Different Rooms, the latest release on International Anthem, is a collaboration between modular synth player Jeremiah Chiu and violist Marta Sofia Honer, and in keeping with the now-legendary Chicago label’s recent output, it is a playfully experimental and enviably accomplished release. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who heard the duo’s 2022 debut, Recordings from the Åland Islands, or any of their subsequent work as solo artists or in collaboration with other – sometimes massive – musical names. Chiu has released an album of analogue synth compositions and toured with M83, while Honer has learnt her skills as an arranger to label-mates Makaya McCraven and Daniel Villarreal and contributed viola to albums by megastars Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar.
As a duo, Honer and Chiu concentrate on surreal musical juxtapositions, improvisational flights of fancy and an overriding aesthetic in which free jazz, 20th century minimalism and contemporary ambience are the guiding lights. Different Rooms takes its name from its novel recording process: the pair have studios next door to each other, and used both in the making of the album. Opener Mean Solar Time eases the listener in with dappled minimalistic pointillism and soft swathes of synth. It is a highly visual piece, conjuring up open skies and the unexpected beauty of urban landscapes, and its mirror image appears at the album’s conclusion, equally beautiful but this time dominated by organic-sounding viola sweeps.
Most of the tracks on Different Rooms were created strictly as a duo. There are two notable exceptions. The title track features Josh Johnson’s soft, exploratory sax over the pair’s tape manipulations and warped, wordless vocals. Guitarist Jeff Parker makes an appearance on Side By Side, adding loose, ascending electric guitar lines like bubbles rising through liquid. The sense of fun and lightness in both of these compositions belies the reputation of po-faced academic density that often clings to the reputation of experimental music, and this light mood pervades much of the album. Long and Short Delays teases the idea of a melody, like a musical game, then seems to fold back in to ambience. One of Eight, with its field recording of a Zhinan Temple chant, is somehow both meditative and insistent, its rhythmic shifts working alongside a background stillness.
The lengthy Before and After Signs acts, alongside the title track, as the album’s centrepiece. It contains perhaps the album’s most uneasy moments. The background shimmer sounds fraught and edgy; the dabs of synth vacillate somewhere between ideas of melody and repetition, and there is a welcome hint of friction. At one point, Honer’s viola enters like a police siren, reminding you of the album’s urbaness, its darker side, and its humanity.
Elsewhere the lighter atmosphere prevails. Speaking In Parallel is a kind of ludic experiment in which neoclassicism is played off against strict minimalism, with striking and strangely hypnotic results. Mind By the Way is hypnotic too, but in gentler and weirder ways. It features samples of the cut-up, disembodied vocals of Giovanna Jacques, and moves close to ideas of hauntology and mysterious, inscrutable nostalgia. Side By Side (reflected) is a subtle mood piece, the bubbling guitar of its sister-song replaced by tentative synths.
In the way Different Rooms manages to mix an intense joie de vivre, a fleeting melancholy and a commendable attachment to experimentation, it reminds me a little of Erik Satie. Like Satie in his day, Chiu and Honer realise that intelligent, modern music doesn’t have to be brow-furrowingly serious, even when serious themes are being explored. Different Rooms is the perfect example of how quick and luminous this kind of music can be.
Different Rooms (June 20th, 2025) International Anthem
Bandcamp: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/different-rooms