Aeriform Cities

Oa

VFI022

Tracklist

1. Snapping in the Air
2. 100 Feet Over Berkeley
3. 3 Feet Over Oakland

Notes

Oa creates experimental music from the sounds of language. Writer Hugh Behm-Steinberg and sound manipulator Matt Davignon have recorded various anecdotes, conversations and sung pitches from their peers, neighbors, musicians and other writers. Performing either as a duo or collaborating with other sound artists, they break down these elements with samplers and digital turntables, then rebuild them into improvised musical passages and narratives.

Music is created from 100% voice sources, including:

Sheila Bosco (1, 3)
Rafael Canales (3)
James Cline (1, 3)
Ron Heglin (2, 3)
Gretchen Jude (2)
Denise Newman (1)
Sarah Elena Palmer (all)
Laena Wilder (2)

Artwork by Mary Behm-Steinberg
Mastered by Myles Boisen at Headless Buddha Mastering Lab

Media

Bio

Hugh Behm-Steinberg is the author of two books of poetry and two libretti: Terrible Things Will Happen But It’s Going to Be Okay: A Donner Party Opera with composer Guillermo Galindo, and a children’s opera based on the Chinese folktale, The Clever Wife, which was commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera for their Opera to Go series. In 2015 his short story “Taylor Swift” won the Barthelme Prize for short fiction. He is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in creative writing at Stanford University and the recipient of an NEA fellowship. He’s a shop steward for the California College of the Arts Adjunct Faculty Union/SEIU 1021, where he teaches in the MFA Writing and BA Writing and Literature Programs.

Matt Davignon’s music is “fragile and gorgeous and stubbornly weird,” according to the SF Bay Guardian. He’s best known for combining drum machine and pre-recorded source material with a variety of electronic processing devices to create shifting layers of organic and expressive sounds. His music is inspired by field recordings, natural sound phenomena, irregular and imperfect rhythms, and psychedelic, drone and space music.