Tyondai Braxton + Matt Robidoux

Tyondai Braxton’s Splayed Werks is his fifth album and first full-length release since the recording of his 2018 symphonic work Telekinesis. A co-founder of acclaimed experimental rock project Battles, among many other achievements, Braxton’s work spans electroacoustic projects and contemporary composition. Matt Robidoux (they/he) is a San Francisco based composer, improviser, and educator interested in sound-gesture causality and the convergence of movement and sound as it relates to free improvisation and accessibility. Their primary instrument is the “corn synth” (Kinetically Operated Randomness Network), a modular system that interprets physical input from two “ears of corn” sculptures cast in aluminum. “My philosophy on releasing music has changed a lot, but also my idea of what it means to be an artist. The important part of the artist’s job is to archive what you're doing—what you're excited about, what you're dealing with, what you're reacting against—putting that in a form that documents your life… At the moment, we're all looking out into the world, dealing with the helplessness in a time of war, media over-saturation. What's the role of the artist in that? I think the archiving of any particular creative idea in the moment is one of the most significant things an artist can do now. Things I previously thought were important—’this piece means so much to me,’ or ‘listen to how this chord arrived’—are actually much less so.”