Matthew Langford, Lucie Mclaughlin & Jacob Calland - Subtle Vessel (2026)

In one morning recording session subtle vessel was recorded live in the seven-story aquatic space known as the Tank Center for Sonic Arts in Rangely, Colorado. This is the culmination of a two-year-long recording project by Matthew Langford that began as a voice memo he made at a piano in Lakewood, Colorado on July 26th, 2022.

Mirroring and adding to Alvin Lucier's process for "I Am Sitting in a Room", he made live re-recordings of the original voice memo on July 26th, 2023 while adding layers with trumpet, flügelhorn, and simple delay effects. Bringing a body of water into the Tank for the first time, on the morning of July 26th, 2024 Langford began by soaking for thirty minutes in a 400-gallon tank of water while the recordings he had made on the same day one and two years in the past were played into the Tank and re-recorded once more. While standing in the tank of water, he then made five more re-recordings while continuing to add layers with trumpet and flügelhorn to complete this album.

Matthew Langford (he/him) is a sound artist, composer, trumpet player, and improviser living in Colorado. His work explores the embodied nature of things; of creature, substance, and place, co-creation, the obscuring of time and space, and the phenomenological mysteries of all that is in between.

Langford's work has been described as "Effortlessly deep, but hovering..." by Australian sound artist Lawrence English and has been featured in the Denver Film Festival, the Denver Digerati Experimental Media Festival, the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Supernova World on Fire Festival, the Oh My Ears New Music Festival, and the Tank Center for Sonic Arts. His collaborators include visual artist Jeremy Grant, sound artists Tatsuya Nakatani, Jim Ruberto, Ryan Seward, and Andrew Weathers, caves, canyons, an empty pool, and a 400 gallon tank of water. His recent work includes album releases on the Editions Glomar and Discreet Archive labels and a Creative Residency at the ATLAS B2 Center for Media Arts & Performance.

With gratitude toward:
Andrew, Jim, Jeremy, Steve, Isaac, Lore, Curry, Ace, Petey, Luna, Michael, Ryan, Robert, Daniel, Joel, JD, Marvin, Maggie, Shawn, Tanya, Lee, Josiah, Stephan, Chad, Eric, Colleen, Chris, Alexis, Haku, Sisu, Liana, Christian, Dorothy, Hans, DeAnna, Josh, Penny, Curtis, Hollie, Matt, John, Simon, Dave, Ben, Matthew, James, Steve, Bruce, Oz, Nicole, Drew, Tammy, Mom, Dad, Grandma, and to all who have emerged since.