Always Becoming weaves the colors of sunshine pop and dreampop with Robert Kirkbride’s harp-like guitars and Melissa Grey & David Morneau’s crystalline orchestration and signature seductive beats, wrapping the listener in a sonic tapestry of ever-shifting patterns, pulses, and hues.
Complementing the music are nine hand drawings and an essay on humanity’s tilted view of seasonal cycles by Kirkbride, whose work explores the interplay of memory, ornament, and placemaking. These four tracks—Being, Always, Ever, Becoming—are designed to play in an endless loop.
guitars*
Robert Kirkbride
theremin, guitar feedback
Melissa Grey
trombone
David Morneau
composition
Robert Kirkbride, Melissa Grey & David Morneau
recording, sound design, programming, mixing, mastering
Melissa Grey & David Morneau
paw percussion
Foxmèr
=^.^=
Recorded and mixed at The Arches
March 7, 2023
Robert Kirkbride appears courtesy of studio ‘patafisico
*guitars
Gibson ES-175, Martin Sigma CR-7
drawings
Robert Kirkbride
digital composites
David Morneau
"We are a channel that shows independent musicians performing live in unexpected places."
Recorded live on June 25, 2018, at Flower Cat HQ in New York City
Conception: Cristina Müller, Giuliano Rossi and Yuri Tavares
Direction and Production : Cristina Müller and Yuri Tavares
Music composed and performed by: Melissa Grey & David Morneau
Featured guests: Nicole Antebi, Jessica Bowers
Sound recording : David Morneau, Michael Campos, and Miguel Tang
Mixing: Melissa Grey, David Morneau, and Miguel Tang
Biophonic Beats is a structured improvisation for benjolin synthesizer and trombone.
credits
released July 15, 2021
Biophonic Beats was recorded live on June 25, 2018, at Flower Cat HQ in New York City
Music composition: Melissa Grey & David Morneau
benjolin: Melissa Grey
trombone: David Morneau
Sound recording : David Morneau, Michael Campos, and Miguel Tang
2018 Mixing: Melissa Grey, David Morneau, and Miguel Tang
2021 Mixing: Melissa Grey & David Morneau
2021 Mastering: Melissa Grey & David Morneau
cover art based on photo by Yuri Pires Tavares
Biophonic Beats was originally recorded for Ao Vivo no Casarão | Lado B
"We are a channel that shows independent musicians performing live in unexpected places."
Conception: Cristina Müller, Giuliano Rossi and Yuri Tavares
Direction and Production : Cristina Müller and Yuri Tavares
[cover art based on photo by Yuri Pires Tavares]
We livestreamed this performance of Bourdon 50Hz for Basilica Hudson's 24-HOUR DRONE AT HOME. Sunday, April 26, 2020. 5:30am.
Bourdon is a sound meditation tuned to a utility frequency. When one is asked to spontaneously hum a note, the pitch tends to match the utility frequency, or mains hum, because this frequency is integrated into our perceptual habits. In North America and parts of Asia, this frequency is 60Hz, while in the majority of the rest of the world it is 50Hz. Bourdon—meaning drone and derived from French for bumblebee and buzz—invites the audience to tune their individual embodiment of this ubiquitous tone by softly humming along as they listen. Bourdon offers space for contemplation and regeneration with an otherwise unwelcome frequency.
...
Our livestream raises money for Arts Holding Hands And Hearts (AHHAH). They provide literacy, arts, and movement programs for very young children in vulnerable communities. During these moments of isolation and distancing, AHHAH is adapting to deliver programs online.
All proceeds from sales of Bourdon 50Hz [nº38] go to AHHAH.
credits
released April 26, 2020
music composed by Melissa Grey & David Morneau
Melissa Grey - sine wave synthesizer & live sound processing
David Morneau - trombone
Robert Kirkbride - guitar
Cover art based on a photograph taken by Susan Morneau as she listened to the livestream performance of Bourdon 50Hz [nº38]
DR DIEGO bursts into bloom from the seeds of classic deep house, disco, chiptunes, and baroque organ music.
Diego Vásquez’s bass clarinet and Melissa Grey & David Morneau’s vintage handheld synthesizers swoop and spin and soar like reflections from a mirror ball until they metamorphose into a pulsating processional that pulls us out the door and into the vibrant sunshine.
