Kim Cascone

 ( Living People ) 

Kim Cascone (December 21, 1955) is an Italy United States composer of electronic music who is known for his releases in the Ambient music, Drone music, Industrial music and electro-acoustic genre on his own record label, Silent Records.

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Biography In 1989 Cascone became an assistant music editor for director David Lynch on Twin Peaks and Wild At Heart.

Joanna Demers (2025). 9780199774487, Oxford University Press. . ISBN 9780199774487

Musically he has used various aliases over the years but became best known under the moniker Heavenly Music Corporation, a name taken from a track on the record (No Pussyfooting) by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. Cascone released four full albums under this name from 1993 to 1996.

In 1996 Cascone sold Silent Records and Pulsoniq Distribution to work as a sound designer/composer for Thomas Dolby's company Beatnik.

After leaving the company in 1998, Cascone went on to serve as the Director of Content for Staccato Systems, a spin-off company from CCRMA, Stanford University where he co-invented an algorithm for realistic audio atmospheres and backgrounds for video games called Event Modeling. He returned to making music in 1999 and has since been releasing records using his own name on various labels as well as his own label, anechoic (named after his last Heavenly Music Corporation release), which he established in 1996. Cascone has released more than 50 albums of electronic music since 1984 and has recorded or performed with Merzbow, Keith Rowe, Tony Conrad, Robin Rimbaud, John Tilbury, Domenico Sciajno and Pauline Oliveros, among others.

In academic writing, Cascone is known for his paper The Aesthetics of Failure, which outlined the use of digital glitches and systemic failure in the creation of Postdigital and laptop music.

He is also on the advisory board of the academic sound journal Interference based in Dublin, Ireland.

Cascone holds dual Italian and American citizenship as of September 2008.

In 2016 Cascone rebooted his record label Silent Records.

From 2016 to December 30, 2017, Cascone served as the music director for The Silent Channel on SomaFM, an online streaming radio station that features the Silent Records catalog.

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Discography

• Blue Cube (Raster-Noton, 1998)
• Cathode Flower (Ritornell, 1999)
• (Delete) (Fällt, 2000)
• Residualism (Ritornell, 2001)
• Dust Theories (c74, 2001)
• The Crystalline Address, with Robin Rimbaud (Sub Rosa, 2002)
• Pulsar Studies (anechoic, 2004)
• Rondo/7Phases/Blowback, with Merzbow (Sub Rosa, 2004)
• Gravity Handler (CRC, 2004)
• Statistically Improbable Phrases (anechoic, 2006)
• The Astrum Argentum (anechoic, 2008)
• Pharmacie: Green & Red (anechoic, 2008)
• Music for Dagger & Guitar (Aural Terrains, 2008)
• anti-musical celestial forces (Storung, 2009)
• The Knotted Constellation (fourteen rotted coordinates) (Monotype, 2011)
• Subflowers - Phi (Emitter Micro, 2016)

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As PGR

• Silence (PGR, 1985)
• The Flickering of Sowing Time (RRRecords, 1986)
• Cyclone Inhabited by Immobility (Permis de Construire, 1987)
• The Black Field (Silent Records, 1989)
• Fetish, with Arcane Device (Silent Records, 1990)
• The Chemical Bride (Silent Records, 1992)
• The Morning Book of Serpents (Silent Records, 1995)
• A Hole of Unknown Depth (Silent Records, 1996)

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As Heavenly Music Corporation

• In a Garden of Eden (Silent Records, 1993 / Astral Industries, 2018)
• Consciousness III (Silent Records, 1994)
• Lunar Phase (Silent Records, 1995 / Astral Industries, 2017)
• Anechoic (Silent Records, 1996)

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As Khem One

• Copperopolis - Guitar Study (Humanhood Recordings, 2018)
• Modal Gauzes No. 1 - Guitar Study (Daathstaar, 2018)
• Pollen & Fragments (Daathstaar, 2018)
• Heliodronus - Messenger of the Sun (Silent Records, 2019)
• Lunadronus - The Realm of Lunar Gauzes (Silent Records, 2020)
• Threshold of Eastern Octaves (Silent Records, 2022)

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With Thessalonians

• The Unwinding (Silent Records, 1986)
• The Concentration of Light Prior to Combustion (Banned Production, 1986)
• Imbrication 2: An Investigaton Into Documenting Change Systems (Angakok, 1988)
• The Black Field (Silent Records, 1989)
• Soulcraft (Silent Records, 1993)
• Solaristics (Noh Poetry Records, 2005)

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With Spice Barons

• Future Perfect State (Silent Records, 1995)

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With KGB Trio

• Swiss Pharmaceuticals (Utech, 2005)
• Smoke on Devil's Mountain (Scrapple Records, 2008)
• Noise Forest (Aural Terrains, 2009)

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Bibliography

• Cascone, Kim. " Aesthetics of Failure." Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.
• Cascone, Kim. " Laptop music-counterfeiting aura in the age of infinite reproduction" Parachute 107, 2002.
• Cascone, Kim. " Grain, Sequence, System: Three Levels of Reception in the Performance of Laptop Music. Contemporary Music Review Volume 22, Issue 4, 2003.
• Cascone, Kim " Evolving the Emergent Content Workshop. Interace Cultures - Artistic Aspects of Interaction - Christa Sommerer, Laurent Mignonneau, Dorothee King (eds.), 2008.
• Cascone, Kim. " Grain of the Auditory Field" Junk Jet No.1, 2007.
• Cascone, Kim. " The Use of Density Groups in Electroacoustic Music" Contemporary Music Review, Volume 30, Issue 2, 2011.
• Cascone, Kim. " Residualism" Sound - Caleb Kelly MIT Press, 2011.
• Cascone, Kim. " Subtle Listening – How Artists Can Develop New Perceptual Circuits" Infinite Grain, March 30, 2014.
• Cascone, Kim. " Transcendigital Imagination: Developing Organs of Subtle Perception" Interference Journal of Sound, Volume 4, 2014.

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External links

• Kim Cascone Interview on Spiderbytes.com
• Interview with Kim Cascone on Ctheory.net
• Interview with Kim Cascone on Cycling74.com
• Review of CD "Music for Dagger & Guitar" - Joanna Demers
• Dialogue 05: Kim Cascone
• Interview with Kim Cascone for SEAMUS
• Kim Cascone 13 Questions on Prepared Guitar
• Kim Cascone: Dark Stations and Black Fields
• Interview with Kim Cascone for Postdigital Science and Education

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