Ariadne Randall’s Ghostly Tone Poems on ‘Her Water Dream / Image Of A Blue Thumbs Up,’ Out Today

Photo by Christine Miess
May 31 2024

Her Water Dream / Image Of A Blue Thumbs Up TRACKLIST
[h2.1] her water dream
[h2.2] grandother hallowhall
[h2.3] on that last shore

[h1.1] blunted (dover beach)
[h1.2] blue (da ba dee)
[h1.3] dark way bird path open hand
[h1.4] as horizon

Her Water Dream / Image Of A Blue Thumbs Up is out now, buy/stream it here.

Today, Oxtail Recordings releases Her Water Dream / Image Of A Blue Thumbs Up, the new double EP from Ariadne Randall, a bold artist whose works explore the tension inherent in being the queer child of “a traveling apocalyptic evangelist and a Gospel singer who roamed America’s Bible Belt.” Listen to Her Water Dream / Image Of A Blue Thumbs Up here.

Now based in Vienna, Austria, the multimedia artist, classically trained musician, and trans woman uses her work to engage with her experiences both before and after transition. Her Water Dream / Image Of A Blue Thumbs Up presents temporal landscapes composed of modular synthesizer, digitally transfigured textures, and Ariadne’s own voice, operatically emoting or delivering spoken word.

The music on Her Water Dream / Image Of A Blue Thumbs Up is stunning — environments of resonance and mystery and boundless space that signal the arrival of an indelible new voice in ambient music. There are haunted atmospheres reminiscent of Grouper or the more subdued Burial tracks, humid and dense drones that evoke Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, and bubbling synthesizer figures that recall Emeralds.

Ariadne’s accompanying lyrics are compelling as well, marrying mystic modern poetry in the vein of Laurie Anderson with the mundane absurdity of Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw and Arab Strap’s ability to mine profound vulnerability from the more unseemly aspects of intimacy.

Says Ariadne: “much was difficult before coming out as trans, including releasing the solo records i was continually drafting: they were documents of a body which felt other, not my own. now, this veil lifted, i thread present and past towards an autobiography of affinities, a personal history in sound.”

She continues: “In two times of crisis – before coming out as a woman, and in the late days of a dark American presidency – I turned to improvisation as a funnel for the unknown. I looked for what I couldn’t imagine when the possibility of imagining differently seemed slim. This double EP came from this longing…In these songs I kept the rawness of invention because that rawness felt human: the craquelure of becoming anyone, perhaps.”

ABOUT ARIADNE RANDALL

Ariadne Randall is an American artist, composer, and writer based in Vienna, Austria. She holds degrees in classical composition and contemporary art from UCLA and Bard MFA, and straddles the worlds of academia and DIY. Practicing worldbuilding, she creates spaces for imagination in sound, language, and image. In her work, underground queer raves coexist with Medieval polyphony, Foucault with the leather he wore, alongside Zen koans, Low Theory, postwar American experimentalism, contemporary digital culture, and poetry.

She is documenting her gender transition through a trilogy of performance works; the first, Reverse Cowgirl Beta, premiered at Brut, Vienna in 2023; the second will feature McKenzie Wark. Her visual art is represented by Galerie Peter Gaugy.

Ariadne has worked with the likes of Rosa Anschütz, Via App, Genevieve Belleveau, Dreamcrusher, Eartheater, Matt Evans, Filous, Filly, Golden Vessel, Wayne Horvitz, and the Vienna Volksoper. She has also shared stages with Show Me The Body, Blood Orange, Dan Deacon, Huerco S., Guerrilla Toss, A Place To Bury Strangers, Ratking, and Ben Seretan, among others.