Noh Age, Charmaine Lee, John McCowen, Li-Chin Li - The Long Ear (2026) [Hi-Res]

The New York label Kou Records has released “Long Ear,” the debut album by the spectral music trio Noh Age, made up of vocalist and label co-founder Charmaine Lee, multi-instrumentalist John McCowen (contrabass clarinet) and Li-Chin Li (sheng). The music is inspired by Romanian composer Iancu Dumitrescu and was produced by Randall Dunn.

The core of the sound is a parabolic microphone, a Cold War device built to eavesdrop on speech from a distance. Lee runs its signal through four tube amplifiers and aims it at the contrabass clarinet, the sheng and her own voice, shaping the feedback that arises in the room itself. The album was recorded over three days in Brooklyn. The trio reimagines spectral music — a movement that, in the words of Gérard Grisey, rests on the acoustic properties of sound and its hidden harmonics — through the aesthetics of basement noise: wailing feedback, retching fuzz and grimy saturation in the vein of American Tapes releases.

Highlights include “Cold Lake,” where Ligeti-like vocal clusters sit on sharp, high-pitched drones and gurgling woodwind echoes. The finale, “Fifty Three,” is a long freakout at the crossroads of Scelsi, Oliveros and Sunn O))), worthy of Sonic Youth’s SYR series.

Tracklist:
1. Noh Age, Charmaine Lee, John McCowen, Li-Chin Li - Living Shadows / Iron Curtain
2. Noh Age, Charmaine Lee, John McCowen, Li-Chin Li - Loc Do
3. Noh Age, Charmaine Lee, John McCowen, Li-Chin Li - Cold Lake
4. Noh Age, Charmaine Lee, John McCowen, Li-Chin Li - For Morty
5. Noh Age, Charmaine Lee, John McCowen, Li-Chin Li - The Screemies
6. Noh Age, Charmaine Lee, John McCowen, Li-Chin Li - Fifty Three