press kit – Alex Keller and Sean O'Neill
Contact
Alex Keller
- five one two niner two three three one six two
- alex at alexkeller dot net
Biographical
Alex Keller and Sean O'Neill have collaborated in performance and installation pieces since 2015. Using field recordings, vintage telephone test equipment, magnetic oscillators, light and space, their work has addressed the agents and artifacts of change in the urban and acoustic realms.
In 2017, they released an LP called Kruos on the Elevator Bath label, and a CD called LCLX on the Mimeomene label. In 2020 they will release a CD called Ando on Loma Editions.
Alex Keller is an audio artist, sound designer, curator and teacher based in Austin, Texas. His engagement with performance, installation, and recording is an outgrowth of his interest in architecture, language, abstraction and music.
Sean O'Neill is a multi-media artist, who explores both the visible light spectrum and the audible frequency range to determine how they influence our lived environments, and vice versa; he has a stated interest in how perception shapes the dynamics of spatiality.
Press
“…a complex, nuanced work of sound art, conjured up from some rather rudimentary sources, largely just field recordings and a telephone test synthesizer. It is a bit of a difficult, unsettling experience at times, but a strong one nonetheless.”
Creaig Dunton, Brainwashed
“From the interior to the exterior, inside then out, Alex Keller and Sean O'Neill wrap passages of field recordings with synthetic accompaniment, manipulating, oscillating, obfuscating. The two sound artists aim to freeze time with these passages, and even though time actually does pass while listening, from minute one to minute thirty-five, the result is a moment and a place (or places) that exist in that moment, specifically trapped on grooved vinyl for repeat experience. For study, for meditation, for nostalgic rediscovery, Kruos entertains the idea that it functions more as an image than as a sonic enquiry, a photograph of sound framed by Keller and O'Neill's accompaniment. They display a deft hand in allowing the field recordings to drive the experience, but their obvious fingerprints on the record guide the mood.”
Ryan Masteller, Critical Masses Media
“The other side sees them going outside, put up a microphone in the middle of a field and see if there is not much action, but as Cage thought us, ‘there is no such thing as silence', and some remarkable low sound action takes; there might be thunder, rain, insects, birds but just as easily they fool us, and we hear the sound of telephone testing equipment and magnetic oscillators producing some static crackles, although surely towards the end of the piece there is a rowing boat and birds and we move away from the drone action that starts of ‘Kruos II”. These are quite beautiful pieces of music, that cleverly combine field recordings and ancient technology merging together in a great way.”
Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly
Technical requirements for performance
- Two circuits (one for audio and one for lights).
- Three extension cords (two for audio and one for lights).
- Four DI boxes (we will each send a stereo pair). We can provide mic level outputs as an alternative.
Performance
- video example here
Photos
Photo by Alex Kacha, 2016
Photo by Michael Reust, 2016
Photo by Michael Reust, 2016
Photo by Michael Reust, 2016