Carmen Villain will release her new album, Memoria, on September 4th via Smalltown Supersound. Along with the news, the artist has shared lead single, “Entre Nosotros.” Memoria is the follow-up to Villain’ s previous LP Only Love from Now On.

Memoria’s focus is sound as memory. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros’s writings on internally recalled sounds inaudible to others, as well as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2021 film Memoria, Villain approaches memory as both a cognitive faculty and a form of composition, moulding samples from her own archive into a cosmic introspection. The album’s inward gaze takes its inspiration from deep listening as a form of empathy, connecting us simultaneously with ourselves and our environment.

The LP is built from a combination of new recordings and material from Villain’s sound archive. Recording sessions with frequent collaborator Johanna Orellana (flutes) as well as Eivind Lønning (trumpet), alongside Villain’s own clarinet recordings, are fractured and reassembled into a dense but airy sample bank. Visceral human presence (breath, wind, the physicality of air moving through instruments) and harmonic strands of free jazz appear through layers of processing, as if heard from a distance – or through time. Rhythms and textures degrade. Sound erodes. Memories are recast. And melodies, unlike in Villain’s previous releases, are less distinct and make way for other musical leads. There is a lineage that can be traced to Rhythm & Sound, clicks-and-cuts, Pharoah Sanders, Jon Hassell, Actress, and Ricardo Villalobos

Carmen Villian
Memoria
Tracklist
Smaltown Supersound

1. Labour of Imagination
2. Entre Nosotros
3. Memoria
4. Hope Synapses
5. Blue
6. Holding a Shape
7. Omriss

Pre-order Memoria HERE