Jeremiah Chiu - Edge Conditions (2026) [Hi-Res]

American composer, synthesist and multi-media artist Jeremiah Chiu, a Chicago native who has long lived in Los Angeles, releases “Edge Conditions”, essentially his first full-frame look at himself as a composer. Before it, he made three electro-acoustic duo albums with violist Marta Sofia Honer (one together with Ariel Kalma) and three trance-jazz albums with his quintet SML. His solo album “In Electric Time” (2023), recorded at the Vintage Synthesizer Museum in Los Angeles to 8-track tape on a “first thought, best thought” basis, was a set of quick improvisational studies, close in spirit to Raymond Scott’s “Manhattan Research Inc”.

The new work goes a step further: it was created in February–March 2026 within a deliberate system of self-imposed limits meant to connect the different artistic worlds Chiu inhabits. The music draws on solo work, live collaborations, field recordings and audio sketches going back years. The title comes from architecture, where “edge conditions” are the boundaries and transition zones between different environments or materials, often forming a functional space of their own; Chiu says the idea suited a record that is itself bound by restrictions.

Sonically, the album is densely layered, tightly composed electronic music, related to the YMO spinoffs, Arthur Russell’s 12-inch mixes, Yasuaki Shimizu, early Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and Art of Noise: deconstructions spun through the dance/chill cycle and rebuilt in California. The intro “Way In” bursts into bleeping electronics and processed drums; “A.M. Fuses” is mid-tempo techno-jazz echoing the turn-of-the-century Chicago scene (Tortoise, Prekop, Chicago Underground, who influenced Stereolab), whose music Chiu grew up on. “In Visibility” was written with Art of Noise in mind. Chiu says their music is dialed in yet light, “serious play”, and its industrial textures create an almost human pulse and breath. The title track combines the album’s most sensuous groove with its noisiest chaos, anarchically processing parts by trumpeter Marquis Hill, EVI player Will Miller and saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi, then cools into synthetic ambient with cut-up human chatter and the muscular drums of “Interfaces”.

The record’s strength is its breadth: shifts of style, recording fidelity, field-recorded moments and textures within tracks and across the whole album, all held together by one internal logic. The most radical departure is “Sentimental Object”, with strings by Marta Sofia Honer: instead of drone and modality, it offers drama, tension, tonic resolution and many chord changes within dense synthesized layers. Chiu drew on a Handel figured-bass exercise, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “async” (especially “andata”) and Albinoni’s Adagio, a stately yet hopeful melancholy. The album moves in an easy tidal ebb and flow: each moment arrives and leaves on time, the difficult sounds easy, and rhythmic and harmonic transformations link the distinct episodes. “Plastic Mind / Elastic Machines” returns to the body: train-whistle puffs, a shaker, a deeply saturated low-end beat from SML drummer Booker Stardrum, and modular chatter that turns tonal and pastoral in its second part, perhaps the most Chicago moment on the record. In this way one of Los Angeles’s most exciting artists finally steps fully into the spotlight.

Tracklist:
01-01 Jeremiah Chiu - Way in [0:47]
01-02 Jeremiah Chiu - A.M. Fuses [4:00]
01-03 Jeremiah Chiu - In Visibility [3:12]
01-04 Jeremiah Chiu, Marquis Hill, Patrick Shiroishi, Resavoir - Edge Conditions [4:25]
01-05 Jeremiah Chiu, Ben Lumsdaine - Interfaces [2:31]
01-06 Jeremiah Chiu, Booker Stardrum - Plastic Mind / Elastic Machines [5:47]
01-07 Jeremiah Chiu, Marta Sofia Honer - Sentimental Object [3:20]
01-08 Jeremiah Chiu - Doubles [2:55]
01-09 Jeremiah Chiu - Non-narrative [4:19]
01-10 Jeremiah Chiu - A Floral Pattern [6:39]
01-11 Jeremiah Chiu - Night Fog [4:26]