Elori Saxl Quartet - Yamila

“Building a hypnotic counterpoint between a bright chamber-music ensemble and groaning analog synthesizers, composer Elori Saxl’s debut is an investigation of emotion and seasonal change.”

Elori Saxl is an American experimental electronic composer. She has composed music for classical ensembles, PBS, The Guggenheim, The National Film Board of Canada, Burton, Patagonia, Google, Poler, Dove, the New Yorker, This American Life, Public Radio International, SFMOMA, and more. She also works in film as a director and editor. Her film work has been nominated for two Emmys and been featured by the New Yorker, Vimeo Staff Picks, and festivals around the world. She has performed across the globe including recent dates opening for Colin Stetson on his 2022 North American tour, opening and performing with Emile Mosseri and Mary Lattimore in LA, Dripping Fest, WOS fest (Spain), Corsica, National Sawdust, Public Records, and more.

Her debut album ‘The Blue of Distance’ (2021) received critical acclaim for its elegant combination of digitally-processed recordings of wind and water with the rich sounds of analog synthesizers and chamber orchestra. The album was accompanied by four music videos, two self-directed by Saxl and two collaborations with Canadian choreographer and dance Emma Portner. The same year, she released the single ‘Moss II’ under Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s imprint Touch the Plants. Her music has been featured by Pitchfork, The New Yorker, WNYC New Sounds, BBC 3 Radio and more.

The mini-album ‘Drifts and Surfaces’ was released in July 2024 via Western Vinyl. The three-piece set flourishes quietly in present-tense synthesis and originates from three different commissions, each influenced by her experience of living on Madeline Island, a small island in Lake Superior, and unified by shared themes that explore how technology has come to define our daily life: the blurring of physical and digital worlds, the compression and datafication of human experience, and the paradox of everyday stasis and constant change. Saxl continues to utilize chamber-music ensemble alongside analog synths and digital experimentation, deeply tuning into textural emotion. ‘Drifts and Surfaces’ offers a snapshot of an artist in constant evolution, absorbing life’s impressions with mesmeric, visceral, and nearly tangible minimalist sound.

Elori Saxl’s full-length album ‘Earth Focus’ (November 2024, Western vinyl) consists of material Elori created to soundtrack the PBS show of the same name. Earth Focus (the TV series) delves into the intricate connections between Southern California’s natural landscapes and urban development. Each episode explores a specific location, including the Los Angeles River, Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, Joshua Tree National Park, and the Mojave Desert. Saxl’s music underscores the emotional narratives of these places, emphasizing the interplay between humans and nature and the impact of human-constructed environments.

A new score ‘Texada’ will be released via Western Vinyl on April 25th, 2025. Texada is the official soundtrack for the film of the same title directed by Claire Sanford and Josephine Anderson and produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Set on the remote Canadian island of Texada, the film explores the evolving relationship between people and place. Through a richly textured sonic environment, Saxl extends the film’s themes into sound, capturing cycles of creation, extraction, and renewal that unfold across vastly different timescales. Saxl, whose work frequently investigates the interplay of memory, environment, and technology, translates these ideas into sound. Blending analog synthesizers, processed baritone saxophone (performed by Henry Solomon), and field recordings of water and rock, she builds layers of sound that evoke the textures of stone, the movement of waves, and the pulse of industry. By intertwining the human and the elemental, Saxl’s score not only deepens the immersive quality of Texada but also stands as its own meditation on transformation and coexistence. Her compositions invite the listener to consider how personal and planetary histories intertwine, leaving traces across landscapes both external and internal.

Yamila

Looking over the precipice of pure emotion, Yamila dances between electronic and analog music, tradition and experimentation. Following in the wake of her first work, Iras Fajro 2019 (Forbidden Colours), supported by Clark (Warp), this year the Spanish composer, cellist, singer and producer will reveal her most intimate catharsis in her second album Visions (Umor-Rex). A celebration of hallucinatory powers of music, it offers a journey that prodigiously unites baroque accents, Spanish folklore and contemporary electronic music, and includes a collaboration with the New York based musician Rafael Anton Irisarri.

Yamila is based between Brussels and Madrid. She has performed at festivals such as Sonic Acts Festival, Arts Electronica, Seoul International Computer Music Festival, Rewire, and Rotterdam Film Festival, and she has created music for contemporary dance productions in places such as the Gothenburg Opera, the Nederlands Dans Theater and the Dance Forum Taipei. In a permanent search for new languages that expand the limits of pre-established formats, Yamila has collaborated with visual artists, choreographers and filmmakers among others.