Rahikka is Seattle-based electronic ambient artist Carson Rennekamp. His most recent LP, Abstract Elegies, was released on Stereoscenic Records on November 6, 2020. Rahikka’s work is inspired by abstract expressionism, experimental film, and subconscious escape.

James Lee is a guitarist based in the Seattle area. His playing is inspired by a variety of genres ranging from pop, electronic, to metal.

Composed of synthesizers, guitar, and electric kalimba, this is the second take from a semi-improvised performance recorded in Seattle on December 5, 2020. The goal of the recording was to create a seamless, dreamlike atmosphere; a juxtaposition to the uncertain and chaotic times we’re currently living in. Looped sequences, lush pads, and effected guitar flow throughout the recording in a structureless composition to evoke ethereal landscapes. The recording is dedicated to our late friend and amazing musician, Kevin Bontrager.

Rahikka (electronics, kalimba)
James Lee (guitar)

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Tom Baker is a composer, guitarist, improviser, and electronic musician, active in the Seattle new-music scene. His compositions, from operas and avant-jazz to chamber and electronic music, have been performed across the US, Canada, and Europe. As a performer and improviser, Tom specializes in fretless guitar and live-electronics. His band TRIPTET recently released its fourth album, Slowly, Away, on Engine Records. His electronic-interactive-arts collaboration with visual artist Robert Campbell, was featured in the MoxSonic Festival in 2019 and the Currents Virtual Festival in 2020. Tom is a Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts where he teaches composition, music theory, and electronic music. (photo: Jessa Carte)

The four pieces that make up this recording are part of a series of works entitled Traces. One might consider them ghost stories. In my youth I was obsessed with Harry Houdini, especially his interactions with Sir Conan Doyle, and their arguments about spiritualism and the paranormal. From there I stumbled onto the practice of EVP (electronic voice phenomenon). As a young person with an obsessive relationship to sound and access to a reel-to-reel tape recorder, this seemed to give my life a purpose: to find and record “invisible” sounds and otherwise unheard voices. These four works for performers and interactive electronics are a remembrance of that period in my life, each a meditation on loss, grief, and memory. They are a search for what remains in the absence of known things, real things, loved things. They each began as an incantation, a conjuring, giving voice to the inaudible and form to the imperceptible. What emerges are traces and remnants of people, spaces, and memories – requiems for things lost. These works were to be performed at the Chapel Performance Space in October 2020 in a live performance (which was lost to Covid-19). They are now actualized here on the Wayward in Limbo series. “Traces:Sarah” was commissioned by Melissa Achten.

(00:00) Traces:Sarah – Melissa Achten, harp
(12:19) Traces:Henry – Tom Baker, bowed mbira
(20:48) Traces:George – Tom Baker, electric guitar
(29:09) Traces:Nellie – Lily Shababi, viola; Madison LaVigne, cello

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Greg Sinibaldi is a saxophonist and composer living and working in Seattle and New York.

This music is a partial diary of 2020, comprised of improvisations recorded over the course of the last eight months. The pandemic, our country’s political situation, protests in the streets, and my personal struggles with depression have left me feeling emotionally raw. I’ve been profoundly affected by the state of the world, moving from sadness, despair, confusion, and longing for hope. These pieces are my reactions to these times. Each piece is accompanied by the date created, a newspaper headline of that day, and the total number of deaths due to Covid-19 as of that date, or a combination of these elements. Together, they represent a snapshot of the complexity of that day in 2020.

Digital album available to purchase on BandCamp.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

China Faith Star is an auto-didactical, overly practical, visual trickster, sound/word mixer. Born in Los Angeles to Punk Flower Children and raised in a world of diverse interactions, she fled to the woods to bathe with trees. She writes poetry, occasionally. Mostly she conjures ideas, transmuting socio/political/emotional concepts into aesthetically visceral maps/translations: popping color, repetitious pattern, dimensional texture, expressionistic, meditative. Her medium-diverse visual artwork, animation, theatrical, word-smithing and musical performances have been exhibited in 25 cities nationally / internationally and her work has been added to public and private collections.

Arrington de Dionyso synthesizes the iconoclasm of No-Wave Punk with the primordially potent universalities of Albert Ayler-era Free Jazz. Founder of Olympia-based experimental rock groups such as Old Time Relijun, Malaikat dan Singa, and the ecstatic protest-jazz band This Saxophone Kills Fascists, he has also performed alongside many luminaries of the decentralized global music scene including collaborations with Senyawa, the Master Musicians of Jajouka, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and many ensembles of Jathilan trance music throughout Indonesia. In 2019 he was the international headliner at the Khöömei in the Center of Asia Festival, in Kyzyl, Tuva.

