Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer : Different Rooms

There’s something sort of magical about the new album Different Rooms by Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer. Both have established themselves as progressive, forward-thinking musicians and composers within the growing world of experimental and electronic music. Either working together on their International Anthem Records debut Recordings from the Åland Islands(2022), or last year’s The Closest Thing To Silence with Ariel Kalma, Chiu and Honer build sonic worlds that feel dream-like yet also tactile. Chiu’s In Electric Time from 2023 had the synthesist and educator improvising on synths and drum machines at L.A.’s synthesizer museum to stunning effect. And through tape manipulation and editing, Honer’s viola becomes something otherworldly.

With Different Rooms, the musicians wanted to make something that felt present. And these songs do feel present, eliciting an emotional call and response from the ears to the brain to the heart. Sometimes sounding like cinema, other times touching on composers like Steve Reich and Terry Riley with looping melodies melting into the background. Different Rooms begs for repeated listens, and it grows on you with each needle drop.

It’s hard to categorize an album like Different Rooms. “Mean Solar Time” feels very cinematic. Like an opening to an 80s television drama. It immediately grabs your attention. “Long and Short Delays” feels like continuation of that feel, but expands out and creates a space for the melody to grow. “Side by Side” features guitarist Jeff Parker adding some eloquent six string to Chiu and Honer’s interpretive synth and strings.

As with many of International Anthem Records’ releases, Different Rooms wants to bring the listener into the album’s world. It wants you to be an active participant and locked in. This isn’t hazy interpretations, ambient excursions, or making things weird for weird sake. The songs here are purposeful, present, and sharpen the focus. From expressionistic title track “Different Rooms”(featuring saxophonist Joshua Johnson), the lush string track “Speaking In Parallel” to the Steve Reich-esque “Side By Side”, Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer build an engaging and urgent musical world.

Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer continue to make striking, purposeful records of intricate compositions and engaging sounds. Different Rooms is simply stunning.