asunder (syntagma) is music, in the tradition of Spahlinger’s musica impura, about music as translation/illusion: that is, music about reduction, simulation and impossibility as the basis of communication. Simulated “field recordings,” largely synthetic in nature and centered on auratically charged material (bells, voices, natural ambience), alternate with flute “translations,” in which the real-world sonic phenomena of the field recordings are transfigured, vis-à-vis the flute’s fixed performance practice, into an extremely lossy analogue. In moments where the flute and electronics venture together into extremes of volume and intensity, translation comes apart at its illusory seams.

“The music of Earth comes about from its myriad hollows, the music of Man from his pipes of bamboo: and what of the music of Heaven?”

-Zhuangzi, The Adjustment of Controversies