Visible Sound release experimental sound project ‘Nikola Tesla’s Mattergy’ via Soleilmoon
Visible Sound release experimental sound project 'Nikola Tesla’s Mattergy' via Soleilmoon
Experimental audio collective Visible Sound will release the album “Nikola Tesla’s Mattergy” tomorrow July 25 via Soleilmoon. The digiCD combines archival and newly processed audio based on historical experiments involving Tesla coils, synthesizers, and resonant electric circuits.
The production features sounds originally captured in 1990 by CM von Hausswolff during a visit to Dale Travous’ CCD2 Laboratory in Seattle. Travous had constructed a functioning Tesla coil and demonstrated it during von Hausswolff’s US tour with Phauss and The Hafler Trio. Recordings of that demonstration were first integrated into Phauss’ 1991 material and reissued in 2022.
The meeting also sparked a separate collaborative effort – featuring von Hausswolff, The Hafler Trio, and Annie Sprinkle – using Tesla coils to support a NATO withdrawal protest in Iceland. That project employed high-voltage devices, including laser modulators and Hewlett Packard function generators, to produce and manipulate sonic output.
And now we enter some foggy history because none of what follows could be verified with other sources.
The second section of the album, “Visible Sound: The Mexico Tapes”, draws – so the band claims – on long-lost recordings from 1973. These were created by Mexico City’s Federal Electrical Commission for a never-aired Canal 4 television show about Nikola Tesla’s sound experiments using turbines and wireless circuits. Although the show was pulled over viewership concerns, the underlying audio – captured with early synthesizers and custom circuits – was preserved on magnetic tape by a former Commission employee. In 2024, these tapes were recovered by Telekinett and further processed by Mauricio Reyes and von Hausswolff to create the tracks now featured on “Nikola Tesla’s Mattergy”.
Below are two album tracks, “Potential Frequency” and its twin track “Frequential Potency“.
About Visible Sound
Visible Sound is an experimental sound project with roots in historical sound research, circuit manipulation, and conceptual art installations.
Formed through collaborations between CM von Hausswolff, Mauricio Reyes, and archival recovery groups like Telekinett, the group focuses on audio rooted in technological history and sonic experimentation.
The name “Visible Sound” also references a 1973 Mexican media initiative focused on the acoustic properties of Tesla technology.
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