The Kitchen's Synth Night Series Continues with Laurel Halo & Catherine Lamb

The Kitchen continues its Synth Nights series, featuring artists whose work demonstrates the boundless potentials of electronic music. This Fall, the Kitchen welcomes Laurel Halo back to Synth Nights to play selections from her recent album, Dust, November 27-28. On December 5, Catherine Lamb will present the third installment of her Prisma Interius compositions.

On Dust, released June, 2017 on Hyperdub, Laurel Halo "continues to resist classification and deflect interpretation by treating the human voice like a synthetic material to be molded and shattered." (Pitchfork) The album revolves around loose and warped songs based on woody instrumentation, sub bass, restless, intricate electronics, and patchwork lyrics, vocalized by a number of collaborators, that slip in and out of the songs. The tracks coalesce to form a sun-filled, melted, yet at times, heavy-hearted and challenging album. Dust was recorded with a number of collaborators, including composer/percussionist Eli Keszler, who joins Halo for this performance-Halo's return to the Kitchen following her Synth Nights concert in 2014.

Catherine Lamb will perform Prisma Interius: III, the most recent development in a series of pieces constructed around the Secondary Rainbow Synthesizer, an instrument created with composer Bryan Eubanks that spectrally filters a live sound input of the outer atmosphere into the concert space. In this iteration, Lamb, in voice and on viola, is joined by Eubanks to present a piece with synthesizer constructed around 45 unfolding chords of slowly and hypnotically expanding durations and proportions. Lamb told The Wire of her work, "I follow the philosophy that the most intense sound is not the most intensive... Particularly when working with particular tonal colorations and shadings, the more the tones are played in a plain and relaxEd Manner with room to blossom, the more expressive and generative they might become."

The Laurel Halo concerts on November 27-28 and the Catherine Lamb concert on December 5 begin at 8pm; tickets are $20 for non-members and $15 for members, and can be purchased at www.thekitchen.org, by phone at 212.255.5793 x11, or in person at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street), Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2:00 - 6:00 P.M.

About Laurel Halo Heavy, mutilated strains of electronic music with influence from the sounds of Detroit, UK and Germany - Laurel Halo's music is shapeshifting, moody and ecstatic. The Michigan-born and Berlin-based artist has been a mainstay of the London-based label Hyperdub, who released her breakout debut album Quarantine in 2012. The record received critical acclaim, and was named Wire Magazine's Album of the Year. Since then she's released two more albums-2013's Chance of Rain for Hyperdub, 2015's In Situ for Honest Jon's-and toured extensively with a live hardware PA. In addition, Laurel hosts a regular show on Berlin Community Radio, having originally cut her teeth as a freeform DJ on the legendary WCBN-FM station in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has collaborated with John Cale, Julia Holter, David Borden, Daniel Wohl, and Metahaven among others. Halo has also composed the soundtrack for Still Be Here, a Transmediale/CTM film commission starring the Japanese virtual popstar, Hatsune Miku, which debuted at Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and was most recently shown at the Barbican Hall in London. Her latest album, Dust, is out now on Hyperdub.

About Catherine Lamb Catherine Lamb (b. 1982, Olympia, Wa, U.S.), is a composer exploring the interaction of elemental tonal material and the variations in presence between shades and beings in a room. She has been studying and composing music since a young age. In 2003 she turned away from the conservatory in an attempt to understand the structures and intonations within Hindustani Classical Music, later finding Mani Kaul in 2006 who was directly connected to Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and whose philosophical approach to sound became important to her. She studied (experimental) composition at the California Institute of the Arts (2004-2006) under James Tenney and Michael Pisaro, who were both integral influences. It was there also that she began her work into the area of Just Intonation, which became a clear way to investigate the interaction of tones and ever-fluctuating shades, where these interactions in and of them-selves became structural elements in her work. Since then she has written various ensemble pieces (at times with liminal electronic portions) and continues to go further into elemental territories, through various kinds of research, collaboration, and practice (herself as a violist). She received her MFA from the Milton Avery School of Fine Arts at Bard College in 2012 and is currently residing in Berlin, Germany.

Funding Credits

Music programs at The Kitchen are made possible with endowment support from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust; annual grants from The Amphion Foundation, Inc., The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Howard Gilman Foundation, and The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

About The Kitchen The Kitchen is one of New York City's most forward-looking nonprofit spaces, showing innovative work by emerging and established artists across disciplines. Our programs range from dance, music, performance, and theater to video, film, and art, in addition to literary events, artists' talks, and lecture series. Since its inception in 1971, The Kitchen has been a powerful force in shaping the cultural landscape of this country, and has helped launch the careers of many artists who have gone on to worldwide prominence.

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