Matchess

Matchess is the solo work of musician Whitney Johnson. The project considers the reproduction of sound and meaning through a range of historical material processes, including live tape looping, cassette sampling, and field recording. With the limited palette of a 1960s Ace Tone organ, viola, analog drum machine, stereo reel-to-reel, and voice, she crafts a sound collage of ephemeral songs on a surface of droning ambient noise. Matchess invokes music of the past, including musique concrète, komische, and early electronic experiments, while also referencing texts of the past, including symbolist poetry, science fiction metanarrative, and her own lyrical technique of the sigil mantra. In addition to her solo work, Matchess collaborates widely in Chicago with such artists as Circuit des Yeux, Gel Set, TALsounds, and many others.