BEN RICHTER: Mymerian
SEDCD074 | Released in 2026 | 200 copies | $15
Mymerian1 download
Three Fields download
Vaalbara download
Sixty-one + minutes of deep and powerful drone compositions recorded live at Epsilon Spires Church performed on organ, accordion, contrabass and cello by Richter, Mike Bullock and Laura Cetilia. Rich and meditative, arcing past, present and future.
Sedimental’s first release for 2026 is a monumental document from avant-garde composer Ben Richter (bio and discography below). It has been a pleasure to get to know Richter personally over the past five years as we live in close proximity to one another as well as explore and witness his compositional and performative prowess both in a solo setting as well as with his Ghost Ensemble. A Sedimental release was inevitable, and we can’t be more excited for it to be another document recorded at Epsilon Spires (re: Kassel Jaeger’s-ARITHW, SEDLP072, 2024) as these three pieces are attentively performed in the venue’s remarkably resonant Sanctuary space chosen specifically for its acoustics and the 1906 Estey pipe organ within.
“This music was made possible through the kind invitation of Executive Director Jamie Mohr to a winter residency at Epsilon Spires, a non-profit performance center housed in a historic former church in Brattleboro, Vermont, with the opportunity to compose a set of works for their 1906 three-manual Estey pipe organ. Due to the frigid temperatures, the organ was sounding almost 60 cents flat from A=440Hz. In combination with Laura Cetilia and Mike Bullock’s intonationally flexible A=440 low string instruments and my A=444 quarter-tone accordion, this created a unique pitch landscape and dark atmosphere from which emerged three meditations on the ripples, pulsations, and slow transformations of memory.”-Ben Richter
Mymerian (Green) — 29:45
–20, –33, –59 Personal — metamorphic memory. yester, peaks island, bear lake, harghita
Three Fields (Blue) — 20:11
–6,100, –53,000 Ancestral — sedimental memory. yore, cucuteni, shanidar, riverine
Vaalbara (Red) — 11:21
–3,000,000,000 Geologic — igneous memory. primordia, archaea, volcanean
compositions by Ben Richter
performed by Ben Richter, organ and quarter-tone accordion
Laura Cetilia, cello
Mike Bullock, contrabass
recorded live in concert March 22, 2025 at Epsilon Spires Brattleboro, Vermont
produced by Rob Forman
engineered and mixed by Ben Richter / mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi
design by Mike Bullock
Ben Richter is a composer, accordionist, and founding director of Ghost Ensemble. Inspired by nonhuman consciousness and Deep Listening, Ben’s music orients toward interacting gradual processes that cross acoustic thresholds to auralize the vast and infinitesimal timescales of geologic and ecological systems. Ben’s recent commissions include experimental chamber works for Diapason Brass, Loadbang, House On Fire, Jack Dettling, Jeonghyeon Joo, and Margaret Lancaster, as well as music/sound in intermedia collaborations with Lei Han, Goldie Poblador, M Dougherty, and UMass-Amherst’s Futuring Lab and Y3K exhibitions. As an accordionist, Ben explores intonation and airflow preparations that extend the instrument’s microtonal and timbral capacities in original works such as the double album Aurogeny (2023), “an epic symphony of accordion mastery” (Noel Gardner, Buzz), “consistently fascinating … pulsating, scintillating music … with momentous results” (Julian Cowley, The Wire), and Panthalassa: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean (2017), “likely to offer a profound impact on the very nature of listening” (Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio). Ben’s compositions for Ghost Ensemble include Rewild (2022), “gorgeous ... arresting ... lingering, unspooling and evading time ... suggesting an eternal process” (Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily), and Wind People (2016), “a multifaceted texture that evokes the primeval” (Meg Wilhoite, Meg's New Music Blog), and “cloudy, mysterious, and dark ... Beckettian in its slow spread” (Brian Olewnick, Just Outside).
Ben Richter/Ghost Ensemble Discography (selected)
2025 Dissolution Seedlings Ben Richter & House on Fire, Sawyer Editions (Composer)
2025 interius/exterius Ghost Ensemble & Catherine Lamb, greyfade (Performer, Producer)
2025 Blue Fifty-Four Ben Richter, Blue Tapes (Composer, Performer, Producer)
2024 Rewild Ghost Ensemble & Ben Richter, New World Records (Composer, Performer, Producer)
2023 Aurogeny Ben Richter, Infrequent Seams (Composer, Performer, Producer)
2021 Mountain Air Ghost Ensemble, Indexical (Performer, Producer)
2018 We Who Walk Again Ghost Ensemble, Indexical (Composer, Performer, Producer)
2017 Panthalassa: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean Ben Richter, Infrequent Seams (Comp., Perf., Prod.)
2016 Herxheimer Doinas Ben Richter, self-released (Composer, Performer, Producer)
2016 Clepsydra Ciphers Ben Richter, self-released (Composer, Performer, Producer)
2015 Ghost Ensemble and Lightbulb Ensemble Ghost Ensemble, Indexical (Composer, Performer, Producer)
As a daughter of mixed heritage, Mexican-American musician, Laura Cetilia is at home with in-betweenness, straddling multiple worlds as cellist / composer / educator / artist while working within acoustic / electronic / traditional / experimental sound practices. Her compositions have been described as “unorthodox loveliness” (Boston Globe) and hailed as “alternately penetrating and atmospheric” (Sequenza 21). Laura is winner of the Artzenter Emerging composer award and the General Operating Support Grant from the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts. Her recent album “gorgeous nothings” was listed by Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and Alex Ross (New Yorker) as one of the best releases of 2025. Her works have been performed by San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, TAK Ensemble, Loadbang, Mivos Quartet, Splinter Reeds, a.pe.ri.od.ic, LCollective, Taceti Ensemble among others. After receiving her D.M.A. in Music Composition in 2024 from Cornell, Laura became certified as a Deep Listening® Practitioner from the Center for Deep Listening and returned to teaching cello and experimental music practices at Community MusicWorks, an organization that provides free instruments and lessons in underserved areas of Providence, RI. She plays with Mem1 (established in 2003 with M. Cetilia, modular synth), Ordinary Affects, LCollective, and the all-female groups MOONS, n/ether, and noeplace.
Mike Bullock is a composer, improviser, and environmental sound recordist based in Western Massachusetts, USA. He creates electroacoustic sound work with field listening, contrabass, synthesis, and spatial audio systems. Bullock has presented projects at Harvestworks, ISSUE Project Room, Experimental Intermedia, the Park Avenue Armory, Fylkingen (Stockholm), Instants Chavirés (Paris), Café OTO (London), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Waterworks Museum, the Goethe-Institut (Boston), and EMPAC (Troy, NY). His recent projects include Ephemerospheres, a series investigating hidden, temporary acoustic ecologies.