EU Premiere

In a European premiere, composer and media artist Olivia Block – a renowned experimental artist who has been recording since the 1990s – presents her latest album The Mountains Pass (2024), accompanied by musicians Paige Naylor on electronics and organ, and Jon Mueller on drums and percussion. It is an album brimming with glistening tones and underscored by a murky Lynchian quality. In opener ‘Northward,’ Block introduces her singing voice, which arrives like an apparition at the listener’s ears; influenced by a true story, she sings from the perspective of a Mexican grey wolf who separated from her pack and wandered hundreds of miles towards New Mexico. Drawing inspiration from nature and the non-human world, and inspired by a particular mountain range in northern New Mexico, the songs on the album too roam and wander into unpredictable aural realms. The album is a trove of carefully unfurling electroacoustic compositions: Mueller’s drums bring a cacophonous storm of energy to ‘The Hermit's Peak,’ while the arpeggiated rigour of ‘f2754’ summons a sense of journey and discovery.