OUT NOW all streaming platforms: DIFFERENT ROOMS by Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer /// + Tracing the Lines with Sam Prekop
(( photo by Charlie Weinmann ))
Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer
Different Rooms
Out in full on streaming platforms
Tuesday, July 8th
Today, the Los Angeles based duo of modular synthesist Jeremiah Chiu and violist Marta Sofia Honer release their new album Different Rooms on all streaming platforms (following its June 20th release on LP, CD, and digital download).
“...Different Rooms is both study and symphony, mapping the right angles and curves of the city through sound.” - David Walker, New Commute
“...an electronic world full of enlightened grandeur.” - Brad Farberman, Tidal
“…as smooth and crystalline as a pool of soft pebbles.” - Romulo Moraes, Aquarium Drunkard
“...an abstract dreamscape.”- Paul Simpson, AllMusic
“...striking and strangely hypnotic…” - Thomas Blake, KLOF MAG
Listen.
** Tracing The Lines **
A Conversation With Sam Prekop,
Jeremiah Chiu, and Marta Sofia Honer
Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer sat down with longtime friend and creative peer Sam Prekop to talk drawing, design, gear, and the overlap between visual and musical practice. Prekop’s drawing (Untitled, September 2023), became the album cover for Different Rooms and this conversation for our zine, Tracing The Lines, traces how that collaboration—and their friendship—came to be.
Different Rooms
documentary by David Burkart
In this visually stunning mini documentary by David Burkart, Chiu and Honer go deeper into the worlds of Different Rooms.
** Further Listening **
Inspirations Playlist
In this Spotify playlist curated by Chiu & Honer, they share twenty-one tracks that inspired, informed, or echoed the making of Different Rooms.
(( photo by Colin Patrick Smith ))
Different Rooms finds synthesist Jeremiah Chiu and violist Marta Sofia Honer returning to a collaboration that, with the March 2022 release of their critically-lauded duo debut Recordings from the Åland Islands, initiated an epically prolific run for both artists in their own rites. In the wake of performances to support Åland Islands, in 2023 Chiu toured the US opening for M83 and released the solo recording In Electric Time, an album of in-the-moment synth-based compositions captured on analog tape at LA’s Vintage Synthesizer Museum. During that time, Honer was busy doing strings and arrangements for recordings and performances by International Anthem artists Makaya McCraven and Daniel Villarreal; she also contributed viola to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, Kendrick Lamar’s GNX, and various projects with Adrian Younge’s Linear Labs Orchestra, among many others. Chiu and Honer worked together with Ariel Kalma on the three-way collaborative album The Closest Thing to Silence that released in early 2024, just months before the LA trance-jazz supergroup SML, which is co-led by Chiu, released their groundbreaking self-titled debut album. This protracted, two year run of activity and growth for the two musicians crescendoed into a moment of opportunity for them to conceptualize and compose the new duo work that would become Different Rooms.
Different Rooms collects songs and musical motifs composed, edited, and collaged by Chiu and Honer in the weeks between late 2024 and early 2025. Except for pieces composed from improvisations recorded with Jeff Parker and Josh Johnson in 2023 (heard on forthcoming singles “Side by Side” and “Different Rooms,” respectively), most of the ideas were initially developed during live performances on the duo’s fall 2024 EU tour, then fully realized when they returned to their home studios to record, arrange, and shape the music into album form in the beginning of 2025.
About the process, Chiu and Honer say: “This record marks an evolution in our approach to studio production. Our studios are side-by-side. When we were writing this album, you might have found us tracking viola stacks in one studio while, in the other, we were writing through-composed themes and rearranging the material. Granular synthesis and tape manipulation are key tools we use to create variation and movement in a composition. This process often yields surprising results, capturing the emotion but expressing it in unexpected ways. It feels essential that we embrace a bit of chance.”
Contrary to how Åland Islands – with its interwoven field recordings and atmospheric improvisations captured in the hyperreal landscapes of an archipelago in the Baltic Sea – completely transported listeners to another place, with Different Rooms, Chiu and Honer say “we want this music to meet you where you are.” It’s a decidedly urban album; field recordings still have a presence, but they come from scenes on train platforms, city streets, and rooms in their home, painting a quotidian sonic image that blurs the line between what the listener hears in their own environment and what is on the record.
The sonic and temporal abstraction between what is performed in real-time versus what is recorded, manipulated, and collaged is perfectly encapsulated in the album’s title Different Rooms, which literally refers to the fact that the material was recorded in different spaces, while figuratively reminding us that our shared experience of present time is one that is asynchronous, historied, and complex.
Purchase Different Rooms here.
Different Rooms
Album Release Performances
Monday, July 14th - Zebulon - Los Angeles, CA - tickets
Thursday, July 24th - Lincoln Center - New York, NY - tickets
Sunday, July 27th - Solar Myth - Philadelphia, PA - tickets
Saturday, November 22nd - Barbican Centre (w/ Tortoise) - London, UK - tickets
+ more TBA
Deluxe Vinyl Package
Different Rooms features album cover art by Sam Prekop, and comes on a 140g LP in a heavyweight reverse-board jacket, with IARC 2025 obi strip & poly-lined inner sleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, with lacquers cut by Daniel K @ SST.
Available on Limited Edition *Battiato Brick* Color vinyl for $29 USD.
Also available on Classic Black vinyl for $24 USD.
