CHUCK ROTH

found inspiration in subtractive properties and patterning. The music of watergh0st songs translates that electronic music to the guitar: many of the songs began as synth tones and later branched out through the physicality of his instrument. When writing music, Roth wants melodies to feel comfortable in the body, focused less on setting a structure and more on letting music unfold how it happens in any given moment. His songs are fluid and his melodies are clear, plucked with careful attention but never too deterministically. His is the music of a traveler, floating around the strings of the guitar. It is about embracing the banal, or the everyday moments that shape a life.

Though Roth’s music often feels quite direct, there is a dreaminess that lives inside of it. His lyrics don’t feel too hot or cold, instead they have a wistfulness and melancholy of what it feels like to live through every passing day. His exploratory style bolsters these lyrics, giving the music its sense of ennui, as does his focus on texture.

TONY WAGNER

Westbahnstudios AiR Showcase VII

Developed during Westbahnstudio’s AIR residency in January 2025, the composition Clusterfist for solo violin expresses a profound meditation on the phenomenology of grief and its somatic echoes. The work demonstrates the violin’s capacity for complex, non-linear storytelling by employing a lexicon of extended techniques and non-standard tuning to focus on an embodied expression, grown from the slow clarity of a frozen, transitional season. Its methodology is one of accumulation and pressure, building breath through stacked tone clusters to moments where sound is nearly choked into silence before being released into passages of urgency or calm. This core structural principle of tension and release serves to articulate a complex contemplation on the fragile mechanics of being.

Tony Wagner (he/they) is a musician and artist working at the intersection of avant-garde composition, experimental sound and trans-disciplinary performance. His practice encompasses solo compositions under the monikers Tony Renaissance and Bogland, collaborative projects with the duo Snake Boots and the collective Transformative Narratives, as well as original scores for film, theater, and performance. Wagner’s compositions have been presented across various performance, theater, and experimental music contexts. Beyond their artistic practice, they contribute to Vienna’s music scene as co-manager of the music platform Tender Matter.

MORNING SEANCE Release-Show “Eternal life makes your past grow too big”

The electronic music of Morning Seance is built on constant variation and intricate, looping patterns with no clear beginning or end. This variation is not simply applied to an audio element, but enacted as a compositional logic — avoiding mechanical combinations and obvious rhythms. The result is a mutable mass of audio matter and tonal debris, guiding the listener through richly divergent environments.