2015 In Review

Hello and happy holidays! I wanted to thank everyone for their support of my musical projects throughout 2015. Below is a recap of projects I worked on in 2015 with some free downloads, videos and other media.

In a River the Color of Lead

In a River the Color of Lead

Early this year I released my 8th solo studio album on NOREMIXES. The album is a continuation of my exploration of the piano as an object of beauty and noise. It was released digitally and as a vinyl record (with support from Kickstarter backers). I’m very proud of this work and hope you all got a chance to listen to it.

NOREMIXES Store


Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet

In February I was delighted to perform with my long-time choreographic partner Nora Gibson and her company Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet in the premiere of 257,885,161-1. This ballet was a meditation on the mathematical concept of twin primes. The premiere was well received and sounded and looked gorgeous. Excerpts from the premiere can be viewed here on Vimeo.

In 2016 I’ll be working again with NGCB on an even more ambitious project EPHEMERAL, a work about time for dance, light, and environmental sound score.

EPHEMERAL
Christ Church Neighborhood House Theater, Philadelphia
Feb. 19-21

Tickets can be purchased online and you can support NGCB’s second season on their Hatchfund page.


Field Recordings / Cities and Memory

This year I began to really explore the sound world of actual places through field recording. I published several works through the brilliant UK based site Cities and Memory. Here are three pieces they published:

  • Turtle River (Philadelphia) presented on World Listening Day and at the Oxford Contemporary Music Festival.
  • Corca Dhuibhne (Western Ireland) field recordings and reimagined sounds recorded in Dingle and the Cliffs of Moher. 
  • Utopia part of an international collection of artists who created an imaginary sound world for the Thomas More novel Utopia (1515)

The last piece I wanted to share was from the Papal visit to Philadelphia in September 2015. The piece contains recordings I gathered over three days as about a million people descended on center city Philadelphia to celebrate the historic visit by Pope Francis. As with many of these recordings, I sought to remove the element of time and create a shifting landscape of timeless space.
 

Philadelphia Papal Visit - Soundcloud

dark matter

Photo by Glenn Benge

This season I am Artist in Residence at <fidget> along with choreographer / artist Zornitsa Stoyanova. In November we collaborated on the performance film dark matter. It was premiered at the <fidget> Fall Experimental Music Festival.

The above photo is by Glenn Benge from the premiere.

Here’s a review from Thinking Dance

Excerpt from dark matter on Vimeo


Save the Date

In March 2016 I’ll be performing another concert at <fidget>. This is going to be a 12-hour long concert of sleep music! Bring a sleeping bag, pillow and blanket, enjoy some dream tea and snuggle in for 12-hours of dream drones and tape loop lullabies. I’ll be performing ambient music all night with visuals from Alex Bond focusing on themes of Bardo, reincarnation, Dream Yoga and sleep (un)consciousness.

To get a taste of the kind of music you’ll hear, please check out my 2014 sleep music album, Quiescent. It’s an eight hour mix of music for the four sleep cycles.

Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State

Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State
March 19 7pm – March 20 7am
thefidget space


Happy New Year!
Michael

In a River the Color of Lead

In a River the Color of Lead was released by NOREMIXES in March 2015. It was pressed to vinyl thanks to the support of a successful Kickstarter campaign

Press release from the label about the record:

In a River the Color of Lead follows Mikronesia’s, Quiescent, which was a sprawling eight hour suite of music that patterned itself after the four sleep cycles and was meant to be experienced as a companion to a full night’s sleep or in smaller doses during meditation or yoga. Using that as a reference point, In a River the Color of Lead feels like the colorful awakening from Quiescent’s sleep state. The first piece, ‘Unfolder’ is a nearly twenty minute journey with waves of piano, organ and synthesizers which organically create intricate, cascading melodies. In Mikronesia’s words, “(by the end) the listener is completely engulfed in a river of thick sound.”

The following three works showcase a much more introspective and delicate compositional style, with Mikronesia using acoustic piano processed via iPad and computer. There is a stillness to these pieces which compliments the density of ‘Unfolder’, and by the time ‘Sotapanna’ concludes, there’s a real sense of closure for In a River the Color of Lead, decidedly Mikronesia’s most personal music expression to date.

