Charmaine Lee

 

Charmaine Lee

Charmaine Lee is an artist and label founder who uses sound, language, and structure to forge new ways of connection.  Born in Sydney to a family who migrated from Hong Kong, Lee brings a diasporic sensibility to everything she does—attuned to hybridity, translation, and the quiet complexities of belonging.  Her music is predominantly improvised, favoring a uniquely personal approach to vocal expression concerned with spontaneity, playfulness, and risk-taking.  Beyond extended vocal technique, Charmaine uses modular synthesis, and various microphones to augment and distort the voice.  She has performed with leading improvisers Nate Wooley, id m theft able, and Ikue Mori, and maintains ongoing collaborations with Conrad Tao, Victoria Shen, Zach Rowden, and Eric Wubbels.  She has performed at Issue Project Room, the Kitchen, Roulette, the Stone, and MoMA PS1, and participated in festivals including Resonant Bodies, Huddersfield Contemporary, and Ende Tymes.  She has been featured in group exhibitions including The Moon Represents My Heart: Music, Memory and Belonging at the Museum of Chinese in America (2019).

“Employing as many as four microphones at a time and taking advantage of the natural distortion and feedback occurring within and between them, Lee creates an accumulation of sounds that can be surprising, to say the least — inhuman, in some sense, even if her voice is always present somewhere in the mix.”

 

Her debut full length LP KNVF was released in 2021, and 2024 saw the 7” release Elevator Music, a collaboration with Ikue Mori.  Her belief in artist-led ecosystems led her to found Kou Records, a label devoted to artists who have built singular musical languages.  She is currently on a 3 month long tour of the United States and will perform in all 50 states.

As a composer, Charmaine has been commissioned by the Wet Ink Ensemble (2018) and Spektral Quartet (2018).  In 2019, she was an Artist-in-Residence at ISSUE Project Room.  Charmaine is currently a member of the Editorial Board of Sound American.  Lee has supported cross-cultural exchange and artist development through roles at Rise (Schmidt Futures) and the Asian Cultural Council, helping to advance equity, access, and emerging talent on a global scale.

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Attic Talent

Attic Talent is a duo exploring surrealistic blends of melodic, haunting, and beautiful sound featuring Darin Gray (upright bass, percussion, electronics) and Robert Beatty (electronics).

Darin Gray is known as a solo artist, tireless collaborator, session bassist, improviser, composer, educator, Jim O’Rourke’s go-to bassist for over 25 years, as half of the long standing duo On Fillmore (with Glenn Kotche of Wilco), as the touring bassist for TWEEDY, as a member of Akira Sakata & Chikamorachi, and as the bassist for Grand Ulena, Dazzling Killmen, Yona-Kit, You Fantastic!, and Brise-Glace.  Past and current collaborations include Eiko Ishibashi, Loren Mazzacane Connors, William Tyler and many others.  Gray has continued to collaborate with leading improvisers in Chicago, Europe, Brazil, and Japan.  His discography includes over 150 releases, including compositions for theater, dance, radio, and podcasts.

Robert Beatty is a multi-disciplinary artist and musician based in Lexington, Kentucky.  He is known primarily for his prolific design work in the field of contemporary album cover artwork for both underground and mainstream artists (designing well over 100 record covers for the likes of The Flaming Lips, Oneohtrix Point Never, The Weeknd, and countless others).  Beatty has been a member of midwest noise bands Hair Police and Burning Star Core.

While he has previously used his own name and ‘Three Legged Race’ and ‘Ed Sunspot’ as noms d’klang – Robert Beatty’s underground impulses and electronic tricks continue unabated.  Like the globally recognizable album art Beatty has created for himself and others, his electro-sonics blur the line between analog artifact and digital method.  This ambiguity is intrinsic to his sonic weirdness as he creates mystery mindscapes and imaginary genres that are strangely proximate to 20th-century avant-classical, Komische, and lo-fi bedroom electronics.