Elsewhere by Agnes Martian

Agnes Martian’s new LP, Elsewhere, picks up where their first, The Future Light Cone, left off: the band glides through the cosmos, sometimes soaring in restless pursuit of new sounds, sometimes lying back to contemplate the flickering patterns of distant stars, all the while collectively dreaming of new possibilities - imagining what might lie ‘beyond the arc of light’, (what lies Elsewhere).

The Future Light Cone grew out of a set of jams recorded at Mills College (on March 15, 2020 in the last few hours before a midnight lockdown took effect in the Bay Area). In the ensuing months of pandemic isolation Ben expanded these recordings into an album-length effort using a single synthesizer, the Korg MS-20, eventually collecting vocals from longtime collaborator gideon hart and additional sax overdubs from Zekarias. Work on Elsewhere also began during this period of isolation, but unlike The Future Light Cone, this set of recordings was conceived from the ground up through synth-driven explorations that constitute each track’s basic framework, upon which musicians were later invited to improvise. The album folds in an expanded palette of synths (including experiments with then-unfamiliar FM and wavetable synthesis techniques) and acoustic instrumentation.

The result is a richly textured suite of sound that moves between propulsive rhythm and meditative stillness, balancing analog pulse with organic resonance. Zekarias’ saxophone and gideon’s vocals provide the album’s narrative and emotional anchors, while contributions from Primary Mystical Experience (Galecstasy) on drums, Rocco Freeman (Mirage, Elf Freedom) on guitar, and Pétur Eggerts (Skelkur i bringu, Geigen) on violin and acoustic textures helped shape the record’s expansive soundscape.

The album’s title expands on the “light cone” imagery from a model in special relativity, in which “Elsewhere” describes the space outside both past and future events—a realm beyond possible trajectories of cause and effect. For Ben, this idea serves as both metaphor and mission: “For me, Elsewhere reflects our collective desire to imagine alternative social and political possibilities, and to uncover new soundmaking approaches that might help us envision those futures.” While the title evokes distance, the album’s making was rooted in connection. “Agnes Martian started as an open invitation to explore sound together,” Ben says. “That’s also how I approached inviting collaborators for this project.” Rocco—who helped release the first album’s cassette edition and inspired Ben to resume self-recording—helped introduce the band to Primary Mystical Experience, whose live drums became a key part of Elsewhere’s rhythmic fabric. The group was also able to continue their longstanding collaboration with gideon before their move to New York and to reunite with Pétur, a longtime friend from the Agneshaus years.

At the album’s heart lies the transition from “Cycle Heart Echo” into the title track—two pieces that capture Elsewhere’s central movement from tightly wound repetition to open, exploratory drift. “They show our range,” says Ben, “and our fascination with what happens in the margins—between rhythm and release, sound and silence.”

Drawing particular inspiration from Harmonia, Upper Astral, The Far East Family Band’s Fumio Miyashita, Barış Manço’s 2023, and Philippe Besombes & Jean-Louis Rizet, Agnes Martian channel the same spirit of self-recorded experimentation and ecstatic exploration that once defined the outer reaches of Kosmische and new age sound.

Agnes Martian soundtracks a planetarium that charts undiscovered constellations of inner space. Started by Benjamin Rodgers and Zekarias Thompson in 2019, the collaboration grew out of a weekly ritual of deep listening and collective cosmic exploration. All of our many iterations have retained an interest in repetition and improvisation.

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