STRANGE MACHINES Album to Arrive via Phenotypic Recordings
Violinist Justin DeFilippis says the project became a study of human experience rather than technology alone.
Balourdet Quartet has confirmed a new album, Strange Machines, set for release October 2 via Phenotypic Recordings. The collection's first single, 'impossible inventions: i. faster – than – light – machine' by Paul Novak, is out now.
In a world where it feels like technology is tearing us apart, Balourdet Quartet illustrates how it can bring us together. After commissioning the album's title work through Chamber Music America's Classical Commissioning Grant, and concurrently witnessing the exponential rise of artificial intelligence, the quartet—Angela Bae, Justin DeFilippis, Benjamin Zannoni and Russell Houston—began to take on the intermingling of modern technology and the future of the string quartet, coming of age as musicians during AI's first public wave.
Spanning nearly six centuries of music, from the Renaissance to new commissions that draw on generative and predictive AI, Strange Machines treats the string quartet as a kind of superhuman instrument, pushed beyond its usual limits. Curious where the technology stood, the quartet attended the AlgoRhythms conference and met researchers and composers working in the field, asking what AI could actually do, how composers were using it and where its real limits were. As the repertoire expanded, the quartet found itself repeatedly returning to profoundly human stories: a galaxy named for a loved one, a grandfather's voice preserved on an answering machine, a Renaissance composer marveling at an engineering wonder, a machine falling in love.
Violinist Justin DeFilippis shares: 'We thought we were making an album about technology. What we discovered was that every composer was really writing about the human experience.'
The project began with Karim Al-Zand's Strange Machines, which imagines a workshop of improbable devices built from the raw materials of eighteenth-century music. Through commissioning new works and exploring older repertoire, the quartet's residency at Indiana University became an unexpected laboratory, where AI and Music summits led them to composers and researchers shaping the future of the field. What they kept hearing was that nobody really wanted music written by AI—the exciting question wasn't whether machines could replace artists, but how these tools could help musicians express themselves better. That discovery became the album's guiding principle.
The collection's first single, 'impossible inventions: i. faster – than – light – machine,' opens Paul Novak's four-movement impossible inventions, a work imagining a series of machines that could never exist—a faster-than-light machine, a quantum clockwork device, an anti-gravity machine and finally a cyborg falling in love. Drawing inspiration from Bach's Two-Part Inventions, Novak creates a dazzling network of musical conversations, with ideas flashing between instruments like electrical currents as they move through the quartet.
Other works on the album span an extraordinary range of subject and era. George Antheil's Sonatina Death of the Machines, arranged by the quartet, traces the life cycle of a machine from startup to collapse. Nicky Sohn's Galaxy Back to You transforms the story of a galaxy named in her honor into a seven-movement cosmic love letter. Nina C. Young's Memento Mori stretches material from Bach's Art of Fugue into a vast meditation on mortality and deep time. Kyle Brenn's Blossoming Like Crazy builds a tribute to his late grandfather from a preserved answering-machine recording, joined by the Bergamot Quartet. Guillaume Dufay's 1436 motet Nuper rosarum flores, composed for the consecration of Florence Cathedral, bridges into Isaac Smith's Canetis Cathedrali, in which a predictive AI system reimagines the Dufay recording into an evolving electronic soundscape that responds to the quartet in real time.
The album's sequencing was built to carry listeners through that arc—an exciting, vibrant front half giving way at the album's center to a more meditative, reflective turn, with the full musical journey allowing each piece to shine more brightly than any could on its own. Across six centuries of music, Strange Machines returns again and again to the same human concerns—love, memory, grief, hope, curiosity and wonder. As Houston shares, 'I think we all expected technology to be the main story. What surprised us was how every composer found a way to use it to bring people together.'
About Balourdet Quartet
Balourdet Quartet has been acclaimed for its vibrant energy and emotional depth — described as creating 'a world where memory and transformation coexist … one in which clarity of line and finely judged color matter as much as expressive warmth' (Seen and Heard International). As 'an ensemble unafraid to show its personality' (The Strad), Balourdet was awarded the 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as Chamber Music America's 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award. The Quartet engages communities in ways that 'inspire their creativity' (The Seattle Times), a core part of Balourdet's mission, through residencies with the Seattle Chamber Music Society and the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle. Founded in 2018, in the spirit of friendship and mutual love of food, Balourdet Quartet is named after Antoine Balourdet, former chef at the Hotel St. Bernard in Taos, New Mexico, where the Quartet first came together. To learn more, visit balourdetquartet.com.
About Phenotypic Recordings
Phenotypic Recordings brings to light new music by world-class musicians and innovative composers, with a focus on music that highlights the most important issues facing the world today. Artists include Kronos Quartet, Osvaldo Golijov, Kenji Bunch, MoVE (Modern Violin Ensemble), W4RP and more. As another way of amplifying artistic voices, Phenotypic Recordings donates revenue from streaming and downloads to support humanitarian causes identified by the artists making the music. For more information on the label and artists, visit phenotypicrecordings.com.
Tracklist
1. Paul Novak—impossible inventions (2024)* i. faster – than – light – machine
ii. quantum – clockwork
iii. anti – gravity – machine
iv. cyborg – falling – in – love
2. George Antheil—Sonatina Death of the Machines (1923)†
3. Nicky Sohn—Galaxy Back to You (2024)* I. Active Nucleus
II. Celestial Motion
III. Cosmic Dance
IV. Mystical Depths
V. Water Masers
VI. Supermassive Black Hole
VII. Gravitational Waves
4. Karim Al-Zand—Strange Machines (String Quartet No. 4) (2022)* I. Alberti Machine
II. Goldberg Machine
III. Mannheim Machine
5. Nina C. Young—Memento Mori (2013)
6. Kyle Brenn—Blossoming Like Crazy (2020) ft. Bergamot Quartet
7. Guillaume Dufay—Nuper rosarum flores (1436)†
8. Isaac Smith—Canetis Cathedrali (2025)*
*Commissioned for Balourdet Quartet
†Arranged by Balourdet Quartet
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