Selections: CORIN
In this series, we invite DJs, producers and label heads to dig into their digital crates and share the contents of their collections. This week, CORIN spotlights “glitched beats, ecstatic trance synths, heavenly vocals and sci-fi realms”
During recent live performances of her 2023 album for Lee Gamble’s UIQ label, ‘Lux Aeterna’, CORIN has been accompanied by an uncanny visual spectacle. Produced by Malaysian-Australian multimedia artist Tristan Jalleh, the video depicts a Dune-like otherworld, where shapeshifting environmental features, wormy tentacles and mercurial fluids morph and unfurl around an avatar of the musician herself, enhanced by strobing lights and thundering beats.
It’s a fitting accompaniment to the Filipina-Australian electronic artist’s second album, which “explores the idea of sound as a sentient being”. Named after a choral work by avant-garde composer György Ligeti, which featured in Stanley Kubrik’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, ‘Lux Aeterna’ alchemically blends elements of trance, classical and deconstructed club music into a swirling cinematic opus. Like Ligeti, CORIN investigates the complex technique of micropolyphony, through which sounds and harmonies gradually merge into one another to create a living, breathing effect.
Rave materials swoop and swerve through these nine tracks, like in the IDM headrushes of ‘vīsiōnem’ and the rapturous drums of ‘xtasis’, but CORIN’s interest in sci-fi and her background in theatre beam just as bright through her incorporation of haunting vocals, dramatic pianos and precise granular synthesis. Put simply, it’s mind blowing.
Corin has taken her A/V show to venues including Berlin’s Kraftwerk (during the Atonal festival) and, most recently, at Melbourne’s Meat Market and Brisbane’s Powerhouse for Ohm Festival. For her contribution to the Selections series, she has chosen to spotlight “a collection of glitched beats, ecstatic trance synths, heavenly vocals and sci-fi realms. I’ve selected some artists and albums that have somewhat informed and inspired my journey as an electronic producer. And also some club tracks that I generally love to drop in my DJ sets including some trance classics.”
Dive in below.
“This 2006 minimal glitch album ‘Revep’ from Japanese pianist Ryuichi and German producer Alva Noto is my first foray into discovering electronic music. An old housemate gave me the CD to listen to. At the time I’d studied classical piano but had never heard piano performed and manipulated in such a beautiful way.”
“A favourite old school trance classic, the repeating synth line is so hypnotic and I love the cello lines too. I’ve always been drawn to the euphoric.”
“Another favourite hard trance classic. The synth line is so heavenly infectious.”
“One of my favourite ‘ping’ style breaks - perfect combination of cinematic ambience with glitchy machinations.”
“Another amazing glitchy synth break from electro Afrofuturists Drexciya.”
“Cyberpunk metal classic from one of my favourite Japanese classics, Tetsuo II. I put this in my sci-fi OST mix for Crack magazine.”
“A Stingray classic that I love to drop in DJ mixes. Never heard such a deeply vibrational bass line.”
“An ambient grime synth classic.”
“Newly released track from one of my favourites, Iranian producer/composer Sote. I love how Sote manages to create ambient synth-based music which has a uniquely raw, visceral feel to it.”
“Seemed appropriate to end the list with this epic floor stomper (I put this in an old Boiler Room set). It’s also connected to another classic Japanese sci-fi ‘Ghost in the Shell’. Takkyu is a famous Japanese 90s techno producer, he made this for the playstation version of the movie.”
