Lyricist/vocalist Mimi Goese and composer/mutantrumpeter Ben Neill create an otherworldly blend of sensual lyricism and technology in their unique musical collaboration.

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Dream pop vocalist Mimi Goese and composer/mutantrumpeter Ben Neill create an otherworldly blend of sensual lyricism and technology in their unique musical collaboration. Their new music explores the musical and poetic qualities of mathematics and science through collaborations with chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham and the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries. The new songs combine the interplay of Goese’s captivating vocals and the electro-acoustic explorations of Neill’s self-designed mutantrumpet with sounds created from fractal mathematics and Hudson River environmental data. The reflective, sometimes surreal lyrics find poetry in numbers over glitchy beats, deep sub bass, and ambient textures.

After originally meeting in New York in the downtown NYC music and performance scene, Goese and Neill began working together in the mid 2000’s on Persephone, a music theater work presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival in 2010. The music was released as a CD titled Songs for Persephone on Ramseur Records in 2011. They began working on their new body of songs in 2015, and have performed them at the Whitney Museum of American Art, BAM Café, and Joe’s Pub. In 2016 they received a New Music USA grant to create Fathom; Hudson River Data as Music, a commission from the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries. Fathom was premiered at the Towne Crier in Beacon, NY in November 2016. Goese and Neill have also performed together at Lincoln Center, Moogfest, Etnafest Italy, and Festa de Serralves Portugal, among others.

Mimi Goese is known as the lead singer/co-songwriter of Hugo Largo, the critically acclaimed minimalist dream pop band who released two albums on Brian Eno’s Opal label in the ’80s. After touring with musician/producer Hector Zazou and co-writing/singing on the Moby album Everything is Wrong, Goese’s solo album Soak was released by Luaka Bop, David Byrne’s label. She has also collaborated with A. Leroy, Hahn Rowe, Porl Thompson (of The Cure), and Dick Connette, with whom she recently performed at Roulette in a series curated by Meredith Monk.

Composer/performer Ben Neill is the inventor of the mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument, and is widely recognized as a musical innovator through his recordings, performances and installations. Ten CDs of his music have been released on labels including Universal/Verve, Astralwerks, Thirsty Ear, and Six Degrees. His most recent recording Horizonal was released in 2015 on Audiokult Recordings, Vienna. The Demo, his electronic opera with Mikel Rouse, was premiered at Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall in 2015 and also performed at the Krannert Center of the University of Illinois and the University of Kansas Lied Center. A long time student and associate of minimalist composer La Monte Young, Neill is currently leading a series of performances of Young’s brass music in a variety of international venues and festivals. Other performances of Neill’s music have included Cite de la Musique Paris, Spoleto Festival, Umbria Jazz, Bang On A Can Festival, ICA London, Istanbul Jazz Festival, Vienna Jazz Festival, and the Edinburgh Festival. Neill has worked closely with many musical innovators including John Cage, John Cale, Pauline Oliveros, Rhys Chatham, DJ Spooky, David Berhman, Nicolas Collins, and David Rothenberg. ITSOFOMO, his collaboration with the late visual artist David Wojnarowicz, has been presented in venues such as The Tate Modern London, The Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and The New Museum New York.