Editions Mego will release the new album by Australian producer Jasmine Guffond, titled Microphone Permission.

Guffond developed the album over a two-year period as part of her ongoing research into online surveillance and sound as a method of investigation.

The album’s source material comes from various projects Guffond has been working on, including a commission to sonify the data of the city of Melbourne, a dance performance about the future sounds of an extinct forest, and an installation that sonifies Twitter metadata in real time.

We’re told that the results are a “stark, brooding, disorientating journey into a paranoid musical field” that sits somewhere between ambient club music and a dystopian soundtrack.

Across four tracks, Guffond questions the nature of invasive, algorithmic, and computational listening practices. For example, “Microphone Permission” refers to the consent we routinely give when installing various applications onto our smart devices, inspired by a 2018 scandal in which fans of Spain’s most popular soccer team were effectively turned into unwitting spies by granting the La Liga application microphone permission.

Guffond is a Berlin-based artist and composer working at the interface of social, political, and technical infrastructures through live performance, recording, installation, and the sonification of data. She will deliver her album premiere at this year’s CTM Festival in Berlin, taking place from January 24 to February 2, 2020.

Tracklisting

A1 / 1. Forever Listening
A2 / 2. Dotcompound
B1 / 3. Default Cultures
B4 / 4. An Utterly Dark Spot

Microphone Permission LP is out March 6. Meanwhile, you can stream “Forever Listening” and an album teaser below. Pre-order is available here.