Light Music was motivated by the scant attention being paid to women composers in the European tradition. It began as a composition in drawings. In the filming of these drawings — it developed into an orchestration of noise — whereby the intervals between the lines register as differentiated noise or “notes”. The drawings were then filmed using a rostrum camera (a type of camera used to animate still images). The movement of the camera lens — towards or away from the drawings — is heard; as the intervals between lines narrow or widen, so the pitch of sound rises or falls. The image produces sound — that is, the playing of lines is literally “light” music. In the earliest film screenings of Light Music, it was not possible to synchronise the two projectors. And so I would move between the two — in a sense conducting them — trying to keep them in time. Cinema and music tend to demand that each performance be a repetition of the last. But Light Music is more or less different each time it is screened. In a particular context, the audience becomes performers — performing within and to the light of Light Music. This is taken away, perhaps — on a mobile phone — as a digital record of the viewer as performer. The relationship of the audience to the work has radically changed: sound is not still — sound moves. (Lis Rhodes)

Headquartered in Stockholm, Kali Malone is an American composer and musician who creates sonic monoliths that tug at the very material of listening. Via analog and digital synthesis — and within compositional frameworks that utilize just intonation and psychoacoustic phenomena — Malone’s minimalism maintains a certain gravity even as the ground below shifts. A recent string of critically acclaimed albums explore harmonic interplay within elec- tro-acoustic instrumentation: woodwinds with buchla 200 synthesiser, strings quartets with sine waves, and — most notably — the pipe organ close mic’d and spatialized. Using synthetic and acoustic instrumentation in repetitive and extended durations, Malone’s rich harmonic textures emit a distinct emotive hue serving to generate a captivating and uncanny depth of focus.

For now the highpoint is The Sacrificial Code, an ode to the pipe organ. “While The Sacrificial Code sidesteps the traditional sonic characteristics of such religious sites, its clean minimalism and graceful melodies conjure similarly powerful emotions”, according to Resident Advisor. Kali Malone’s soothing, repetitive harmonies evoke big emotions that leave a tenacious impression, especially when experienced live.

Malone has performed extensively throughout Europe and North America and has collaborated and performed with a variety of artists including Caterina Barbieri, Ellen Arkbro, Sorrowing Christ, Puce Mary, Free The Land, Zach Rowden, Leila Bordreuil and Lucy Railton. In 2016 she co-founded the record label XKatedral together with Maria W Horn.