Photos: EPISODIC MEMORY Album by Exceptet and Brendon Randall-Myers to Release
Sarah Goldfeather's ensemble recorded three commissioned works with the Brooklyn-based composer.
Brooklyn-based new music ensemble Exceptet has announced the release of EPISODIC MEMORY, a portrait album collecting three works by composer Brendon Randall-Myers, on cmntx records. The album represents nearly a decade of collaboration between the seven-piece, Soldier's Tale-inspired ensemble and the composer.
'Brendon has been one of our favorite collaborators since nearly the beginning of Exceptet,' says Sarah Goldfeather, Exceptet's co-founder, Artistic Director, and violinist. 'We're thrilled to have these three commissions all on one album, and that we had the pleasure of working with Brendon so closely on this recording.'
The album opens with CHOPSTICKS, a modernist and metal take on West Virginian folk music. Amplified guitar prepared with chopsticks and played with another pair of chopsticks evokes the sound of hammered dulcimer, while a fiddle-like violin part provides rhythmic propulsion and winds and brass hits lead to a boisterous finale. CHOPSTICKS will be released as a digital single on August 26, 2026.
LIE DOWN draws on another of Randall-Myers's influences: an Anglo-Scottish murder ballad, 'Lord Randall.' Goldfeather's alto voice narrates Lord Randall's will as he lays dying, poisoned by his lover. Ringing vibraphone and sliding trombone create unsettling harmonies as Lord Randall slips away.
The album's eponymous work, EPISODIC MEMORY (learning to hurt), is a 25-minute exploration of how our brains process trauma. 'When you're a child and you burn your hand on the stove, you remember not to do it again. Episodic memory is the brain's way of storing the unique memory of each specific event,' Randall-Myers explains. 'This piece isn't about literally burning my hand; it's about consequences. It's about growing and changing and not making the same mistakes.'
The first movement, 'new muscles,' is built around pulsing microtonal variations of a single pitch. Accumulating polyrhythms build to a breaking point as the piece transitions attacca to 'all in your head.' Tinnitus-like unisons in violin and Eb clarinet are driven rhythmically by pitched wine bottles until the full ensemble enters with uncomfortable squirms and trills. The final movement, 'correction / contraction,' strips everything down to murmuring double-stops in the bass and multiphonic bassoon trills, before irregular, start-stop rhythms in the rest of the group build to cacophonous masses of oscillating sound upon which the trumpet shreds a solo to close the album.
About the Composer
Brendon Randall-Myers is a composer and guitarist who creates intricate and visceral music at various intersections of rock, experimental, and classical. His music has been described as 'astonishing, transfixing, soul-piercing' (Last Rites), 'an unflinching testimonial on grief and endurance' (Pitchfork), and 'a trance that's always in motion' (Bandcamp Daily).
Brendon co-leads microtonal metal band Scarcity and is a member of electric guitar quartet Dither. He co-founded math rock band Marateck and avant-rock multimedia collective Invisible Anatomy, both active from 2014-2020. Brendon was a member of the Glenn Branca Ensemble from 2016-2020, initially as a guitarist and later as conductor after Branca's death in 2018. With these groups and others, Brendon has performed in clubs, concert halls, and basements around the world, including the Barbican Theatre (London), the Venice Biennial (Italy), and the Forbidden City Concert Hall (Beijing).
Current and recent projects include 'Aveilut' for the String Orchestra of Brooklyn with Scarcity's vocalist Doug Moore; 'A Collective Landscape', an evening-length work developed with pianist Miki Sawada and Lakota vocalist Chaz White Feather; and 'Only in the Dark', a concerto for cellist Annie Blythe to be performed by Contemporaneous and the Symfonie Orkest Nijmegen.
The album includes CHOPSTICKS, a metal-inflected take on West Virginian folk music set for release as a digital single ahead of the full album, along with LIE DOWN, based on the Anglo-Scottish murder ballad Lord Randall, and the title track EPISODIC MEMORY (learning to hurt), a 25-minute work exploring how the brain processes trauma. The full album will release digitally on cmntx records, with a limited run of CDs available via Bandcamp.
