Few artists possess the rare ability to transform their primary instrument, bending it entirely to their will and pushing it beyond its natural limits. The pedal steel guitarist […]
Watch: Pioneer Works Live Videos Document Jaimie Branch, Aaron Dilloway, Sunn O))), Circuit des Yeux and more

Temporarily shuttered to improve accessibility, Pioneer Works has more than enough footage to tide you over.
If you’ve got a few minutes to experience something deep and grounding, you should fill it with with this document of the late trumpeter-composer Jaimie Branch opening her show at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Part of the performance space and communal hub’s video series False Harmonics, Branch’s set with her band Fly or Die burns from start to finish. But it’s the way she begins the show we’re focusing on now: “Let’s do a thing real quick,” she requests of the crowd, then leads them through some deep, intentional breaths and a few moments of silence. Once in this intention-setting headspace, drummer Chad Taylor eases in.
Come for the intro, stay for the set. Those of you with more than a few minutes of time might think about investing in this entire hour-long gig, one of dozens of installments in the Pioneer Works series.
The nonprofit Red Hook space is temporarily shuttered to improve accessibility — it will reopen in September — so now’s a good time to celebrate their YouTube channel, which, since its arrival seven years ago, has documented dozens of astounding sets by sound artists, as well as live conversations with thinkers from the arts.
Not just at their venue, though. Their “Graveyard Shift” series features artist commissions occurring at Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery, where, according to performance notes, “the storied landscape and monuments are used as reference points for producing site-specific works.” In summer 2022, Chicago-based experimental songwriter Circuit des Yeux joined Brooklyn-based composer Faten Kanaan for the fourth installment of Graveyard Shift.
Wanna get lost in synth? Italian composer Caterina Barbieri’s blissful set last year will take you there. As explained in performance notes, Barbieri “explores themes related to machine intelligence and object-oriented perception in sound.” Her work features “complex sequencing techniques to explore the artifacts of human perception and trigger temporal hallucinations. Barbieri investigates the polyphonic and polyrhythmic potential of sequencers to draw severe, complex geometries in time and space.” At Pioneer Works on March 28, 2023, Barbieri performed “At Your Gamut,” from her 2022 album Spirit Exit.
Those who have never experienced Wolf Eyes or its cofounder Aaron Dilloway in concert are in for a (noise, freakish, dissonant) treat. For False Harmonics 5, Dilloway took the stage with his table full of gear and did what he does, which is something like an exorcism.
The sound artist FUJI||||||||||TA is the master of an instrument he built — an organ without a keyboard but with pumps and eleven pipes. As explained in the caption for the below clip, the artist is “inspired by various natural phenomena that respond to his interest in wanting to hear unheard sounds and noises … [T]he instrument was designed to create a landscape, rather than function solely as a musical instrument. The element of water, using sound synthesized water tanks, has recently been added to Fujita’s performance repertoire. The music consists of water sounds from multiple aquariums alongside his pipe organ and his voice.”
And: Get lost in distortion and feedback with this drone-fueled heaviness: In December 2022, Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson performed as Shoshin (初心) Duo, featuring “valve amplification, spectral harmonics, distortion, and volume.”