Kim Cascone

Kim Cascone
Birth name	Kim Cascone
Born	(1955-12-21) December 21, 1955 Albion, Michigan, United States
Genres	Microsound Noise Ambient Dark Ambient Drone Electro-Acoustic Field Recording Binaural Beats
Occupation(s)	Composer Writer Sound Designer Teacher Lecturer Music Director
Instrument(s)	Laptop Max/MSP CSound Pure Data Synthesizer Field Recorder Ardour Hydrophones Electric Guitar
Years active	1983–present
Labels	anechoicmedia Silent Records Sub Rosa Ritornell Raster-Noton C74 12k Nexsound Aural Terrains Störung Monotype Emitter Micro timemachines Daathstaar
Website	Silent Records

Kim Cascone (December 21, 1955) is an American composer of electronic music who is known for his releases in the ambient, industrial and electro-acoustic genre on his own record label, Silent Records.

Biography

In the late 1989 Cascone became an assistant music editor for director David Lynch on Twin Peaks and Wild At Heart. He has used various aliases over the years but became best known under the moniker Heavenly Music Corporation, a name taken from a track on the record (No Pussyfooting) by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. Cascone released four full albums under this name from 1993 to 1996.

In 1996 Cascone sold Silent Records and Pulsoniq Distribution to work as a sound designer/composer for Thomas Dolby's company Headspace. After Headspace, Cascone went on to serve as the Director of Content for Staccato Systems, a spin-off company from CCRMA, Stanford University where he co-invented an algorithm for realistic audio atmospheres and backgrounds for video games called Event Modeling. He returned to making music in 1999 and has since been releasing records using his own name on various labels as well as his own label, anechoic (named after his last Heavenly Music Corporation release), which he established in 1996. Cascone has released more than 40 albums of electronic music since 1984 and has recorded/performed with Merzbow, Keith Rowe, Tony Conrad, Scanner, John Tilbury, Domenico Sciajno and Pauline Oliveros among others.

In academic writing, Cascone is known for his paper The Aesthetics of Failure, which outlined the use of digital glitches and systemic failure in the creation of post-digital and laptop music. He is also on the Advisory Board of the academic sound journal Interference based in Dublin, Ireland.

In 2016 Cascone rebooted his record label Silent Records and is digitally distributed by The Orchard in over 240 markets worldwide.

From 2016 to 2018 Cascone served as the Music Director for The Silent Channel on SomaFM an online streaming radio station that features the Silent Records catalog.

Discography

• Blue Cube (Raster-Noton 1998)
• Cathode Flower (Ritornell 1999)
• (Delete) (Fällt 2000)
• Residualism (Ritornell 2001)
• Dust Theories (c74 2001)
• The Crystalline Address, with Scanner (Sub Rosa 2002)
• Pulsar Studies (anechoic 2004)
• Rondo/7Phases/Blowback, with Merzbow (Sub Rosa 2004)
• Gravity Handler (CRC 2004)
• Statistically Improbable Phrases (anechoic 2006)
• The Astrum Argentum (anechoic 2008)
• Pharmacie: Green & Red (anechoic 2008)
• Music for Dagger & Guitar (Aural Terrains 2008)
• anti-musical celestial forces (Storung 2009)
• The Knotted Constellation (fourteen rotted coordinates) (Monotype 2011)
• Subflowers - Phi (Emitter Micro 2016)

As Khem One

• Modal Gauzes No. 1 - Guitar Study (Daathstaar 2018)
• Pollen & Fragments (Daathstaar 2018)

As PGR

• Silence (PGR, 1985)
• The Flickering of Sowing Time (RRRecords, 1986)
• Cyclone Inhabited by Immobility (Permis de Construire, 1987)
• The Black Field (Silent, 1989)
• Fetish, with Arcane Device (Silent, 1990)
• The Chemical Bride (Silent, 1992)
• The Morning Book of Serpents (Silent, 1995)
• A Hole of Unknown Depth (Silent, 1996)

As Heavenly Music Corporation

• Summer Breeze - with John Stuart (Fon Records, 1987)
• In a Garden of Eden (Silent, 1993)
• Consciousness III (Silent, 1994)
• Lunar Phase (Silent, 1995)
• Anechoic (Silent, 1996)

with KGB Trio

• Swiss Pharmaceuticals (Utech, 2005)
• Smoke on Devil's Mountain (Scrapple Records, 2008)
• Noise Forest (Aural Terrains, 2009)

with Spice Barons

• Future Perfect State (Silent, 1995)

Bibliography

• Cascone, Kim. "Aesthetics of Failure." Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.
• Cascone, Kim. "Laptop music-counterfeiting aura in the age of infinite reproduction" Parachute 107, 2002.
• Cascone, Kim. "Grain, Sequence, System: Three Levels of Reception in the Performance of Laptop Music. Contemporary Music Review Volume 22, Issue 4, 2003.
• Cascone, Kim "Evolving the Emergent Content Workshop. Interace Cultures - Artistic Aspects of Interaction - Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, Dorothee King (eds.), 2008.
• Cascone, Kim. "Grain of the Auditory Field" Junk Jet No.1, 2007.
• Cascone, Kim. "The Use of Density Groups in Electroacoustic Music" Contemporary Music Review, Volume 30, Issue 2, 2011.
• Cascone, Kim. "Residualism" Sound - Caleb Kelly MIT Press, 2011.
• Cascone, Kim. "Subtle Listening – How Artists Can Develop New Perceptual Circuits" Infinite Grain, March 30, 2014.
• Cascone, Kim. "Transcendigital Imagination: Developing Organs of Subtle Perception" Interference Journal of Sound, Volume 4, 2014.

External links

• Kim Cascone Interview on Spiderbytes.com
• Interview with Kim Cascone on Ctheory.net
• Interview with Kim Cascone on Cycling74.com
• Review of CD "Music for Dagger & Guitar" - Joanna Demers
• Dialogue 05: Kim Cascone
• Interview with Kim Cascone for SEAMUS
• Kim Cascone 13 Questions on Prepared Guitar
• Kim Cascone: Dark Stations and Black Fields