Experimental electronic performance ensemble. Formed in 2003 by Laura and Mark Cetilia, a wife-and-husband team, Mem1 creates original music for cello and electronics, as well as video and installation art. Based in Los Angeles, California, and Providence, Rhode Island, Mem1 owns and operates Estuary Ltd., a record label dedicated to experimental music and sound art, and organizes CTRL+ALT+REPEAT, a performance series for new music programmed annually in Los Angeles. The duo has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, and has collaborated with Steve Roden and the Penderecki String Quartet, among many others. In addition to several albums dedicated to the duo’s original music—including Alexipharmaca (2006), Stationary Drift (2009), and Tetra (2010)—Mem1 has released an album of collaborative works, titled +1 (2009), and an album-length collaboration with Stephen Vitiello, Age of Insects (2011).
A Mem1 piece is typically an improvised, collaborative birthing and nurturing of a singular yet texturally complex sound. Spontaneously but carefully and gradually, the sound may begin as the breathing of the cello, played by Laura. In the opening of “Somniferum” (...