Dan Langa LIVE at Ki Smith Gallery

Fugue State, the new collaborative project led by Northampton, MA-based composer, producer, and engineer Dan Langa, celebrates the release of their debut album After Nothing Comes, out via Switch Hit Records. Neither solo project nor traditional ensemble, Fugue State was born out of a compositional methodology: an obsessive cultivation of studio recordings with a rotating cast of musicians, transformed into spectral, unrecognizable forms.

Rooted in years of studio-based collaboration, Fugue State treats the recording process itself as compositional material. The project draws on an impressive roster of New York City musicians to splice together studio takes, cut in surreptitious B-roll, and render performances into something strange and new.

That process of obsessive excavation became the project's name and guiding logic: Fugue State. After Nothing Comes is a spectral song cycle occupying the space between saxophone ambient, contemporary chamber dub, crumbling art song, and elegantly fried motherboard remixes — the sound of a project that treats the studio itself…