Sound

All pieces arranged for two-channel stereo (l/r).

Infinite Odyssey
 
Every location in Homer’s Odyssey (transl. Stanley Lombardo), in six voices.
 
Six channels, 28:20, on loop
 
Homer’s Odyssey, the second-oldest work of literature in the western canon, tells the story of Odysseus’s ten-year journey to return to Ithaca from Troy. Spanning complex concepts of home, ancestry, family, ecology, war, history, migration, and the oral tradition, Odysseus’ travels through the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Tyrrhenian seas have come to, in our time, take on further significance through translation, geopolitics, and the migrant crisis currently underway across N. Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.
 
Infinite Odyssey condenses and expands Homer’s epic poem into an infinitely looping list of places—names of geological formations, islands, countries, towns, and cities, some of them lost to antiquity, some of them still extant today; intimate locations in homes and on ancestral plots; spatial relations between bodies and things—into a polyvocal text spoken by six contemporary poets and arranged in a rhythmic, overlapping soundscape reminiscent of tides and waves. In stripping away time, plot, and narrative, Infinite Odyssey leaves the listener with the bare essentials: the human voice in open space, snippets of biography, an ocean of place scrolling infinitely through lost, but discernible, human drama. 

Written and arranged by Mike Lala, 2015-17.
Recorded by Michael Clemow in Brooklyn, NY.
Feat. the voices of Hannah Aizenman, Jameson Fitzpatrick, Elisa Gonzalez, Mike Lala, Paco Marquez, and Allyson Paty.

Suite w/ a View for the Ends of Our Days (Three Plinths) & Miki Yamada Foster Remix
3:48 | 3:21

Written and arranged by Mike Lala, 2014-16.
Recorded by Miki Yamada Foster and Mike Lala in Brooklyn, NY.
Remix arranged and manipulated by Miki Yamada Foster.

Special thanks to Russ George, Bill McKibben, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost.

In the Gun Cabinet
17:59 | 12 tracks

Originally published as a chapbook by The Atlas Review.

Written and arranged by Mike Lala, 2012-16.
Recorded by Miki Yamada Foster and Mike Lala in Brooklyn, NY.
Additional sound design by Zachary Nichols.

Special thanks to Allyson Paty (human voice 2), Cy Twombly, and Harry Bertoia.

Twenty-Four Exits (A Closet Drama)
4:20 | 2 Acts, 1 track

Originally published as a Present Tense Pamphlet.

Written and arranged by Mike Lala, 2011-16.
Recorded by Miki Yamada Foster and Mike Lala in Brooklyn, NY.
Effects recorded by Zachary Nichols in Ypsilanti, MI.

Voices:

(Act I)
Narrator: Mike Lala
Male Voice Center: David Shakopi
Engineer: Lil Brozilla
Male Voice Left: Justin Thomas
Male Voice Right: George Primavera
The Mossad: Justin Thomas
Stuxnet: Claire Corddrey
Centrifuge: Lil Brozilla

(Act II)
Narrator: Mike Lala
Man/Male Voice Offstage: Warren Richardson
Female Voice Right: Miki Yamada Foster
Female Voice Left: Lyndsey Wurch
Male Voice Right: Justin Thomas

Self_Interrogation (Kill Team)
11:34

Written and arranged by Mike Lala, 2011-16.
Recorded by Miki Yamada Foster and Mike Lala in Brooklyn, NY.
Effects recorded by Zachary Nichols in Ypsilanti, MI.

Voices:

Narrator: Mike Lala
Old Tape: Richard Sonnenschein
Contemporary Recording: Alaina Ferris
 

You Heavy Sop You Late You Overdue Can of Beans (Miki Yamada Foster Remix)
1:09

Written by Mike Lala, 2014-16.
Recorded, arranged, and manipulated by Miki Yamada Foster in Brooklyn, NY.

Mike Lala's Soundcloud.

*Oh, and have you heard the Nothing that was?