Hindsight 2020 is an aleatory composition in 13 fragmented movements: trepidation, determination, isolation, observation, integration, breathing, anxiety, reaction, duration, injustice, overwhelm, hopefulness, and the unknown. Performed here by Arrington de Dionyso (bass clarinet, Indonesian lalove flute) and composer China Faith Star (soprano saxophone, electronic components), the piece includes samples submitted from across the globe of various artists breathing, field-collected recordings of protests and responders, nature, and electronically composed themes from sourced content. More than a chronological document, the work seeks to create a mood of sustained catharsis in an allegorical response to the experience of living through the year 2020, the drastic shifts and imbalance, the visceral emotive and pensive moments, and the opportunities to capture field recordings of the myriad social reactions to a year rife with death and injustice, anxiety and political clashing, police response and the chorus of nature amplified in times of shutdown.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

L.A. Lungs is an Olympia-based project consisting of Nathan Markiewicz and Lori Peterson. We feel very grateful to consider the greater Pacific Northwest esoteric arts community home since the project began in 2005.

These two live performances both occurred at Teatro de la Psychomachia in Seattle, in 2013 and 2016. While performed almost three years to the day from one another, the two performances feel like they could’ve been from the same evening. Thanks to Casey Chittenden Jones for recording these tracks. Also thanks to Vanessa Skantze and Teatro de la Psychomachia.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Lost Chocolate Lab is guitarist Damian Kastbauer channeling solo improvisational frequencies at the intersection of technology and expression.

Somewhere tangled in the frequency-sheets of sound stands a lone guitar player; glaciers of distortion covering invisible mountains with blankets of white noise atop towering peaks. Impossible to reconcile the enveloping resonance from common six-string instrument; the full-on maelstrom of sound barely representing the visible playback mechanism slung over-shoulder. Notes on a scale transferred from fingertip to fretboard, magnetic pickups transferring vibrations to electricity. The weaving of a sonic tapestry, dyed with the circuits of a thousand components in a signal chain enshrouding the interaction in pure-potential. Simply-put: the energy-driving creation of the human spirit and the output thereof reaching the heart of someone.

Digital album available to purchase on BandCamp.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Stephanie Wood is an experimental sound artist, sound practitioner and healing justice-centered activist. Using a plethora of gongs, DIY sound sculptures, processed found objects and field recordings, she incorporates surrounding soundscape, silence, and group experiences in performances. Stephanie loves playing/composing with eclectic ensembles and teaching group improv with gongs, electronics and found objects. She also hosts Seattle Avant-Garde Music Society and co-hosts the NO CONCERT series at Taoist Studies Institute with Shoko Zama. Instagram: @stephaniewoodbelovedsound

While largely spacious in nature, this session recorded at the Chapel is neither radically experimental nor “journey-centered.” Rather, it’s a collection of “ramblings” interacting with the space and its sounds. Some sections are more hollow while others are disproportionately loud and intense. The closing drone is immersed in appreciation for the Chapel, the innumerable souls contributing to the space’s “magic,” and the unexpected avenues of support in these difficult days. Angela Wilson was vital for logistics and playing “back up” on gongs. 

Instruments: Val Bertoia linear copper and brass sonambient sculpture, Kosmov double-side hand pan, Yamaha THR amp and contact microphones. Gongs by Nolan, Paiste & Grotta Sonora.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Dangerknife was formed by Nico Sophiea (drums) and Brad Rouda (guitars) out of a mutual fondness of improvised music, film and poor decisions. One’s love of Pop and Harsh Noise and the other’s love of Balkan folk and 70s rock has created a band with a great sound for a discount record bin. They are joined here by Joe Kaufman (bass) and Mack Fisher (modular synth). Watch for upcoming releases on BandCamp.

This online concert was recorded live in one take. As Dangerknife typically performs to silent films of the past 110 years (homemade to major studios) as our guideline, we played while watching films the guitarist made years ago. That said, this is perfect for staring off into the void of 2020 and just wondering “What the hell,” or playing video of your own! We look forward to the day we can all do this in person again, safely.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.

Pink Void is the immersive solo project of Crystal Perez. She uses her guitar, keyboard and samples to create sprawling soundscapes of slow building, hazy guitar drone capable of lulling and consuming the listener in a nightmarish aural fog.

This piece is an exploration of creativity, endurance and strength as a cocoon we must sometimes create for ourselves in order to survive the isolation and pain of life. Getting through difficult times might require us to reach inside ourselves as we often find there is no other who can save us.

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of previously unreleased material.