released May 20, 2020

Album Art by Namgyal Jorden
Each artist composed, performed, & recorded their own track.

Track 1: Life Took a Turn, by Renee Baghdady
I wanted to use my piece to reflect how all of our lives have changed so quickly. I have used many sounds throughout my piece: some are samples that I already had and also I made some sounds myself. I started out the piece with normal sounds you would hear outside during your day and showed slowly how the virus started to affect us. By the middle of the piece, it builds up with the heavy rain and all you can hear is the sound representing the virus to show how it completely took over. In the end, I use other samples of outside life, but I reintroduce the virus sound to hint if we get back to going outside and not social distance anymore the virus can easily spread again. I wanted to use my piece show that we will be able to get back to our lives but if we start too soon or if people ignore the rules while we start slowly lifting restrictions, this whole process quarantining and staying in our houses can easily start over again if we do not be careful.

Track 2: Better Days, by Britique Stapleton
A raw recording of vocals sung and written by Britique. A song about remembrance of times that were good. With little edits and mixes. Recorded over a fixed track beat, the background vocals were edited to sound more hallow. Short, sweet, and to the point, the lyrics expresses fun, happiness, and enjoyment.

Track 3: A May Day, Landbuoy
This recording is a mix of instrument trackings and field samples from where I've had to shelter in place since march. Among the general pitterpatterings, you'll hear my guitar over birds and whistles, neighbors clapping, blowing horns for first responders and the sound of my organ. I am thankful for the time I've been able to spend working with these sounds for class in quarantine. It's been a silver lining for me in corona chaos. I'm inspired everyday by other makers, my friends, class mates, and essential workers.

Track 4: Parasite, by Namjrdn
My idea for this piece is to portray the unfortunate development of Anti-Asian violence happening not only in the United States but worldwide. It's a representation of the struggles of Asian-Americans facing racism in a time when we should be joining hands.
I named my piece after the international Korean film Parasite which won four Academy Awards in the early month of 2020. This film shows you the world of the rich and the poor. How the rich prosper and the poor remain vulnerable. Ironically, it represents the current struggle of everyone in the world affected by COVID-19 today and that’s why it’s a parasite, a disease that we all need to overcome.
Included is a short audio of Bruce Lee who is just a very powerful and humble figure who represents not only Asian-Americans but simply put, humanity. A perfect combination and answer to everything this track stands for.

Track 5: Leap of Faith, by Natty Korb
“Leap of Faith” is an ambient track that imagines the conception of the universe from the perspective of an unsure creator. The entire piece was programmed to compose itself at the press of a single button, which when triggered, would begin picking samples at random to play through a custom delay that slowly chews up sounds into entirely new sonic textures. It represents the constant interactions that occur between species, resulting in the evolutionary changes that have, over time, created the world that we currently live in.

Track 6: d/a/r, by Sandow Sinai
d/a/r is a simple representation of some of the processes involved in viral reproduction. It starkly invites the listener to meditate on the ways that these microscopic processes scale up, from cell to individual to community, and the subtlety of the ways a virus produces the conditions of its replication obliquely to the agency of its host.

Track 7: Three Point Eight Five Million, by James Burns
Three point eight five million uses a combination of tape looped thunder, alongside a Model D clone to create an electroacoustic piece to represent the spread of a virus, alongside this, the title of the piece takes after the number of coronavirus cases worldwide at the time of it’s release. Recorded entirely outside of a DAW, numerous guitar pedals and an SP404 were manipulated in real-time to transform the clean sound into a distorted soundscape that is riddled with delay, resulting in a wash of noise that encapsulates the listener and portrays the chaos and uncertainty of the current pandemic we’re living in.

Track 8: Tenebrous, by Israel Ponte
In my piece “Tenebrous” I wanted to show the darkness that is going on in the world right now and how it's affected so many people. That is also why I chose the name “Tenebrous” which means darkness in Latin. A lot of my family members work in the medical field and I hear first hand what is going on in the world right now with all the death and how no one can really stop it so in my piece I really wanted to capture the feeling of helplessness and despair to show the reality of the situation.

Track 9: Saving Health, by John Montez
Saving Health is based on the experience of electronically mediated communication during lockdown. It samples William Byrd's I Have Longed for Thy Saving Health, a choral piece from the English Renaissance which communicates an existential fear related to disease. This fear of plague speaks through time. However, in a state of social distance, it is sometimes a privilege to speak to anyone at all. By processing the Byrd piece through the telephone to the point of near unintelligibility, Saving Health questions what information is able and is unable to penetrate out digital media. Further, it brings a postmodern sensibility to the idea of a piece of music "speaking through the ages," subjecting our very cultural artifacts to the same filter that is our digital media.

Track 10: airspace, by tiger west
www.samanthatigerwest.com
video: youtu.be/az7DENba6k0
Airspace calls attention to the significant parallels in our lack of care for people and our attacks on the environment. This piece offers a response to the emerging global pandemic that is COVID-19, using field recordings to convey this unfathomably destructive experience, the toll it is taking on human life while the current administration distracts us as it has revoked over 98 protections for the natural world. The piece works through the layered intermixing of sound: the busy signal and recorded voice over of the NYS unemployment phone line, various talking heads, cars and drumbeats uncannily coexist with sounds of early spring coming to life in the landscape where I am quarantined. Airspace celebrates our interdependence with the wild, rather than continuing the illusion of dominance and disconnect.

Track 11: Box Out, by Marcello Di Russo
This piece is a collage of sounds captured in my apartment during the Covid-19 pandemic. All the sounds have been recorded through a microphone placed inside a small cardboard box to underline the separation between us, quarantined at home, and the bewildered outside world. The title itself, which is a technical basketball term that represents the act of positioning yourself between the rim and an opponent to have a higher chance to catch the rebound, emphasizes the sense of separation.