I was on the docks in the dry air at midnight, heartbeat dominating my senses as I looked out into the desert. When my eyes came to focus, I saw the stars reflecting on what had always been the sea. The wave crashed as I woke, eyes wide. 11 Heralds summoned the Fool to deliver his message to a congregation of mechanical ducks, but I left before he spoke. I found entrance 35 to the airport behind my house, but I couldn’t buy a ticket inside so I kept walking, a screen of pixels swimming across my eyelids, squaring every circle. I tried to read to clear my mind, but a purple veil ripped the sky apart and night fell at midday.
The News From Utopia grows from a priceless time in this life together with my beloved, inspiring Alex Sopp. The initial snippets of musical gesture, the harmonic/ rhythmic contradictions, and the mental space to build a large-
scale form that held those ideas together all came during the first months we lived together and shortly thereafter got married. The musical conspiracy that I’ve spun out also wouldn’t be imaginable to me without my cherished colleagues in JACK Quartet from whom I’ve learned an immeasurable amount, most importantly to follow my own unadvisable whims.
I feel this music connected to where I come from: I’ve learned much from my father’s meticulously kept and bountiful garden as well as my mother’s uniquely colorful and playfully designed quilts. Anything I create musically is made with the aim of having many voices singing together, the way it was when I was growing up.
Thanks to Daniel Bruno, Murat Çolak, and Brian Riordan for technical knowledge and guidance. I owe many people thanks for listening to drafts and offering vital encouragement over the three years, a few being Natacha Diels, Cenk Ergün, Chris Fisher-Lochhead, Ben Hjertmann, Shawn Jaeger, Marina Kifferstein, and Peter Margasak. Finally, thanks to Zadie Smith for generously allowing me to use the title of her profoundly affecting short story “The Lazy River” for the final track of this album. Its imagery, content, and form were vital for that composition, which spurred the structure and sonic profile of the entire record.
—Austin Wulliman, 2023
Produced and Engineered by Austin Wulliman. Mastered by Murat Çolak at GERYON. Recorded at Cats Cradle, Brooklyn, NY 2021-2022. Published by Austin Wulliman. Cover art and design by Haeg Design.