nóstos

nóstos is a concept album, an ode, and a simulation. The listener is invited into a type of game to live vicariously through dreams, memories, and reiteration. This work aims to produce a sonic and theatrical experience fit to describe, express, provoke, and soothe the fractured postpostmodern mind, while reflecting on themes of nostalgia. In creating our emotion radio, we rely heavily on personal as well as cultural background: the Soviet and the Yankee are superimposed into a blurry notion of ‘home’: the freedoms we enjoy, and the transgressions we miss. At the same time, global culture has allowed for a proliferation of media such that certain sonic moments transcend their locality, and become almost universally iconic. In this work we explore cliches as sonic references to home. Through experimental textures, digital and recorded sound, voice, and samples, we recognize an intimate and collective desire to return to a place that might no longer exist - and also to celebrate the contradictory nature of living in the present.