Emily Sprague

"... The process eclipses the need for a final product. You get that sense from watching the videos that document Emily A. Sprague’s own evolving modular setup. Take a clip like 'Modular ‘Piano’ Music ~ Eurorack Ambient': A metal box brimming with knobs, tangled wires, and multi-colored LEDs sits on a desk, spilling forth a soft, burbling sequence of tones. The sound is too organized to scan as totally random, but it’s too random to be properly composed. Every now and then, Sprague briefly enters the frame to twist a knob, though the effect on the sound is often imperceptible. The sound (the 'patch') could conceivably keep doing what it’s doing until the power grid goes down, and it’s so pleasant you could listen for almost as long. Like Eno said of ambient music, it’s the perfect combination of ignorable and interesting, and much of its generative magic would be lost in the translation to a finished recording. ..."
Pitchfork (Audio)
bandcamp: Water Memory (Audio)
You Can Make Anything Into Music: An Interview With Emily Sprague
Soundcloud (Audio)
YouTube: Emily Sprague