‘Modern Living’ is album of material originally intended for the project ‘20°32'50.4"S 67°22'57.6"W ‘(2021) a multiscreen video installation about the Salar de Uyuni, an expansive, ancient salt flat in Bolivia which has the largest reserves of Lithium on the planet. An area of increasing global importance due to the increasing demand for Lithium within everyday electronic devices and the next significant shift in transport, the electric car.

This record now sits outside of the project but is still very much informed by research into the area and the politics of the Lithium economy and the intersections between landscape, psychotropic medicine and global trade.

Aspects of the record were written from a speculative perspective, in anticipation of my visit to the salt flats, other aspects were written in retrospect, trying to recall emotions and observations of alchemy and colonialism, futuristic land art, and the overwhelming sense of absence and alien melancholia that the salt flat instilled within me. The music synthesizes both digital and analogue sources, as a means to abstract both the material and the immaterial, to mimic sounds of fluidity and evaporation, heat and sunlight, the ancient and the ultramodern.

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Mastered by Jack Allett

Tracklisting:

01 Notation Of Movement (i) [0:56]
02 Smok [3:44]
03 Brace [3:09]
04 Ish [3:09]
05 Apex Predator [1:06]
06 Avacado Leaf [2:33]
07 I'm Evaporating [3:46]
08 re;re;re;volver [5:28]
09 You Never Said [6:40]
10 Teem [5:50]

Rob Lye

Rob Lye is an artist and musician based in London. Recent work has explored technology, landscape and psychotropic drugs, specifically Lithium and the burgeoning 'green' economy.

He recently received an ACE research grant (2019) to travel to Bolivia to visit the Salar de Uyuni and the Bolivian Amazon rainforest .

Recent releases include 'Modern Living' (2021) Takuroku, 'UN' Stairwell Editions (2021)

He has exhibited and performed internationally in venues such as TATE Britain, Cafe Oto, Whitechapel Gallery, APT Gallery, OUTPOST, ASC, FUSE, Caraboo etc. 

www.robertlye.co.uk

https://stairwelleditions.bandcamp.com/