Michael Vincent Waller is an American composer based in New York. Some describe them as one of the most interesting composing of the big city, and we surely agree. His music has been described as lyrical and introspective, drawing inspiration from impressionism, post-minimalism and world music. There’s a melancholic longing quite unique in his sound.

A student of names such as minimalist legend La Monte Young, Bunita Marcus, and Elizabeth Hoffman influenced, Waller compositions are suffused with an avant-garde essence of enthralling beauty.

Waller's most recent publication, Moments (Unseen Worlds, 2019 is a collection of minimalist pieces performed solo by pianist R. Andrew Lee and vibraphonist William Winant. The piano pieces bring memories of Satie gravitating between softness and more dramatic tones. The album draws on Western classical music tradition in its most archetypal forms through its use of modal melodies, triadic harmonies and metered rhythms. Yet the emotional heart of the music is not in attack, but resonance. The afterlife of sounds. Those elements that can’t be grasped and placed into easy historical categories. Behind his surface attacks, Waller finds hazy, edgeless zones that draw us downwards, into introspection – an “inward gaze.

For this mix Waller has prepared as pretty fluid stream of consciousness, starting with the austere and contemplative, building to the dense and dark electronic, blurring into jazz, funk, hip/hop -- then shifting suddenly back to hardcore dark chamber music, which smoothes out to drones, and finally emotive piano music.... (then a reprieve, coda / tour-de-force outro).

Tracklist

Bunita Marcus - Solo

Luigi Nono - Omaggio a Gyorgy Kurtag

Elaine Radigue - Naldjorlak

Deep Listening Band - Cave Water (Troglodyte's Delight)

Linda Caitlin Smith - Far From Shore

Zbigniew Karkowski - Electrostatics

Iannis Zenakis - S.709

Miles Davis - Savad (Live in Switzerland, 10/22/71)

Fela Kuti - Expensive Shit

Mississippi Fred McDowell - Shake 'Em On Down

GZA - 4th Chamber

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Trans (Abschnitt 1)

Jlin - Unknown Tongues

Morton Feldman - Turfan Fragments

Phill Niblock - Hurdy Hurry

Peter Garland - Nostalgia for a Southern Cross

Michael Pisaro - Akasa

Young Thug - Check

Michael Vincent Waller - Love IV. Sizing

Kanye West - Jesus is Lord