Ariadne Randall

Be yourself and trust that. That’s what I’m trying to do. I find that it’s always useful to say yes to reality, however hard and scary it can be. That’s also why these pieces are the way they are: they’re a way of saying yes to their moments, taking listeners along with me while we discover something together. Is that a message to the world? I’m not sure. As for me: I’m a trans composer, writer, and visual artist educated in Los Angeles  and New York, now living in Vienna. Originally from liminal spaces somewhere between American Gothic and Breaking Bad, I looked to art for truths and experiences that were missing around me but felt within — like many other queer folks.

What a lovely way to ask this question, thank you. I felt that the risk of it failing due to length was less important than the possibility that it could offer what some people might need, as I needed it in the moment of composition: immersion, perhaps an antidote to the kind of media-rhythms and shiny surfaces we’re all waltzing with now. At some point I noticed my body really wanted something different than that sense of time. I always assume I’m not the only person to feel whatever thing, so I hoped it might resonate.

Yes – but also: what’s the lead? Before I came out I was always trying to be something or someone. I studied genres, techniques, trends, and gender roles. But, to quote Ralph J. Gleason from the liner notes to Bitches Brew, all that lacked the “snapping fire of when you step out of the spaceship for the first time.” I’m tired of following. It doesn’t work anyway. People feel imitations a mile away, and computers will copy things perfectly soon enough. Become untrainable.

Thank you so much, that’s very kind. The most important decision I’ve made as an artist and person in recent years is to trust that what is genuine for me will speak to others. It’s an ongoing trust fall, and scary at times. But it’s also practical since hiding doesn’t work either.

That was just the truth. I came out to my girlfriend some weeks later and we wept and this song that had mystified me became clearer in its meaning. Improvisation can be like dreams in this way, showing things you didn’t know you knew and weren’t aware you needed.

Perhaps all advice is bad advice, but this worked for me: try practices that force you to finish lots of things quickly, whatever the results. Morning pages, pressing record,   meditation, whatever. Eventually, you’ll get good at whatever it is. If you are lucky, sometimes you’ll end up with a pearl in your hand. In this pearl will be a hint to what is true for  you. You can’t avoid it, actually. Even a stubborn horse will eventually turn its head towards the hay. The poet William Stafford, who recommended writing a poem daily, was asked how this was even possible. He simply said, “Lower your standards.” Failing better works.

Above all, it’s a vocal record: almost every sound is made somehow from my voice. It’s also a record of attempts to find a relationship to a body and voice strange to me, documented in real-time. Listeners will hear sung and spoken word, oceanic landscapes of electronics, sh*tposting poetry, and sincere songs of the heart.

It happened this way, you’re right. I came out as non-binary around the time the first EP was composed and as a woman after the second. In A Blue Thumbs-Up, I hear a certain queer, ironic New York pessimism: here we are in the heart of a certain kind of dream, that dream isn’t always what was sold to us, and anyway, a monster’s in charge and we’re gay despite it all. This was a laptop record and I was living as a man and looking for sounds and modes I’d never heard before. I wanted a voice and had never found it. I kept trying and got here. Her Water Dream, for me, is the continuation of that search. The record has to do more with themes traditionally associated with the Feminine: softness, growth, spring, but also death and the underworld, fecundity and youth. I wanted a voice and had never found it. I kept trying and got here. It was different than I expected, and there was a softness in it I had not before allowed myself.

On the one hand: Robert Ashley, Laurie Anderson, Éliane Radigue, Morton Subotnick, and the Troubadours and Trouvères of Medieval Europe. On the other: club basements, the old Spectrum and Ghetto Gothic parties, Berghain at five in the morning as the sun rises, time stretched out into a material one can feel.

Next are four things: first, another full-length record called Our Mouths Are Spring, on love, big data, and how they’re all mixed up these days; second, the next part of the Reverse Cowgirl trilogy, which (fingers crossed)  will premiere in 2025 and has a pretty exciting team including some queer legend elders; third, a June concert at the Vienna Volksoper on queer joy, which will feature four new compositions of mine for opera singers and piano on texts by local LGBTQIA+ poets. The fourth and final thing is, a group exhibition at Galerie Peter Gaugy, also in June, on the theme of Dark Botanicals — death, rebirth, biology, and growth.