emptyset have shared the throbbing, swirling new single “Antumbra” taken from their upcoming album Dissever, out May 23rd. The track evokes pioneering production methods emerging in parallel across the late 1960’s, incorporating elements of the transformative, hypnotic, expansive and transcendent. Informed by those tandem evolutions in sound from the past, emptyset brings those elements together in a truly futuristic sound, replete with swirling, dynamic fluxes that swell into enveloping barrages of distorted sonic bliss.
The arrangements, performed live and captured in single takes, emerged across a series of sessions at long term collaborator Mat Sampson’s recording studio in Bristol. This process revisited early hardware, spatial and multitrack recording techniques to create a dynamic body of material that could look back to these foundational musical forms and converge them through the lens of a reimagined timeline, cultivating a transmission from 1969 to the present and a sensory bridge to the past.
Dissever was first presented at Tate Modern as a live performance to accompany the exhibition Electric Dreams, a large-scale survey of the global history of art and technology, which built further on the improvisatory nature of the compositions and their evolving performative possibilities. The ideas and methods of the album were equally anchored through the duo’s parallel explorations, notably within Ginzburg’s work with the transnational multi-instrumental group Osmium, and Purgas’ research and installations uncovering the sonic histories of South Asia.
emptyset will performing select shows throughout 2025, including an upcoming set at Long Play Festival in NYC, their first US show in over 5 years, with more to be announced.
