Los Angeles serves as home base for Byron Westbrook, a multi-media performer whose practice fuses avant-garde electronic music with sound sculpture and installation formats. In addition to staging immersive live sets, he has issued recordings such as Corridors in 2010, Precipice in 2015, and Translucents in 2024.
During the 2000s he surfaced within New York’s experimental art circles, acquiring foundational experience through his role assisting filmmaker and composer Phill Niblock at the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. He later completed an MFA at Bard College under the guidance of sonic and visual artists Laetitia Sonami, Marcus Schmickler, and Matana Roberts. His first solo outing arrived with Corridors in 2010, presenting the sonic element of three pieces originally staged live alongside visuals at multiple New York City venues.
Precipice followed in 2015, emphasizing atmospheric and densely layered textures. Body Consonance, released in 2017, shifted toward a more propulsive approach that highlighted his command of electronics, guitars, and tape manipulation. Subsequent projects of comparable scope included Confluence Patterns in 2018 and Distortion Hue in 2021. Mirror Views appeared the same year, merging field recordings with synthesizers and originating as a component of a 2017 audio-and-light installation; Westbrook’s move to Los Angeles took place around this time. In 2024 he unveiled Translucents, a continuous 41-minute piece whose textural character draws on the qualities of holographic sound and memory.
