when the great fires were lit on the other side of the ocean [2022-2024]
composed by Weston Olencki and performed by TAK ensemble
Order LP
Microtonality, Occultism, and Electrical Force in Early Modern America
‘when the great fires were lit on the other side of the ocean’ is the first collaborative album written and developed by Berlin-based composer Weston Olencki and NYC’s TAK ensemble. Borrowing its title from the psychogeographical excursions of W.G. Sebald, when the great fires… takes its own journey through real and imagined histories of electricity, using myriad perspectives and mythologies around electrical force to re-enchant its ubiquitous presence throughout our recent past. Fantastical philosophies and prophecies around electricity were central to the belief systems of early sound recording innovators, the eschatological prophecies of the Spiritualists, and complex political players central to the founding of our current age. This particular era and its manifold perspectives about this new “endless” source of power allowed individuals from a wide array of social strata to explore their visions and fears of the immanent modernity – a time of intense introspection on the precipice of a fundamentally changing world.
The musical settings are as varied as their source materials: slow-burning, mesmeric drones constructed from the harmonics of the 60Hz ground hum, crackling textures of the electromagnetic ether, field recordings taken at Nikola Tesla's first AC power plant in Niagara Falls, and a speculative contrafactum of old Irish sean-nós balladry. Part chamber ensemble composition, part conceptual research obsession, when the great fires… grows from the possibilities of ‘what could have happened’ as much as dusty archival records, pulling the listener inside this teeming interconnected narrative across centuries and disciplines.
In addition to the vinyl (designed by Sweet Wreath), bonus materials include a densely footnoted article on the work’s source material, originally given as a lecture by scholar A. Gilbert Williamson in 2054 at Roulette Intermedium, and a professionally printed & bound copy of Olencki’s handwritten score.
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Weston Olencki is a musician from South Carolina, based in Berlin, Germany. Their projects position musical instruments as sites of cultural inscription, working fluidly between experimental sound, traditional musics, and their various space/time(s). Their solo discography includes Verd Mont (SUPERPANG, 2021), Old Time Music (Tripticks Tapes, 2022), pearls ground down to powder (Full Spectrum, 2024), I went to the dance (Longform Editions, 2024) and Broadsides (Outside Time, 2025), with other recording projects released by PAGANS, Dinzu Artefacts, Lobby Art, Out of Your Head, and HatHut. They are an active member of RAGE THORMBONES and APPARAT, and perform in many contexts on low brass instruments, winds, banjo, and electronics. (photo by Cy Klock)
Since its formation in 2013, TAK ensemble has established itself as a major force of new and experimental music, gaining recognition as “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen). The group has been praised for delivering performances that “combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” (The Wire). TAK maintains an active performance schedule in their home of NYC and across the world, with recent engagements at IntAct Festival (Bangkok), NYPhil’s Kravis Nightcap Series, Music Current Festival (Dublin), Corcoran Festival (DC), and SWOONFEST. TAK has released 9 albums to critical acclaim, featuring the fruits of their long-term collaborations with composers such as Tyshawn Sorey, Ashkan Behzadi, Natacha Diels, Eric Wubbels, Erin Gee, Taylor Brook, David Bird, Mario Diaz de Leon, including this very release with Weston Olencki.
(photo by Titilayo Ayangade)
when the great fires…was made possible by a grant from the Fromm Music Foundation, New Music USA’s Creator Fund, Humanities New York, and funded in part by The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc. LP reissue sponsored by an Archival Preservation Project Grant from the Sylvia Marie Cahill Memorial Foundation.
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Reviews:
The feverish curiosity of musician and composer Weston Olencki leads them down all kinds of rabbit holes, where quirky research, speculative models, and theoretical writing often ties together new interests and fascinations. As an addendum to when the great fires were lit on the other side of the ocean, which they wrote for and with New York’s TAK Ensemble, they created an academic lecture from five decades into the future. The imagined lecture looks back on this work, postulating arcane connections between the emergence of electricity and Irish folk singing, an admittedly reductive summary. While it’s all fascinating, it’s not necessary to read it in order to be knocked out by the performance captured here, in which singer Charlotte Mundy’s striking presence and powerhouse delivery rides over elaborate, collectively formed sound fields harmonized around the 60 Hz hum of the American power grid. (The same sonic foundation has been at the core of La Monte Young’s music since the late 1950s.) Clarinetist Madison Greenstone, flutist Laura Cocks, percussionist Ellery Trafford, and violinist Marina Kifferstein produce wildly variegated soundscapes that sigh and moan, with vibrant (if terse) little flourishes emerging from the collective din. This is not a work about individual solos or complex arrangements, but there is a quiet virtuosity, often enhanced by extended techniques and folk tropes, in the ensemble’s commitment to forging an aggregate sound world, where Mundy’s elastic voice forms unusual harmonic webs with the rest of the group, while occupying the foreground. Pitted against literal sounds of electricity—whether field recordings made at Nikola Tesla’s first power plant in Niagara Falls or live currents triggered by a light bulb she holds in performance—Mundy is remarkable.
