Avaeken

Stephen O’Malley releases Avaeken through Dais Records: two sides of immense, immersive, self-annihilating music. First installed as part of Wish You Were Here, Banks Violette’s 2026 exhibition at Antwerp’s TICK TACK, it holds a powerful tension between presence and absence, life and loss.

Over two decades, O’Malley and Violette have shaped a distinct language of sound, space, and sculpture, heard and seen at The Guggenheim, Centre Pompidou, Maureen Paley, Gladstone Gallery, and TICK TACK. On LP, low-frequency vibrations, deep oscillations, and phase cancellations carry that same force into any listening space.

The piece began in 2020 as a commission from Belgium’s ZWERM electric guitar quartet. Named after the ancient oak on Sweden’s Fårö, Avaeken was written for four standard electric guitars, using ebows and slides to sustain microtonal harmony, then recorded with O’Malley at Muziekcentrum De Bijloke in Ghent.