Indexical is pleased to present NYC musician Dominic Coles and vocalist and producer Cruel Diagonals. For this performance, Coles will share a new piece using a type of listening he calls alphabetic listening, attempting to establish an alphabet through the association of a word and an abstract, synthetic sound. Cruel Diagonals presents new voice-centered electronic music compositions.

Dominic Coles is a musician based in Queens, NYC. Through composition and improvisation he investigates the interactions of place, personhood, and power as they are articulated in sound and speech. Documents of this practice have been presented by Edition Wandelweiser, Tripticks Tapes, Spricht Editions, and performed at Café OTO (London), KM28 (Berlin), Les Ateliers Claus (Brussels), Shift: FourOneOne (NYC), Alyssa Davis Gallery (NYC), Casa Del Popolo (Montreal), Indexical (Santa Cruz), and in DIY spaces throughout the US and Europe. Dominic has been a resident artist at Baldwin for the Arts and a Qubit Innovator Lab Fellow. He also runs the record label Party Perfect! with collaborator Hunter Brown.

Since 2016, Los Angeles-based multimedia artist, Cruel Diagonals (aka Megan Mitchell), has been creating critically acclaimed experimental electronic music and intriguing visuals. Though classically trained as a vocalist and well-versed in jazz standards as a youth, Cruel Diagonals applies her brilliant voice to compositions and improvisations that are the antithesis of staid tradition or arid academic exercises. Rather, she optimizes her minimal gear setup with an instinctual adventurousness and an acute sense of the most chilling and moving atmospheres and timbres, favoring fluidity of tones over the grid-like modes of much electronic music. Cruel Diagonals augments these elements with exquisite vocalizations, informed by ancient folk musical traditions, as well as contemporary classical ones, thereby forging a unique sonic palette.