Robert Crouch is an artist and curator whose work encompasses sound, performance, and technology. As an artist, he locates his work with the intersection of phenomenological listening practices, conceptual sound art, and contemporary electronic music. At its core, his work can be understood as a conversation between tonality, context, history, and subjectivities. Similarly, Crouch's curatorial work focuses on the overlapping disciplines of sound, technology, movement, and performance.
2011 saw the debut of his first solo release, An Occupied Space, on Dragon's Eye Recordings, which was followed by Organs in 2015 (also Dragon's Eye). Both were well received by audiences and press, with Igloo Magazine proclaiming Organs "Vital!," and Textura describing it as "a wave of industrial churn, its individual components (organ among them) merging into one another and bobbing to the surface as the droning thrum insistently rolls along." In 2016, the venerable minimalist imprint Line released Crouch's third solo release, A Gradual Accumulation of Ideas Becomes Truth, which Brainwashed enthusiastically described as "a sound that is ominous, but never off-putting. . . . The depth and mood conveyed in each of these pieces results in a theme, or almost a field recording, for a space that may have never existed."
"These pieces announce their physical presence and hold their ground with a subtle plasticity to their sonic architecture. There is a detached, amnotic fluidity evident in Crouch's work which is also found in much of the Pop Ambient compilations over the years. Luminous sound pooling abounds."--Aquarius Records
Crouch is the founding partner of VOLUME, a curatorial project that functions as a catalyst for interdisciplinary new media work through exhibitions, performances, events, lectures, and publications, and has worked with a wide range of artists including William Basinski, Nate Boyce, Frank Bretschneider, Richard Chartier, Cassils, Celer, Loren Chasse, William Fowler Collins, Tim Hecker, Isis, France Jobin, Lucky Dragons, Mamiffer, Carsten Nicolai, Yann Novak, taisha paggett, Steve Roden, Terre Thaemlitz, Julie Tolentino, and Christopher Willits.
As of 2017, Crouch is the Executive and Artistic Director for Pasadena Arts Council and the Artistic Director for the AxS Festival. In 2014 he organized the North American premiere of Sphæræ, a large-scale inflatable performance space and public artwork by Dutch artist Cocky Eek.
Crouch is the former Associate Director/Curator at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), where he curated solo exhibitions with artists Karen Lofgren, Gina Osterloh, Steve Roden, Sean Sullivan, and Margo Victor, and performances with artists including William Basinski, Celer, Lawrence English, Dominick Fernow, and Yann Marussich.
Robert Crouch is published by Touch Music.
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Robert Crouch is an artist and curator whose work encompasses sound, performance, and technology. As an artist, he locates his work with the intersection of post-phenomenological listening practices, conceptual sound art, and contemporary electronic music. At its core, his work can be understood as a conversation between tonality, context, history, and subjectivities. Similarly, Crouch's curatorial work focuses on the overlapping disciplines of sound, technology, movement, and performance. Sublunar continues Crouch's inquiry into the complex relationships between sound, context, and meaning, first proposed in his 2016 release, A Gradual Accumulation Of Ideas Becomes Truth. The four tracks which comprise Sublunar were composed using field recordings from and audio files originally created for mas gestos y mas caras, a collaborative performance with artists Rafa Esparza and Yann Novak. mas gestos y mas caras was a durational performance incorporating sound, breathing, and a series of repetitive actions and gestures, choreographed within an architectural installation of adobe bricks fabricated and designed by Esparza. Sonically, Sublunar is a radical departure from the originating performance, yet these tracks remain tethered, literally and aesthetically, to the processes and context of their construction: Esparza's labored breathing, cautious footsteps, a soft cascade of water, dust, soil. The title itself, Sublunar, reinforces an attachment to the Earth and the physical world, and intentionally resists metaphysical interpretation or decontextualization. It is precisely through this tethering that Crouch seeks to open up a diversity of possible approaches to the work, rather than confine our reading to a primarily or exclusively musical text. The first track, "Descension", opens with sounds of breathing, muted movements, and environmental noises, and serves as an acknowledgement of our collective understanding of sound, of these specific sounds, as physical phenomenon. By extension the listener is allowed to consider this particular organization of sound itself as a kind of sculpture, architecture, and choreography. The body becomes the primary oscillator and architect, delineating boundaries and defining the work as a space within which the listener might inhabit. Presented live in Los Angeles. Source material originally developed as part of mas gestos y mas caras, a collaborative performance with Rafa Esparza and Yann Novak, presented at the Hammer Museum on July 8, 2016.
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