October 2021
Lathe cut vinyl, 7", 33 RPM
Edition of 75, numbered and signed
Wendy's Subway, 2021
35 USD (vinyl and Return to the Field)
About the album
How can one embody a space without being in it? Charmaine Lee’s a stone widens it developed in response to A stone that thinks of Enceladus by visual artist Martha Tuttle, installed at Storm King Art Center in New York.
Incorporating field recordings and vocal samples, this album takes site as a starting point of the highly complex sound environment of this Hudson Valley location, framed by the I-87 NY Thruway, the distant Schunemunk Mountain, and the tree-lined Bunny Road.
This limited edition album is published alongside the book, Return to the Field, edited by Gabriel Kruis and Martha Tuttle, and sold only in a special bundle with a copy of the book.
Digital album available for streaming and download on Bandcamp.
About the artist
Charmaine Lee (b. 1991) is a New York-based vocalist from Sydney, Australia. Her music is predominantly improvised, favoring a uniquely personal approach to vocal expression concerned with spontaneity, playfulness, and risk-taking. Beyond extended vocal technique, Charmaine uses amplification, feedback, and microphones to augment and distort the voice. She has performed with leading improvisers id m theft able, Ikue Mori, Sam Pluta, Tyshawn Sorey, Nate Wooley, and C. Spencer Yeh, and maintains ongoing collaborations with Conrad Tao, Victoria Shen, Zach Rowden, and Eric Wubbels. Charmaine has performed at ISSUE Project Room, The Kitchen, Roulette, The Poetry Project, and MoMA PS1, and participated in festivals including Resonant Bodies, Huddersfield Contemporary, and Ende Tymes. She has been featured in group exhibitions including The Moon Represents My Heart: Music, Memory and Belonging at the Museum of Chinese in America (2019). As a composer, Charmaine has been commissioned by the Wet Ink Ensemble (2018) and Spektral Quartet (2018). In 2019, she was an Artist-in-Residence at ISSUE Project Room, and is a current 2021 Van Lier Fellow at Roulette. Charmaine is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Sound American.