Orca Life has been played on NTS shows including Shamos , with Future World first played on 17 February 2016.

There’s something inherently artificial to be found within the cables and veins of electronic music. Whether it’s the wired, circuitous pathways or programmed effects, these sounds are often misconstrued as either being too clinical or prone to harmonic sterility. But as Orca Life, electronic synthesist and Wise, VA native Chris Roberts creates music that thumps and swells in measured movements, with a beating, experimental heart pumping electronic pulses through a host of twisting synapses.

Employing a host of synthetic resources, Roberts carefully constructs, and subsequently deconstructs, a spread of minimalist drones and static-drenched melodies, while subtle streaks of rhythmic interchange occur at irregular intervals. This seemingly spontaneous exploration of tone and form places his work alongside such artists as Tim Hecker and William Basinski—artists whose work seems to inhabit some formless region of electronic space which few musicians are able to successfully approach and fewer still can shape for their own purposes.

Having released his latest album,” Modern Living,” in 2013 via tape haven Chill Mega Chill Records, Roberts has continued to refine and develop his own circuit-based aesthetic. But rather than let the ambient sounds and textures of his previous work simply repeat themselves, he has incorporated a far more dynamic percussive backbone on “Modern Living” than on any prior album.

Further cementing his position as an innovator in electronic experimentalism, Roberts curates his own cassette imprint, Otherworldly Mystics, which has released albums from such artists as THEMAYS, Infinite Third and Teeel—among a handful of others. Specializing in the corrugated manipulation of analog and digital sounds, these artists, as well as Roberts himself, adhere to no set rhythmic guidelines and approach music as something malleable and inclusive.

This sense of inventive construction has marked his work since he began recording music as Orca Life back in 2003 and has continued to evolve and expand as Roberts’ sonic palette has widened out and incorporated numerous spheres of influence. And while electronic music may by default appear more anesthetized and sterile than other forms of music, Roberts has managed to instill a sense of natural progression and untouched creativity into his wide-eyed circuital landscapes. And as he continues to explore this relatively untouched negative space, his subtle deconstruction of the genre only furthers the boundaries of what electronic music can and should be. - Joshua Pickard

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