A cast of musicians that includes Nik Colk Void, Battles’ Tyondai Braxton and Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier have composed music to be performed by the ensemble s t a r g a z e on a brand new album.
Set for release through Transgressive, the album, One, is billed in press materials as "a remotely recorded orchestral suite which combines classical and current production methods." In addition to Void, Braxton and Saunier, it includes compositions by Buke+Gase’s Arone Dyer and s t a r g a z e member Aart Strootman.
s t a r g a z e were founded in 2012 with members based across Berlin and Amsterdam, and have gone on to work with the likes of Terry Riley, Steve Reich, John Cale, Julia Holter, Matthew Herbert, The National, Bon Iver and Anna Calvi since. The group are helmed by Merle Scheske, Emanuel Florakis, and conductor André de Ridder.
Speaking about her contribution to One, ‘Recollection Pulse #3’, which you can listen to above, Nik Colk Void said in a statement: "Working alongside this collective of classically trained musicians brought me out of my comfort zone as a modular synth artist. I lean towards assertoric compositions built via the appreciation of chance happenings through improvisation, and recording it was a challenge too; feeling blindfolded to the outcome, we began to naturally bend our known rules and experience a crossing which was far more reliant on emotion rather than direction."
Of their choice of collaborators for the new record, s t a r g a z e’s André de Ridder added: "We tried to think of composers who knew s t a r g a z e’s music well from previous live interactions, who had an appreciation of classical music, and who are known as innovative, flexible producers. We wanted those who could think of the recorded parts as something that could also be ‘processed’ afterwards and manipulated. These tracks were open to development at every step, and no two pieces followed the same method or style. The only constant was remote collaboration."
Transgressive will release One on November 25, 2022.