Bass Clarinet
Dr. Diego (Diego Vásquez)
Merlin Music Machine
Melissa Grey
Nintendo Game Boy
David Morneau
additional clarinets, recording
Diego Vásquez
composition, sound design, programming, additional instruments, mixing, mastering
Melissa Grey & David Morneau
produced by Melissa Grey & David Morneau
full text:
"mem mer mère" uses sound and performance to examine humanity’s collective neglect and wanton exploitation of the World Ocean. The driving questions: How do we create art responsibly in the face of climate change and ecosystem collapse? Is it possible to advocate without devolving into propaganda? Is it enough to make art in the pursuit of awareness? Marine biologist Sylvia Earle names ignorance as the "single most frightening and dangerous threat to the health of the oceans." She suggests that "with knowing will come caring, and with caring, an impetus toward the needed sea change of attitude, one that combines the wisdom of science and sensitivity of art to create an enduring ethic."
"mem mer mère" transforms eight measures of Claude Debussy’s "La mer" (1905) into one giant slow-motion wave. In performance, Kate Dillingham’s cello and David Morneau’s trombone incanted the sea using fragments of *La mer* while Melissa Grey interwove them through layers of shimmering live sound processing that conjured the ocean. Marc Fiaux processed video of the ocean's surface to create live visual accompaniment for the music.
The performance integrated scientific wisdom from two sources. As introduction, a recording of Dr. Bhawani Venkataraman reading key passages from her essay, "The True Price of Water", was played to provide context and intention. Throughout the 60-minute performance, a roll call reading of the ocean’s dead zones played like a voice from the future. We applied a data sonification process to alter the recording of each place name based on its decade of discovery. A joint research project of Dr. Robert Diaz (Professor Emeritus, Virginia Institute of Marine Science) & Dr. Rutger Rosenberg (Professor, Department of Marine Ecology, University of Gothenburg) compiled the list of known dead zones that we were generously allowed to use.
Human pollution adds significant levels of nitrogen and phosphorus to coastal waters, causing dead zones. The mass accumulation of these nutrients in the water can result in diminished levels of dissolved oxygen. Water becomes hypoxic, creating dead zones. Each decade since the 1960s has seen a doubling of the number of dead zones in the world’s waters. The contrast between the shimmering music and this alarming list of locations functioned as a metaphor for the sun glitter on the ocean’s surface that obscures its depths from view.
Artist & curator Tansy Xiao invited us into the TV Studio at Hunter College to shoot a music video. Dance movement artist Julie Fotheringham joined us to perform KEPL3R.
telepathic benjolin
Melissa Grey & David Morneau
blindfolds, dance
Julie Fotheringham
composition, mixing, mastering
Melissa Grey & David Morneau
artistic director, video editor
Tansy Xiao
technical director
Monica Rocha
graphic control
Scott Kiernan
video mixer operator
Sophia Yacca
videographers
Yaching Cheung & Kyle Damiao
Performed May 11, 2022 at Hunter College (New York, NY)
History repeats: Melissa Grey & David Morneau return to the expansive universe of Photon Ecstasy to survey for slippery drones, sparkling beats, and hallucinatory, shifting textures. Like the light from distant stars, these sounds arrive from the past, focused by the lens of the duo's inscrutable and immersive creative process.
This process is the sound of PETITE ecstasy. The gravitational force generated by the combination of Grey’s benjolin synthesizer and Morneau’s trombone pull together programmed beats, Game Boy chimes, a recitation by Dan Rose, and the palatial voice of mezzo-soprano Jessica Bowers.
PETITE ecstasy is born from the nebula left behind by Photon Ecstasy.
credits
released November 16, 2018
Melissa Grey (benjolin, beats, programming)
David Morneau (trombone, Game Boy, beats, programming)
Jessica Bowers (mezzo-soprano)
Dan Rose (voice)
music composed by: Melissa Grey & David Morneau
inspired by The DNA-Photon Project by Dan Rose
mixed by:
Melissa Grey & David Morneau
mastered by:
Eric Honour
Symbolic Gesture is electro-baroque refracted through the elemental eurhythmy of foundational beat patterns, with benjolin synthesizer, trombone, violins, chiptune, voices, and hyperlocal field recordings.
Symbolic Gesture is a sonic response to Dan Rose’s False Heads, Masks, and Robots (an exhibition produced by Melissa Grey & David Morneau at The Arches, a home designed by the architect William Lightfoot Price, October 2—November 16, 2020).
released November 21, 2020
composition, sound design, programming, mixing: Melissa Grey & David Morneau
with
Dan Rose: words and voice
Miolina (Mioi Takeda & Lynn Bechtold): violins
mixed and mastered by Melissa Grey & David Morneau at The Arches
produced by Flower Cat
