Since 2020, the Berlin-based experimental duo BEAM SPLITTER – American-Taiwanese vocal artist and electronics player Audrey Chen and Norwegian trombonist and electronics player Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø (who are also partners in life) – has been organizing DEDICATED PLAY, an ongoing artistic project, concert series, and festival, and collaborating with a wide range of like-minded experimental artists from around the world, many of them from diasporic backgrounds. This project revolves around the theme of migration across continents and oceans, and the establishment of the concept of home in shared relationships. It seeks to bring together the commonalities of these experiences, expressing this connection through familial interplay, improvisation, and the merging of experimental, free improvised sonic languages.
Dedicated Play – Live at Morphine Raum features music from Editions Two and Three of the project, organized at the Morphine Raum art space in Berlin, with recordings from nine evenings in 2022 and 2023. Chen and Nørstebø invited fourteen guest artists to join their BEAM SPLITTER duo, including Norwegian trumpeter and electronics player Eivind Lønning and sax player and electronics player Espen Reinertsen (the duo Streifenjunko), with whom they already performed as a quartet. These live pieces are featured with no additional overdubs.
The album also features the debut of the imagined Dedicated Play Orchestra, a 19-minute piece composed by Nørstebø, using individual stems extracted from previously unused sections of the concerts, recontextualizing and overdubbing hundreds of short sound files into a constantly shifting, surprisingly lyrical, and quite otherworldly texture, highlighting Nørstebø’s sonic imagination.
Dedicated Play presents the extended BEAM SPLITTER in various urgent, exploratory, mysterious, and chaotic forms, but mainly as an open, risk-taking sound lab, eager to expand its musical universe. BEAM SPLITTER found natural matches with vocal artist Elaine Mitchener and turntable wizard Mariam Rezaei, turntable and electronics player Mieko Suzuki, pianist Pat Thomas and vibes player Orphy Robinson, electronics player and vocal artist Yara Mekawei, and, obviously, with Lønning and Reinertsen. Each combination explored more nuances in the BEAM SPLITTER inclusive aesthetics.
Nørstebø edited and produced the album, and Chen did the cover collage. The album is available as a limited edition cassette (with a sky blue shell and clear soft poly box), plus a download option.
Eyal Hareuveni
Audrey Chen (voice, analog electronics), Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø (amplified trombone, analog electronics, sound files), Carla Boregas (synthesizer, electronics), Mauricio Takara (drums, percussion, electronics), Elaine Mitchener (voice, objects), Mariam Rezaei (turntables), Mieko Suzuki (turntable, electronics), Hyunhye Angela Seo (piano, electronics, cymbal), J Mo’ong Santoso Pribadi (sound-making objects), Pak Yan Lau (gong rods, toy piano, electronics), Orphy Robinson (vibraphone, electronics), Pat Thomas (piano, keyboard-based electronics), Eivind Lønning (trumpet, electronics), Espen Reinertsen (saxophone, electronics), Hugo Esquinca (digital signal processing), Yara Mekawei (electronics, voice)
