Trickster Signals and Dark Rooms: Two Paths Through Acousmatic Night
Scant Intone
Morose Code
(2018-2021)
Scant Intone is the solo project of Constantine Katsiris, dedicated to his artistic experiments in modern audio. The output varies from stark minimalist tones to densely complex textures with a sound palette that incorporates elements of field recordings, radio frequencies, hand-drawn waveforms, raw data and analog and digital sound synthesis. Focused on researching psychoacoustics, the perception of sound, spatiality, waveform anomalies, and various audio phenomena discovered while exploring the frequency spectrum, his compositions are excursions in abstract electronic music with influences including ambient, lowercase, microsound, noise, glitch, and drone.
Live performances have been numerous over the past 20 years, including many collaborations and improvisations with like-minded audio and video artists.
An avid phonographer, he has traveled extensively to conduct field recording expeditions in urban settings like Paris and Prague to more remote regions such as the Amazon rainforest. The Morose Code project is his latest work.
At approximately my tenth listen to Morose Code, it dawned on me that the piece can be seen as a sonic equivalent to a post 1950 Mark Rothko painting. Do a quick search for any of Rothko’s “Untitled” pieces. You’ll find several large-scale works comprised of various colored rectangular objects situated vertically with different color tones.
If you engage with these pieces long enough, in whatever manner you see fit, something happens. Whatever that may be—such as something internal that may be described as an emotional change, or mood shift, or maybe something that triggers a visual anomaly, a weird morphology of colors (I’ve had the latter happen to me) … there is a very noticeable change in affect. It’s a change that you may feel, or it might be something you see, something you sense. It might cause a feeling of vertigo on one end of the spectrum or, serenity on the other end… with all points between in play. Something indeed happens.
On an auditory level, I’ve experienced Morose Code in a similar fashion. The broken and/or corrupt data used as the ur-material or fundamental substrate of this piece begins to play the role of a Trickster. In its synthetic and very damaged state, this digitized detritus used as compositional clay may at first blush appear to sound like a glitch in an unknown electronic fabric. Something existing for no other reason than a tool allowing for a fine demonstration of a unique method of composing by way of re-purposing. This is true, but to simply dismiss it as such would be a permanent fatal error in the act of engaging with the work.
These sounds are tricksy; they’re something other than what they seem. Like escaped inmates from Bletchley Park, these sounds are code in need of breaking. Like a Rothko painting, extended engagement can (and I bet—will) produce something unexpected. Something uncanny? Something weird? Call it what you like but… SOMETHING WILL happen.
The displaced aural objects, rescued from the sonic glue factory, graciously given a new lease on life by this Morose Code tell a story. It’s a story waiting to be heard. It may have Kings and Queens in it, subterfuge, romance, court intrigue, peasant revolts, unbridled hyperobjects, technologically induced singularities… or maybe glimpses of something stranger. Something beautiful.
Listen with big ears— imagine it into existence!
—Michael Eisenberg
The ‘Morose Code’ project has been in progress, albeit very slowly, over the past six years. These recordings document some of my explorations within the damaged memory banks of an old synthesizer. Upon discovery of the corrupted patches in 2018, I was determined to thoroughly explore the splayed data contained therein, which provided a very unique circumstance in which to retrieve a whole new palette of illogically programmed waveforms. Comprised of a series of vignettes that play out rather like a sequence of coded language that has been garbled in transmission, the version presented here is unmixed, with no additional reverb. Therefore, I recommend speakers in a room as optimum playback conditions, with headphone listening only mildly discouraged.
The research and development phase of this project was kindly supported by Canada Council for the Arts, during which time my mentors included Robert Lippok, Scott Morgan (aka Loscil), and Giorgio Magnanensi, with Taylor Deupree enlisted to master the sound bank for use in composing for radio broadcasts or live performances.
In 2022 I spent two weeks in residence at Lobe studio in Vancouver to work on a multichannel piece comprised of this material utilizing their 4DSound environment. Since then, iterations of this work have been showcased in numerous live performance and broadcast settings.
—Constantine Katsiris
The soundwaves of Scant Intone can be found in several places:
—The website has a plethora of info including a bio, photo’s, vids and lots more.
—The label he records for.
—A sizable bandcamp catalog that is screaming to be heard.
Break the code!
Jason Hembree
Hotel
(2025)
Jason Hembree is a composer from Evansville, Indiana. His project Tenebrae Annex records under the PhilipKDiscs label.
An oscillator spits out a simple monophonic, vaguely melodic motif against a bed of black silence. The tune is familiar; its nature is sinister.
Like a crawling wind, a disturbance rises out of the null-space that’s devoid of light, becoming a whisper of static, a mumble from some ancient past breathing and growing. The blackness is there—still, but the manifestation of sound somehow fills the space with a preternatural solidity.
In its self-regulating madness, driven by an unsavory appetite—a half-formed cry is heard. Cloaked in heavy reverb against a sub-sonic bass drone, the quasi-developed keening is only a beginning.
In a massively accelerated gesture of fanning outwards —a blistering, exquisitely sublime expansion… the halfling sound blooms its train in a terrible glory…
… and that’s the first 45 seconds of this three and a half minute, intensely powerful mind movie of a piece by Jason Hembree. Hotel is one of the finest examples of dark structured noise I’ve heard. All the stops are pulled out, and its narrative is quite clear. The only possible ambiguity is how deep you’ll let your imaginal guide take you as you traverse this scape of unease.
Listen with the lights on, some, only some sanctuary will be granted. Listen with the lights off and all bets are off.
—Michael Eisenberg
A moody, isolating piece made of synth drones and musique concrete samples. Machinery, glitches, and bad weather intruding on precarious shelter.
—Jason Hembree
Jason’s music, under the name Tenebrae Annex can be found on bandcamp in two spots. His main outlet at Philip K. Discs and TA’s own page. Dark music from the Midwest is alive and well. Brace yourselves!
Curators Note-The Acousmatic Crossings feature on Metapsychosis will be taking a Winter break and will be back with fresh sounds on February 5th, 2026. Keep an eye out for a new live diffusion event in January. Until then, I wish everyone a stellar holiday season!
Conversation
Join the Conversation
Discussion hosted at InfiniteConversations.com