SKY TRAJECTORIES — DIGITAL REISSUE
OUT OCTOBER 8, 2026 VIA SIGNAL NOISE
Signal Noise reissues Kikù Hibino's Sky Trajectories on October 8, 2026, with new artwork by Joe Gilmore. First released on Superpang in 2024, the album is now available on streaming platforms.
With Matchess reading texts by Anne Carson, the album gives equal musical weight to beat, voice, and text, reworking techno through off-grid rhythms.
Artist's Note
I began this album under a different title, imagining it as deconstructed dance music with a touch of absurdity. The direction changed during a session at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago in December 2023. Matchess arrived with several books by Anne Carson and began reading. Her voice was calm, yet it had a strange, floating quality.
Listening back to the recordings, I rebuilt the rhythms around her voice. Drawing on the feeling of throwing an object and watching it trace an arc, I played the pads by hand to create rhythms that fall outside the grid. I then cut and rearranged them, taking techno apart in the process. To reinforce rhythmic accents, I let the kick and the voice land together, a technique found in footwork and house.
As I worked, it began to feel less like dance music and more like watching sounds trace paths as they took flight. That feeling gave Sky Trajectories its title.
Anne Carson's text moves through the music in Matchess's voice. It was important to me to give beat, voice, and text equal musical weight, treating them as a single unit.
The last track is a live modular synth recording from June 2023, made for the exhibition Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk at Wrightwood 659. That is why it sounds different from the rest.
My thanks to Anne Carson for granting permission to use her text.
Credits
Synthesizers: Kikù Hibino
Voice: Whitney Johnson (Matchess)
Text: Anne Carson
Artwork: Joe Gilmore
Mastered by Taylor Deupree
Tracks 3–6 and 8 recorded by Kate In at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago.
Track 6 mixed by Taylor Deupree. Track 10 mixed by Troy Cruz. All other tracks mixed by Kikù Hibino.
Track 10 recorded live at Wrightwood 659 on June 23, 2023, for the exhibition Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk, using Eurorack modular and Buchla 208C. Recorded by Troy Cruz of Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago.
Signal Noise SND007. First released on Superpang (SP189), 2024.
“Decreation was first published by Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Random House © 2005. Quoted with permission of Anne Carson and Aragi Inc. All rights reserved.”