Purchase Online:
iTunes
Bandcamp
Spotify
Juno Download
Beatport
Boomkat
Amazon

Quiescent

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For much of 2014 I worked on a suite of very still and subtle music. Perhaps this was a merging of my music and meditation practice. Perhaps this was a result of pairing down my once sprawling studio of synthesizers, machines and wires to a much simpler setup. Perhaps it was just music in the universe that needed to be born. Since I started making ambient music over 10 years ago, I’ve always had an interest in music to sleep to. I enjoy the idea of music that is not always listened to with the active mind, music that washes over someone’s subconscious as they sleep.

Release info

Quiescent is journey into a meditative dreamland. Created by composer Michael McDermott, the album in its entirety is an eight hour long soundtrack patterned after the four sleep cycles. The music gently drifts with you as you release into slumber and then brings you back through to the other side of consciousness. This album can be experienced as a companion to a full night’s sleep or in smaller pieces during yoga, meditation, relaxation or being. The album is pay-what-you-wish pricing, so you may download it for free or if you can place a monetary amount on eight hours of original music anything is appreciated.

Download from bandcamp

Torn Ivory

Torn Ivory is a saturated forest of delicate acoustic piano framed by a flickering stream of static textures. The acoustic piano was recorded initially at Marlborough College in the Vermont country side. Over the winter of 2013 the lofi recordings were processed, treated and re-sampled to create a hazy mulch of warm post-digital ambient piano music.

Mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12K Mastering.

Download

ALOTones

ALOTones was an advertising campaign from Agency Magma in NYC. For this campaign I was commissioned to write seven original tracks for the seven flavors of ALO. On the side of each bottle of the drink in stores was a QR Code where the person could scan the code and download an original piece of Mikronesia music that was written to embody that flavor. Here’s a sample track:

As a viral video campaign Agency Magma created some videos of artists drinking the ALO Drink, listening to my music and creating original illustrations in response.

Here’s one of the video experiments:

Here’s a video explaining the whole campaign and the product in more detail:

Hutch Demouilpied – Otherness – Herzog (Remix)

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Remix for British musician and composer Hutch Demouilpied’s 2012 album Otherness released on Entropy Records.


Download from bandcamp

Host

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Sound artist Mikronesia has embarked on his stillest and most minimal album to date. Host is a two part tale of journeying. The first track contains field recordings taken from a winter camping trip at World’’s End State Park. Part one (“Snow Wind Cast Into The Fire Well”) explores the art of texture, using minimal chord changes and melody but presenting them in contrast to the textured field recordings. The second part uses pure sine waves to explore the overtone series of the note “C”. “Pure” uses clean sound to create a state of timeless stillness, slowly tearing apart the very fabric of tone.

Available from bandcamp

vxvii

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This is one of my person favorite recordings I’ve ever done. It was one of the first things I recorded in our new studio in the house we bought in 2006. The album was described by label kaki as “experimental, shuffling ambient and glitching sound scapes”. It was released on the kikapu net label in 2008, which has since closed up shop. It was downloaded nearly 20,000 times since it’s release. It’s now available on bandcamp as a “pay what you wish” release.

Written and produced by Mikronesia

Available from bandcamp

Perpetual Movement and Sound – Perfect Sec0nds

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This was our first and only studio recording done as “Perpetual Mvmt<>Snd” (Bilwa and Mikronesia). We did the recording in one weekend using a variety of synthesizers, percussion and effects. The music was created with our movement partners in mind and also as a companion to our gasp show at Philly Fringe that fall. This also turned out to the the first release on the new label earSnake. The limited edition spray painted CDs were sold at the Philly Fringe show.

Download from bandcamp

Iris or Comfortable Too

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Iris or Comfortable Too was my second album for Gears of Sand. For this record I limited my sound source to a grand piano which I recorded late one night my brother’s restaurant. The sounds are glitchy and frigid, but there are points of warmth and stillness deep inside.

Available from bandcamp