Kelley Sheehan & Jack Langdon - "Exhausted Mechanisms"
University Lutheran Church
Cambridge, Massachusetts
I: [27:44]
II: [23:30]
III: [8:42]
In Exhausted Mechanisms, synthesist Kelley Sheehan and organist Jack Langdon situate themselves in the modernist University Lutheran Church in Cambridge Square to energetically traverse the convergences and divergences of the organ and modular synthesizer. Across three tracks, the duo excavates the musical histories of their instruments through masses of electroacoustic tone, fleet-footed outbursts, airy drones, and the surreal, distorted sounds of exhausted mechanisms. This collection is an exuberant, raw, strange conglomeration of cross-historical instrumental energies.
recorded at University Lutheran Church, Cambridge, MA
May 12, 2022
mixed by Sheehan/Langdon
Jack Langdon (b.1994, Keyeser, Wisconsin) is an organist, video artist, and writer.
Jack creates work that disintegrates commonplace sounds, images, and narratives—reassembling them in strange constructions. His music is gentle and expansive, drawing inspiration from the landscape and folk modernisms of the American Midwest.
Jack is an organist, whose approach to performance investigates the unique qualities of individual organs—utilizing drones, extended techniques, and electronic augmentations. Jack is a proponent of contemporary organ music and regularly creates new work in collaboration with other performers, composers, and artists.
Jack currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Jack is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.
Kelley Sheehan (b.1989) is a composer and computer musician moving between acoustic, electronic, electro-acoustic, and performance art works. In any medium, her work constructs environments meant to merge electronic and acoustic forces into one composite organism; dependent on this merging to become more than just an extension of itself. Her work has been described as “Full of discovery, collaboration, and unpredictability” (Iannotta, Kyriakides, & Stäbler) with “Woozy Electronics” (LA Times). Named prize winner of the Gaudeamus Award 2019, winner of the 2022 Hildegard Commission, awarded first place for the 2020 ASCAP/SEAMUS commissioning competition, and the 2021 George Arthur Knight Prize, among others.
When not composing, she’s an avid improviser on self-made DIY electronics, no-input mixer, her AI-electric guitar hybrid called ‘other machines,’ or modular. Having performed at such venues as the Banff Center for the Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum. Upcoming projects include works for Line Upon Line and Yarn/Wire
Her research has led her to study with composers of various interests such as Sivan Cohen Elias, Marcos Balter, and Fredrick Gifford. She’s a PhD Candidate in Composition at Harvard University studying with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku. Currently, she is serving as acting director of the Harvard Group for New Music.