleness, Endlessness’ explores labor, leisure and engagement over two hour long compositions.

The source material for ‘Idleness, Endlessness’ was collected while attending the Parkfield Artist Residency in September 2012. Parkfield is a unique retreat where invited artists have no obligation to create work, or anything other then their own meals each day. This creates a unique situation for contemplation and reflection.

The source material consists of synthesized tones and radio static collected on a portable synthesizer, and a single field recording of the wind. From 2012 - 2015 this material was processed in the studio and used in live performances. The final compositions were created through improvisation with the insertion of 5 minute periods of inactivity every 15 minutes to simply contemplate where the piece had come and where it should go.

‘Idleness, Endlessness’ is composed to so that the two pieces could be played back to back and looped creating an all day listening experience divorced from the engagement more traditional music demands.

Endlessness [excerpt]

+ROOM-ROOM is a pair of sound installations for two adjacent galleries at Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery. Yann Novak and Jamie Drouin individually explore how the perception of these familiar places is transformed by sound. Through contrasting sensory experiences, the installations create an experiential divide between the two virtually identical rooms and restructure notions of architectural solidity and singularity in favor of more flexible, intuitive perceptions. The aural compositions, based on actual ambient noises recorded in the galleries, turn attention onto the spaces themselves and encourage us to rethink the ways in which we process physical location, and create assumptions about our surroundings.

+ROOM-ROOM was organized by Henry Associate Curator Sara Krajewski. The exhibition is generously supported by ArtsFund and the Patrons of the Henry Art Gallery. In kind support provided by Tannoy.

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+Room (excerpt)

'We Love Our Parents, We Fear Snakes' originated as a sound and movement performance by Marbles Jumbo Radio and Yann Novak inside Johanna Breiding installation of the same name. The installation was created as an intimate gathering space — foyer/drawing room/death room/living room — for queer-identified performers to explore traditionally familial spaces and experiences of mourning.  Breiding invited Marbles and Novak to collaborate on the project and culminating performance because of their mutual experience of loosing their mothers. The project was part of Women’s Center for Creative Work’s Parlor at the Armory residency program.

'We Love Our Parents, We Fear Snakes' is a free download of Novak’s sound performance released on the 10 year anniversary of his mothers passing and is dedicated to Eva Shao-Huai Blum, Andrea Breiding and Ingrid Ann Buslee.

Free Download

We Love Our Parents, We Fear Snakes [excerpt]

Ornamentation

Ornamentation (Live)

'Surroundings' originated as a site-specific sound performance commissioned for the Hamon Observation Tower at the de Young Museum in San Francisco by the Soundwave Biennial.

'Surroundings' uses the organic architecture of the de Young Museum as a point of departure by incorporate field recordings captured throughout Golden Gate Park and synthesized sounds created to situate themselves within the field recordings.  This relationship between the field recordings and synthesized sounds is intended to echo the symbiotic relationship between the architecture of the de Young Museum and Golden Gate Park while creating a deep and meditative listening environment.

Original field recordings captured by Jen Boyd and Mark Kate.
Mastered By Lawrence English at 158.
Published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music UK Ltd.

Surroundings

Surroundings [excerpt]

3 Surfaces  [excerpt]

'The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past' is the latest album by Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist and composer Yann Novak, and his second for Touch. It considers the relationships between memory, time, and context through four vibrantly constructed tracks that push Novak’s work in a new direction while simultaneously exploring his sonic past. 'The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past' is composed as a quadriptych – a single gesture broken into four parts – that meditates on the inevitable progression of time, our relationship to the past, and our distortion of the past through the imperfections of memory. The album will be released February 23, 2018 on the London-based label Touch. Available digitally and on CD, the physical version will be packaged in a gatefold sleeve as a limited edition of 500. For more information on the artist and release, please visit www.touch33.net.

The album’s conceptual roots stem from 'The Archaic Revival' by American ethnobotanist and psychonaut Terence McKenna. In it, McKenna theorizes that when a culture becomes dysfunctional it attempts to revert back to a saner moment in its own history. He suggested that abstract expressionism, body piercing and tattooing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, and rave culture were proof of this default to a more primal time. The text’s idealism was influential to Novak in the ‘90s, but today the theory bears a darkly-veiled resemblance to the rise of nostalgia-driven nationalism. Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the signifiers of a ‘better time’ - McKenna’s idea highlights our propensity for selective memory, seeing history through the lens of memory instead of fact. On 'The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past' Novak looked back at his own older works through this lens as inspiration.

“For this album I was interested in expanding into a more emotive compositional style and palette. In doing so, I was reminded that this was territory I had covered early on in my career — the whole process became a way to reconnect with my own past and history.”

The Album’s four tracks dynamically shift and surge, where time is rendered as material and momentum compels it into movement. Subtle distortion throughout the album ties the tracks together and echoes techniques explored in Novak’s 'Meadowsweet' (Dragon’s Eye, 2006). Tension gives way to a halcyon vision of place in “Radical Transparency,” immediately followed by the austere swells of “The Inertia of Time,” a piece that captures the twin impulse of generating optimistic beauty in harshly muted tones. Both tracks introduce subtle bass swells and stabs reminiscent of 'In Residence' (Dragon’s Eye, 2008). From there, the album grows darker with “Casting Ourselves Back into the Past,” and “Nothing Ever Transcends its Immediate Environment,” two icier tracks that preserve the album’s core: a layer of something long since passed that locks us into the very moment we inhabit. The latter introduces a processed vocal sample of Geneva Skeen, similar to Novak’s collaborative work with Marc Manning on 'Pairings' (Dragon’s Eye, 2007). The album is a study in perception and alteration, manipulation and awareness, effectively capturing Novak’s command of emotional texturing.

The Future is a Forward Escape Into the Past'

The Inertia of Time

The Future Is a Forward Escape into the Past

Radical Transparency

Live at Human Resources

Live at Human Resources, Pt. 8

Hollow.River is formed from a collection of field recordings and photographs taken during the thaw of the Piney Creek near Banner, WY.  Through the use of digital filtering and processing, these documents of the creek thawing are transposed to create a hybrid state between its covered and uncovered states. This hybrid explores a new state outside the natural thawing process.

Hollow.River is presented here in stereo with some compositional elements added to make it more suitable for home listening.

Hollow.River  [excerpt]

From 'Slowly Dismantling' on Room40, out on November 1.

With 'Slowly Dismantling,' Los Angeles based artist Yann Novak problematizes understandings of ambience as homogenous and static. 'Slowly Dismantling' deconstructs ambient, pulling it way from the blank and the atmospheric, refusing the perceived luxury of sound within which context is erased. Reflecting on his formative experiences as a queer youth in middle America, he explores the idea of these acoustic and social spaces as zones of liberation within which a spectrum of identity is formed. He creates a series of dense sonic fields that reflect on how the past can be decoded and utilized as a device for contextualizing the future.

Slowly Dismantling

All Things End, Sometimes In Fire

Blue.Hour explores the high contrast colors created in the landscape during “l’heure bleue,” the period of twilight each evening when there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness. Directly following the ‘Golden Hour,’ know for its diffused yet powerful light, the Blue Hour retains the diffusion but lacks the strong light source giving this period of the day an especially melancholic and meditative atmosphere.

Blue.Hour is presented here in stereo with some compositional elements added to make it more suitable for home listening.

Blue.Hour  [excerpt]

First presented as a durational audio-visual performance presented at Human Resources in Los Angeles (CA), Snowfall explores the hushed stillness and isolation sometimes experienced during a snowstorm.  Presented over 6 hours, the audience was allowed to come and go as they please. This afford the viewer a more personal experience with the piece through the dispersion of the audience. Snowfall was constructed using photographs and field recordings collected at the Jentel Artist Residency outside Banner, WY in February 2010.

Snowfall is presented here as a one hour composition.  This version is also composed to work well played on repeat for a more immersive experience and to afford the listener the same freedom the original performance did.

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Snowfall  [excerpt]

Stillness

Stillness.Oceanic.1.3

Stillness.Subtropical.1.4

Stillness.Subtropical.1.1

Stillness.Subtropical.1.3

Stillness.Oceanic.1.4

Stillness.Subtropical.1.2

Stillness.Oceanic.1.1

Finding a Way to Live

Yann Novak (b. 1979) is a multidisciplinary artist and composer based in Los Angeles. His work is guided by his unique perspective as a queer autodidact. Informed by his partial color blindness and dyslexia, Novak uses sound and light to explore how these intangible materials can act as catalysts to focus our awareness on our own direct experience. Novak’s diverse body of work—audiovisual installations, performances, architectural interventions, sound diffusions, recording, and prints—invites participants to imagine how divergent our individual perceptions of reality can be.

His work has been experienced through performances at Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane (2023), Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha (2021); PICA, Portland (2019); Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2019); Desert Daze, California (2018); Fylkingen, Stockholm (2018); Iklectik, London (2018); de Young Museum, San Francisco (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Vincent Price Art Museum, Monterey Park (2014); The Stone, New York (2011); LACMA, Los Angeles (2010); and Mutek Festival, Montreal (2007); among others. Novak’s work has been exhibited at Dimensions Variable, Miami (2020); Human Resources, Los Angeles (2017); The Getty Villa, Pacific Palisades, California (2016); The Broad, Los Angeles (2015); Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles (2014); Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, California (2011); Soundfjord, London (2010); The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2009); and SFMoMA, San Francisco (2009); among others. His compositions have been released by Room40, Touch, LINE, 901 Editions, and Dragon’s Eye Recordings, among others.

Novak’s recent honors include the designation of Cultural Trailblazer by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (2021-2022), and the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2019). He has participated in numerous artists residencies including Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, Melbourne (2019); EMS Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm (2018); Mountain School of Arts, Los Angeles (2015); Taliesin Artist Residency, Spring Green, Wisconsin (2014); Touch Mentorship Programme, London (2014); Jental Artist Residency, Sharidan, Wyoming (2010), among others. Novak’s work has been the subject of articles and reviews in publications including C Magazine, Drain Magazine, Inside Art, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Neural Magazine, Signal to Noise, The Stranger, and The Wire, among others.

Yann Novak

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