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An interview about Asterism – a collaborative project between skewed beatmaker Daedelus, experimental drummer/producer Dan Drohan, and technological boundary-pushing label Holography Records. In this interview, Daedelus and Holography Records founder Brian Baumbusch discuss how Asterism will allow listeners to customize compositions in unprecedented ways, transcending the usual composer/listener dichotomy.
The resulting project will be released as an app in which the listener customizes the structure, sound, and mix of each song created by Daedelus and Drohan, with each listen being different, and each song using different interfaces and ideas to allow the listener to manipulate the audio.
About the project, Daedelus has said, “We keep doing the same things to enshittifying results, expecting the outcomes to exceed, being diminished on platforms we once built. Asterism, however, was born of enthusiasms. Dan Drohan and I share a deep love of IDM; actually all things that go skittery. Brian Baumbusch is a dreamer who has put forward a redirect towards mindful listening (even if gamified). These two seeming incongruities have collided here on the Holography label as an album of long-form immersive audio songs that you can speed run.
“Asterism is defined like an unnamed constellation; known pinpoints in the night sky unburdened from all astrology. Similarly this is an attempt at organizing ear’s attention outside of the platforms that have made flat listening the norm. The song’s composed with the play(er) in mind. Visuals produced with the same goal. Gimmick sure, but so was stereo before it opened a can of new storytelling possibilities. I am wild believer in a future glass full of music. Sound saved me on multiple occasions and want it to have the opportunity to do so for others. I profess at the Berklee College of Music and first hand see the light dimmed from students as they rush towards the exit; grasping the enormity of the task, their talent limitless in a liminal world. I’m here with Dan and Brian to offer something new and else.”
ABOUT HOLOGRAPHY
Holography is a new platform reshaping how recorded music is experienced. Rather than presenting a mix as a fixed two-channel image or a predetermined spatial field, Holography renders each composition as a navigable, three-dimensional sonic environment. Listeners are invited to step inside the recording, moving closer to particular instrumental voices, vocal timbres, or textural layers, discovering relationships in the music by literally changing their position within it. Just as the introduction of the home equalizer once transformed listening by granting listeners agency over frequency and presence, Holography extends that agency into dimensionality itself—reimagining the record as a space one can inhabit, not merely observe.
The project is led by artists rather than technologists: founded by composer Brian Baumbusch as a way to execute his creative vision for a specific composition, its development has been shaped in dialogue with producers, engineers, and musicians who understand how music breathes when attention is paid to detail. Rather than accelerating passivity, Holography responds to a listening culture long flattened by streaming platforms where songs are consumed but rarely encountered. In this environment, Holography reasserts recorded music as an art object—something to be approached with curiosity, patience, and personal involvement, akin to handling vinyl, studying liner notes, or sitting quietly with a full album from start to finish.
A highly curated catalog of works is set for release with the platform launch on April 14, 2026, spanning electronic, classical, jazz, experimental, world, and songwriter traditions. Holography has created works with Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Cantaloupe Records, Hyperion Records, and Other Minds, as well as collaborations with artists as diverse as Daedelus, the Grammy-winning Fisk Jubilee Singers, and Grammy nominees Sandbox Percussion, contemporary composer John Luther Adams, revered Balinese gamelan Nata Swara, and more.
Each release is treated not as a technical demonstration but as a distinct artistic environment—an architecture of sound designed to be explored. For critics and listeners accustomed to musical depth, to records that reveal themselves over time, Holography offers something rare in the contemporary listening landscape: the invitation to reenter music as a place of presence, attention, and discovery.
Quotes and promotional copy courtesy Gabriel Birnbaum, Clandestine Label Services
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