Imagined drone ecologies: Listening to Vibracathedral Orchestra

In this short piece, I describe a performance by Vibracathedral Orchestra in which the musicians collectively create an atmosphere of gradually coalescing and dissolving plateaus of droning sound. That this collective sound-making (and listening) can offer an aesthetic conducive to contemplating environment and aesthetics I demonstrate as well as describe in reporting my responses to the performance, drifting from description into a more imaginative realm of speculation on urban space, plants, concrete, time, memory, and the productive flowering ruin of cities and bodies. Returning with the end of the performance to more conventional description, the short review performatively enacts the potential for drone music to evoke, challenge, and explore an imaginative aesthetics of environmental sound.