Mimi Goese and Ben Neill – a History of Collaboration
Dream pop vocalist Mimi Goese and electronic trumpeter Ben Neill collaborated from 2006-2021, creating elegant, eerie electronica that blends sensual lyricism and technology. Their first album, Songs for Persephone, was released on Ramseur Records in 2011. The music had been featured in their multimedia theater performance of Persephone at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival a year earlier. The music was based on samples of 19th century classical pieces, and summoned the sounds of Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, M83 and Sigur Ros.
In 2020 the duo released their second album Life You Are. The songs find poetry in mathematics, combining Goese’s captivating vocals and the electro-acoustic explorations of Neill’s self-designed Mutantrumpet with sounds created from fractals and environmental data. Percussionist David Van Tieghem (Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno) joined the duo on the recording, while the fractal sounds were designed by chaos mathematician and philosopher Ralph Abraham.
Goese co-led Hugo Largo, a coveted New York art-rock band that helped shape the horizon of dream pop on two albums for Brian Eno’s Opal label. She later collaborated with Moby. Neill, meanwhile, is an instrumental tinkerer who has explored the fertile intersection of jazz, electronic, and modern classical music. He worked with electronic instrument pioneer Robert Moog and the STEIM studios in Amsterdam to create the Mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument that allows the player to switch between multiple bells, create digital soundscapes, and control interactive video.