audrey chen: runt vigor

Audrey Chen's long-awaited new solo album Runt Vigor is an adventurous sonic exploration of the voice, cello and analog electronics. Chen began her relationship with sound through the cello and voice over 30 years ago and in the past 15 years, her predominant focus has been her solo work, joining together the extended and inherent vocabularies of the cello, voice and analog electronics (with all sounds created without electronic effect or enhancement other than amplification). More recently, she has begun to shift back towards the exploration of the voice as a primary instrument, delving even more deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. She derives her sound material in continuous process, championing the "in-between" and overlooked. Regardless of instrument, Chen's mode of experimentation touches both the abstractly beautiful and the aggressively unsettling, creating a kind of curiously imagined architecture, non-prosaic song or ritual that reaches beyond gravity or language. Recent projects, aside from performing solo, include her long running duo with Phil Minton, duos Hiss & Viscera with modular synth player Richard Scott, Beam Splitter with Norwegian trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø, and the "romantic noise duo" Afterburner with Doron Sadja (electronics/light projection). Past projects include work with German conceptual artist John Bock, a duo with NYC abstract turntablist Maria Chavez, and a quartet with Nate Wooley, C. Spencer Yeh and Todd Carter that released a LP on Monotype. Her new projects include a double duo/quartet with Beam Splitter and Streifenjunko's Eivind Lønning and Espen Reinertsen and Mopcut with Lukas König and Julien Desprez.