The composer and sound artist on the endurance element of her work and the epiphanies of her new album.
“You get a high from focusing on something for that long,” electroacoustic composer and musician Kali Malone says of performing her fifth album, Does Spring Hide Its Joy. Featuring cellist Lucy Railton, Stephen O’Malley on guitar, and Malone playing sine-wave oscillators, the album was recorded in 2020 at former East German broadcast centre Funkhaus. Over the course of three hours, it coaxes listeners into deep listening by combining microtonal melodies and earthy dissonance.
The trio creates chords together while having the freedom to improvise with octaves and amplitude. Minor adjustments bring about unwieldy ripple effects for the rest of the ensemble, fostering a thrilling group dynamic. Though normally very smiley, when applause rolls in after a performance Malone struggles to come down from a state of hyper-fixation and display emotion. “I can’t really switch into being part of the common metabolism of the room,” she states matter-of-factly, her glossy salt-and-pepper hair catching the winter sun like a Pantene commercial.
Recently, Kali Malone has been thinking about the endurance…
