Joe McKee is releasing album Ultra Letizia via London’s Salmon Universe on February 5, with an accompanying video premiering on AQNB today. The British-born, California-based musician and sound artist is a former member of Australian band Snowman, and founder of Los Angeles label Babyrace Records and Open Source Community Choir.
The footage for the ‘Ultra Letizia’ video is taken from the documentary Are The Green Fields Gone?, directed by artist Cole Sternberg and filmed on a cargo ship over a three-and-a-half-week journey across the North Pacific from Japan to the United States. McKee produced music using the vessel itself as an instrument, some of which was used to score the film. The rest comes in this 11-track percussive opus constructed from relatively stripped-back field recordings of ambient and rhythmic elements that were minimally manipulated, dubbed out and filtered through tape. Numbers like ‘Bollard Beats (Drip-Drops)’, ‘Weather Maps from Space’ and ‘The Engine Room’ soar and burrow through equal parts profound and playful compositions that pulse with the immensity of life.**
Joe McKee’s Ultra Letizia album is out on London’s Salmon Universe on February 5, 2021.