-Peter Margasak, Bandcamp, Best Contemporary Classical, Sept 2026
Read an interview with Weston about the album on I Care If You Listen
composed by Weston Olencki and performed by TAK ensemble
Order LP
Microtonality, Occultism, and Electrical Force in Early Modern America
‘when the great fires were lit on the other side of the ocean’ is the first collaborative album written and developed by Berlin-based composer Weston Olencki and NYC’s TAK ensemble. Borrowing its title from the psychogeographical excursions of W.G. Sebald, when the great fires… takes its own journey through real and imagined histories of electricity, using myriad perspectives and mythologies around electrical force to re-enchant its ubiquitous presence throughout our recent past. Fantastical philosophies and prophecies around electricity were central to the belief systems of early sound recording innovators, the eschatological prophecies of the Spiritualists, and complex political players central to the founding of our current age. This particular era and its manifold perspectives about this new “endless” source of power allowed individuals from a wide array of social strata to explore their visions and fears of the immanent modernity – a time of intense introspection on the precipice of a fundamentally changing world.
The musical settings are as varied as their source materials: slow-burning, mesmeric drones constructed from the harmonics of the 60Hz ground hum, crackling textures of the electromagnetic ether, field recordings taken at Nikola Tesla's first AC power plant in Niagara Falls, and a speculative contrafactum of old Irish sean-nós balladry. Part chamber ensemble composition, part conceptual research obsession, when the great fires… grows from the possibilities of ‘what could have happened’ as much as dusty archival records, pulling the listener inside this teeming interconnected narrative across centuries and disciplines.
In addition to the vinyl (designed by Sweet Wreath), bonus materials include a densely footnoted article on the work’s source material, originally given as a lecture by scholar A. Gilbert Williamson in 2054 at Roulette Intermedium, and a professionally printed & bound copy of Olencki’s handwritten score.
__________________________________________
Weston Olencki is a musician from South Carolina, based in Berlin, Germany. Their projects position musical instruments as sites of cultural inscription, working fluidly between experimental sound, traditional musics, and their various space/time(s). Their solo discography includes Verd Mont (SUPERPANG, 2021), Old Time Music (Tripticks Tapes, 2022), pearls ground down to powder (Full Spectrum, 2024), I went to the dance (Longform Editions, 2024) and Broadsides (Outside Time, 2025), with other recording projects released by PAGANS, Dinzu Artefacts, Lobby Art, Out of Your Head, and HatHut. They are an active member of RAGE THORMBONES and APPARAT, and perform in many contexts on low brass instruments, winds, banjo, and electronics. (photo by Cy Klock)
Since its formation in 2013, TAK ensemble has established itself as a major force of new and experimental music, gaining recognition as “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen). The group has been praised for delivering performances that “combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” (The Wire). TAK maintains an active performance schedule in their home of NYC and across the world, with recent engagements at IntAct Festival (Bangkok), NYPhil’s Kravis Nightcap Series, Music Current Festival (Dublin), Corcoran Festival (DC), and SWOONFEST. TAK has released 9 albums to critical acclaim, featuring the fruits of their long-term collaborations with composers such as Tyshawn Sorey, Ashkan Behzadi, Natacha Diels, Eric Wubbels, Erin Gee, Taylor Brook, David Bird, Mario Diaz de Leon, including this very release with Weston Olencki.
(photo by Titilayo Ayangade)
when the great fires…was made possible by a grant from the Fromm Music Foundation, New Music USA’s Creator Fund, Humanities New York, and funded in part by The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc. LP reissue sponsored by an Archival Preservation Project Grant from the Sylvia Marie Cahill Memorial Foundation.
___________________
Reviews:
The feverish curiosity of musician and composer Weston Olencki leads them down all kinds of rabbit holes, where quirky research, speculative models, and theoretical writing often ties together new interests and fascinations. As an addendum to when the great fires were lit on the other side of the ocean, which they wrote for and with New York’s TAK Ensemble, they created an academic lecture from five decades into the future. The imagined lecture looks back on this work, postulating arcane connections between the emergence of electricity and Irish folk singing, an admittedly reductive summary. While it’s all fascinating, it’s not necessary to read it in order to be knocked out by the performance captured here, in which singer Charlotte Mundy’s striking presence and powerhouse delivery rides over elaborate, collectively formed sound fields harmonized around the 60 Hz hum of the American power grid. (The same sonic foundation has been at the core of La Monte Young’s music since the late 1950s.) Clarinetist Madison Greenstone, flutist Laura Cocks, percussionist Ellery Trafford, and violinist Marina Kifferstein produce wildly variegated soundscapes that sigh and moan, with vibrant (if terse) little flourishes emerging from the collective din. This is not a work about individual solos or complex arrangements, but there is a quiet virtuosity, often enhanced by extended techniques and folk tropes, in the ensemble’s commitment to forging an aggregate sound world, where Mundy’s elastic voice forms unusual harmonic webs with the rest of the group, while occupying the foreground. Pitted against literal sounds of electricity—whether field recordings made at Nikola Tesla’s first power plant in Niagara Falls or live currents triggered by a light bulb she holds in performance—Mundy is remarkable.
-Peter Margasak, Bandcamp, Best Contemporary Classical, Sept 2026
Read an interview with Weston about the album on I Care If You Listen