*200 copies limited edition* Pentiments presents Became These, a double vinyl LP of long-unheard work by Lou Mallozzi, issued October 2025 in conjunction with a record release event at Constellation Chicago. The album draws together nearly a quarter-century of sonic experimentation, assembling pieces recorded between 1996 and 2020—each reflecting Mallozzi’s signature method of poetic deconstruction, where the ordinary becomes estranged and language is rendered unstable through a dialogue of gesture, sound, and collaborative interplay.
Across these tracks, Mallozzi invokes turntables, CD fragments, microphone manipulations, and live electronics to challenge the boundaries of performance and mediation. His approach is neither strictly musical nor spoken, but a liminal practice rooted in spatial intervention and the transformation of culturally familiar artifacts. The album’s release event features new duo and trio improvisations—with Bonnie Han Jones (electronics), Michael Zerang (percussion), and Hal Rammel (sound pallets)—further illuminating Mallozzi’s ongoing engagement with collective sound making and the intersections of sonic art, performance, and conceptual tradition. As one participant in Chicago’s experimental scene, he continues to foster collaboration and innovation, drawing from histories of art installation, radio, and live intervention that define his multidisciplinary approach.
Mallozzi’s works have appeared in renowned spaces across the US and Europe, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and TUBE Audio Art Series in Munich. His role as a foundational artist in Chicago influences the city’s wider experimental sound community, and his impact persists not only in recordings but in workshops, residencies, and collaborations that bridge music, theater, and visual culture. On Became These, this cosmopolitan legacy is distilled into fixed media: archival, yet immediate, inviting close listening into the ambiguous space between public event and private resonance. Through layers of textural disruption and iterative gesture, Became These offers a complex, sometimes playful investigation of the ways in which sound can unmake and remake meaning. The result is an experience that balances intellectual gravity with sonic curiosity—an invitation to inhabit uncertainty and encounter anew the overlapping boundaries of listening, memory, and artistic intent.
