headlights: the radio plays

Composer and synthesist Derek Gedalecia (better known as impossibly prolific avant/noise kingpin Headboggle) teams up with vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Aurora Josephson for a new duo called Headlights. Their tape The Radio Plays channels the austere energy and varied structure of a fireside chat radio broadcast into the world of modern academic music and dadaist noise composition - flitting from sketch to sketch, from live performance to studio recording excursion, over the course of a nearly hour-long program. The Bay Area-based duo churn through ideas and genres at a fast clip, finding room in their radio plays for skewed performances of music by Christian Wolff, Kraftwerk, and The Velvet Underground, alongside their own unclassifiable synth + vocal sessions. Josephson’s voice provides a perfect foil for Gedalecia’s vast arsenal of synths by Serge, Buchla, and more, as her swooping, operatic figures take on a character that seems to melt into the synthetic texture of the machines. Fragments of poetry by the likes of Plath, Tzara, and Whitman weave their way into the proceedings, intoned by Josephson with the crisp enunciation of a radio host. For every recognizable cover, familiar poem, or instance of legible songcraft, Headlights has an expanse of pure abstraction to match - soaked in field recording hiss, goofy carnival-core chromaticism, and ultra high-definition rhythmic bursts in the traditional Headboggle style.