Albumin by Jim O'Rourke & Jos Smolders

 

Jim O’Rourke and Jos Smolders have collaborated before and this is their second outing.

‘’Albumin’’ is a nicely mixed selection from the sessions that both of them have done over the period of three years. Edited towards making four tracks and published as a vinyl record.

Four tracks that incorporate Kyma algorithms that Jim has used and granular synthesis that Jos used to transform his tracks into the final product.

Dense and atmospheric spectral electroacoustics that they present on this album never get old. They have diversified dynamics, some parts create intricate rhythmical clusters but above all – this is a all a dreamwork like soundtrack that only a listener can absorb and create her/his own boundaries to what is happening here.

A nice combination of all those elements add up to the discovery aspect of the passages – you could say that those tracks could be composed well over 50 years ago or 60 years ago but they sound fresh and only a mature musician could create those.

Hopefully we will have a continuation of this assembly not just one more time but many…

Jim O'Rourke and Jos Smolders teamed up again after their first collaboration, Additive Inverse from 2021. Over a period of three years, both artists worked in sessions of a day, each in their own studio.

The result is sometimes like a warm cloud of sounds, suddenly breaking up into a rhythmic, irregular pattern, after which it dives into introverted mindsets. The music is in constant flux

The project followed the same workflow, but this time Jim took the lead and kicked off with a salvo of sounds that he extracted from his Kyma System. Both Jos and Jim were quite interested in the spectral character of sounds. Jim applied Kyma algorithms while Jos granulated his basic recordings. That way, textures are built, quite slowly moving from warm to gritty, from hard surfaces to deep sonic wells.

credits

released June 5, 2026

Music by Jim O'Rourke and Jos Smolders

Mastered by Jos Smolders at EARLabs

Sleeve by Rutger Zuydervelt

https://jos-smolders.bandcamp.com/album/albumin