LIFE YOU ARE (2020)

Mimi Goese and electronic trumpeter Ben Neill create elegant, eerie electronica that blends sensual lyricism and technology in their unique musical collaboration. Ghostly vocals float over snapping and crunching beats, haunting atmospheres created by Neill’s self-designed mutantrumpet, and otherworldly sounds generated from fractals and environmental data. Percussionist David Van Tieghem (Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno) joins the duo on the new recordings, and the fractal sounds were designed by chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham.

Goese and Neill will release a series of singles in the coming months that will comprise a new album titled Life You Are. “Cuckoo,” the first track being released, blends Goese’s cut up vocals with a glitchy, techno-organic pulse created by Neill and van Tieghem. The lyrics describe the parasitic maternal habits of the cuckoo bird.

Goese co-led Hugo Largo, a coveted New York art-rock band that helped shape the horizon of dream pop on two albums for Brian Eno’s Opal label. She later collaborated with Moby. Neill, meanwhile, is an instrumental tinkerer who has explored the fertile intersection of jazz, electronic, and modern classical music. He worked with electronic instrument pioneer Robert Moog to build an early iteration of the mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument that allows the player to switch between multiple bells and create digital soundscapes.

In 2010 they collaborated on Persephone, a multimedia piece for the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave festival. Released as an album in 2011, Songs for Persephone summoned Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, and the 21st-century dreams of acts like M83 and My Brightest Diamond.

SONGS FOR PERSEPHONE (2011)