Kali Malone Announces New Album With Lucy Railton and Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley, Shares New Song: Listen

Stockholm-based composer Kali Malone has announced a new album with Lucy Railton (cello) and Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley (electric guitar) called Does Spring Hide Its Joy. The 3xLP release has a runtime of more than two hours. Each song shares its title with the album; the first to be released is “Does Spring Hide Its Joy v2​.​3.” The album is due out January 20 via Ideologic Organ. Check it out below.

Best known for her pipe-organ compositions, Malone performs with “tuned sine wave oscillators” on Does Spring Hide Its Joy. The album was recorded with O’Malley and Railton in the Spring of 2020 in the cavernous halls of Berlin’s Funkhaus, a former state-run East German radio facility turned recording studio complex. It has since evolved into a site-specific sound installation in collaboration with the visual artist Nika Milano that exhibited in Los Angeles earlier this year. Of the recording process, Malone said in a statement: 

“Like most of the world, my perception of time went through a significant transformation during the pandemic confinements of spring 2020. Unmarked by the familiar milestones of life, the days and months dripped by, instinctively blending with no end in sight. Time stood still until subtle shifts in the environment suggested there had been a passing. Memories blurred non-sequentially, the fabric of reality deteriorated, unforeseen kinships formed and disappeared, and all the while, the seasons changed and moved on without the ones we lost. Playing this music for hours on end was a profound way to digest the countless life transitions and hold time together.”

Malone released her last LP Living Torch in July. She has also played with the rock trio Swap Babies, assembled a percussion ensemble for 2017’s Velocity of Sleep, and collaborated with friends Ellen Arkbro and Caterina Barbieri, among others.

Read about Malone’s 2xLP The Sacrificial Code and The Torrid Eye, her collaborative album with Acronym, in Pitchfork’s “Best Experimental Albums of 2019” list.

Does Spring Hide Its Joy: