Wednesday, July 21st, ISSUE is pleased to stream 맞닿은 하늘 - The Touching of Skies, the debut collaboration of London-based multidisciplinary artist, producer, composer, and singer/songwriter Louis Carnell (Visionist) and South Korean cellist, composer, and improviser Okkyung Lee. The duo’s debut work will stream on ISSUE’s site.
Despite having previously released varied, architectural, and emotive electronic work on PAN and Big Dada, Louis Carnell’s third LP A Call To Arms, released earlier in 2021 on Mute, showcased his own singing voice in the form of song and lyric for the first time. Carnell’s far-reaching and evolving practice has included a host of club-adjacent activities (including co-running PAN sublabel CODES), as well as collaborations bridging electronic and experimental music, and the visual and fashion worlds. Okkyung Lee, has an expansive history with ISSUE, including being an Artist-In-Residence in 2011, and most recently premiering new work with Mark Fell in 2019. Lee has also recently released Yeo-Neun on Shelter Press in 2020, a striking amalgamation of modern classical composition and freely improvised music with the emotive drama of Korean traditional music and popular ballads. Later in 2020, she released “Teum (the Silvery Slit),” a new work featured on a split LP alongside Florian Hecker on INA GRM and Editions MEGO’s Portraits GRM imprint. A new album, 나를 (Na-Reul), is set to be released soon on Chicago label and gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey’s new Black Cross Solo Sessions series.
During the Summer 2021, ISSUE is commissioning artists to produce collaborative work at a time when the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has drastically impacted their ability to travel and perform, and altered the nature of collective work and performance. Pairing artists in disparate locations who cannot work together in “traditional” ways, the Distant Pairs series examines the collaborative process, methods of working, and partnership amidst these constrained conditions.
