Theodore Cale Schafer - Our Blood for .S (2023)

Expanding from Theodore Cale Schafer’s introverted and veiled personal composition style, ˋOur Blood For .Sˊ sees the musician writing for a trans-american ensemble spanning Chicago, Northern Colorado, Texas, and New York City. Schafer has directed and sourced recordings from instrumentalists Tommy Paslaski (cello), mari rubio (violin), and Matthew Sage (clarinet), carefully grafting discrete parts into his own unique fidelity. Across these four works, the musicians’ arterial acoustic performances circulate around Schafer’s emotional core—enchanted by his ability to distill poetic introspection out of dry audio. A careful balance between file-sharing and Schafer’s diaristic approach allow the works to scale into both miniature and empyrean vistas—big skies and small rooms—a moving music where an audio file shot across the plains finds celestial orbit.

Schafer’s music often confronts the tropes of ambient, drone, field recording, and now chamber music to arrive at a kind of “concrete” aesthetic. “Our Blood for .S” is a clear step into a more formal approach for Schafer, hybridizing his penchant for documentation and “minor music” with a clear ear for writing for ensembles. Noble and “chapbook-like” in its immediacy, the longform works on “Our Blood for .S” establish an emotional crossfade between his digital and acoustic orientations—the merchant room in Resident Evil and the court chambers of classical and Gagaku ensembles—the dividing lines that music flows between … “Our Blood.”

Theodore Cale Schafer (b. 1994) is a musician based in New York City. Informed by his occupation as an audio engineer, his work combines digitally sourced audio, manipulated self-recordings, and parts written for musicians to create music that is equally influenced by Playstation OSTs, modern classical composition, confessional narrative, and spoken word. Recently, he has collaborated with Natalia Panzer, Angelo Harmsworth, Claire Rousay, Sydney Spann, and picnic, participated in the Neo-Pastiche: Changes in American Music Festival at the Black Mountain College Museum, and curated the “Casualism” mix series with Retreat Radio in Malmö, Sweden.