Signal Flow Festival 2021, Day 2

Mills Music Now
Saturday, March 6, 2021 | 7:00 PM PST
Presented by Mills College Music Department and the Center for Contemporary Music

Featured works by Kyles Bates, Chad Glenn, and Samuel Regan.

an abstract cloudy blue image with a photo of a desk and window within it.

Kyle Bates

Failing Memory Palace

Please reflect on the text present in Failing Memory Palace: #1 Childhood Home (1992-2011) Inside of the Center for Contemporary Music (2019-2021).

Imagine: 
There I am, in the music building at Mills College with four pairs of speakers, mapping out how my sounds speak to the walls and mingle in the air. I am alone with the imposing space, both because of an ongoing global pandemic, and because it is 2:47 a.m. –my ears awaken in these quiet hours. Night upon night has been spent this way, working over my sonic memory palace, and naively trying to capture, in two dimensions, a something that exists only in this momentary aural environment. Later, I will turn towards the hyperreal. Now, vibrating frequencies and drifting thoughts collapse into my sleepless fugue; only the sounds–and specters of past selves–are here listening with me. 

Composed, installed, recorded, and directed by Kyle Bates at the Center for Contemporary Music from September 2020 to March 2021.
Mastered by Christopher Davidson.  
Promotional photos by Lula Asplund.

My deepest gratitude to Laetitia Sonami, Christopher Davidson, Zeena Parkins and David Bernstein for their invaluable guidance on this work, to William Winant for letting me use his vibraphone, to Brendan Glasson for the technical advice, and to James Fei for his wisdom filled responses to all of my late night emails. 

Kyle Bates is a West Coast based audiovisual artist, musician, and writer. He actively creates and performs in the project Drowse and has produced a range of releases for The Flenser, Whited Sepulchre Records, The Native Sound, Glowing Window Recordings, Apneic Void, and Television. His video work has been described as “incredibly lush and dreamy,” while his audio work has been referred to as “the aural equivalent of blood rushing back to a sleeping limb.” Bates is focused on exploring sound in tangible spaces, the bipolar experience, and making personal internal worlds public through sonic metaphor and autofiction techniques; he is influenced by Roland Barthes’s practice of reading the self as text. He plays with themes of memory, shame, detachment, sleep, fear, and human connection. His practice has included sound and text based performance art, installations, film and video game scores, and various writings. Bates has presented and performed work at festivals, spaces, and galleries in parts of Europe, Japan, Mexico, and across the United States. He is currently curious about what role the act of recording plays in the way that memories form our secular systems of (self) belief.

Chad Glenn

e n   f i n i t e

This piece explores transformation of sound through feedback loops, granulation and spatial relationships in various stages of change while trying to conjure spontaneous moments of beauty or intrigue that can emerge as loops become destructive or uncontrolled.

Live engineering and videography: Samuel Regan, Kyle Bates, Chad Glenn
Mastering: Christopher Davidson

An Oakland based musician focused on sound manipulation and composition in electronic music using analog synthesizers and digital signal processing along with audio reactive visuals.

Samuel Regan

De Anima

Composed and produced by Samuel Regan

Electronics by Samuel Regan - Korg MS-20 analog synthesizer, Ableton Live, eurorack synthesizer (Mutable Instruments, Make Noise, Intelligel, Sputnik Modular) 

Percussion (improvised) by William Winant - timpani, drum set, vibraphone, cymbals, gong

Engineering by Kyle Bates, Chad Glenn and Samuel Regan 
Videography by Kyle Bates, Chad Glenn
Video editing by Samuel Regan
Mixed by Samuel Regan
Mastered by Christopher Davidson

Samuel Regan (1994-) is a composer, performer, producer and multi-instrumentalist from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His music and research explore intersections in ontology, music perception, cognitive science, electronics and experimental media. His sound is presently centered on formal composition, improvisation, modularity, signal processing, and gesture in all of its modalities.

Notes to assist viewing:

  • Viewing in full screen mode is recommended. Press the button with four arrows in the lower right hand to enter full screen mode.
  • Headphones or external speakers are recommended for an optimum audio expereince.

Signal Flow is a student-run music festival held every Spring at Mills College featuring the culminating work of graduate students working in composition, electronic music, improvisation and sound art. This year the festival will be held online via Mills Performing Arts and at signal-flow.org. 

This presentation will be available for on-demand viewing, via this page, at 7:00pm PM PST on Saturday, March 6, followed by this linked ZOOM reception at 8:15 PM.

Content will remain available until 11:59 PM PST on Sunday, March 21, 2021.

Thank you for completing a Viewer Survey.

More information on Mills Music Now and the Mills College Music Department's Graduate and Undergraduate programs.