cloud collecting #23: Tangent Universes (Carolyn Zaldivar Snow)
on 2am live radio sets, hydrophones + being the unique kids you still are
I'm thrilled to have Baltimore-based writer and artist Carolyn Zaldivar Snow (Tangent Universes) share some updates and thoughts on her creative practices. We first connected over our shared experiences in creative parenthood and our mutual passion for what we do. This past June, I had the pleasure of featuring her music at the immersive women of ambient listening event I curated, hosted at Envelop SF. Be sure to check out her Substack on cassette culture at !
Carolyn (she/her) is a writer and artist based in Baltimore, exploring sound and collective memory. Her installations repurpose obsolete technology—such as telephones, cassette players, and typewriters—into new vessels for digital soundscapes. Working under the project name Tangent Universes, Carolyn creates immersive sound environments using modular synths, guitar drones, noise boxes, field recordings, and hydrophones. Her work reflects her Mid-Atlantic context and has been showcased at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, as well as at Philadelphia’s Passages and Velocities and DC’s Rhizome. Her pieces have been featured on labels such as Mystery Circles (Las Vegas, Nevada) and Hyle Tapes (Paris, France). Carolyn also performs with the experimental quadraphonic trio Wooder, alongside Aaron Igler and Eugene Lew.
In addition to her artistic practice, Carolyn contributes writing to Tape Op magazine, conducts artist interviews for experimental electronic label Mystery Circles, and manages a Substack dedicated to cassette culture. She co-organizes DC’s Sound Scene Audio Arts Festival and has taught at American University’s Expanded Media Studio and Rhizome’s Youth Electronic Workshop.
1. You recently released 'Clouds on the Ground' as part of the star-studded 'For LA Vol. 2' compilation, which is raising funds for the victims of the LA wildfires. I'd love to hear about the creative process behind this track and whether you have more music up ahead in this IDM-influenced style.
"For LA" has been thoughtfully pieced together by fellow ambient musician Hollie Kenniff in support of LA's "We Are Moving The Needle" and "GiveDirectly". I think sometimes I find it hard to talk about myself with terms like "star-studded" or engage in any marketing of anything. I will say what makes this compilation special is the inclusion of unreleased tracks and field recordings from Ryuichi Sakamoto's archive situated in places around LA. Hotel pianos. City sounds. It is a strange feeling to have a track anywhere near that level of mastery. For myself, I was invited to contribute because Hollie is pretty passionate about including other women in experimental and ambient at all levels. I did not have anything prepared, but over summer had played a 2 am one hour live-to-radio set for WXPN Philadelphia’s Star’s End which was engineered by Roycee Martin in the studio.
Star’s End has been broadcasting ambient and space music with Chuck Van Zyl at the helm as long as I have been alive— almost 45 years! So, I trimmed out a segment and thought I would use that live recording for something good. I remember driving up in a rain storm and explaining to my eight-year-old I have to be gone overnight to play music at a radio station and he has not quite figured out what mom does for work. The set was improvised— but with prepared sequences and field recordings with my eurorack synth and baritone guitar, which is used more as an expressive trigger for noise patches. I am releasing with Mystery Circles and Resonant Press in the next seasons and my work for Mystery Circles will be situated in IDM and Resonant Press will be long-form location based work. (A lot of my percussive elements come from chopping hydrophone recordings in my local river system.)
2. Can you share a bit about your relationship with field recordings and how it has evolved over the years. Also, what are a few favorite moments you've captured recently?
I come from a documentary film background— I had worked at a studio in Chicago called 137 Films where I was mentored by a special effects professor at Northwestern named Clayton Brown who was also a musician. I started really paying attention to sound design under his watch, even for something as steady as documentary film. Our regular composer for our science documentary releases is Kate Simko who would step out of her then DJ and house element and design these beautiful soundscapes for things like a scene featuring a particle accelerator or a contentious conversation on a cold fusion lab in Utah. Fast forward to the cicada invasion of the pandemic, I was out with a Zoom H5 trying to capture everything. I still use a minimal setup with the Zoom H5 because I am typically hiking alone and need my hands relatively free (no boom, no blimps) and work mostly in a rocky waterfall system with elevation changes. My field interest has become focused around hydrophone work— I play in a project called Wooder where we live process water at shows with different apparatuses and recordings (an example would be contact mic’ing a soup percolator, or recording a site specific fountain) and we play in a quadraphonic setup. Recently I hiked up to Cascade Falls in an ice storm with my partner Matt who was dragging me up a pretty treacherous slope to capture the different resonances from the frozen falls— and I forgot my SD card. All we have are memories and not the amazing things we heard that day. Sometimes I fight with myself between just wanting to organically listen and then my production brain that wants to capture and catalog everything.
3. How do you cloud collect (connect to childlike wonder) in your creativity?
I have always been a weird and curious kid. I am not sure if anyone remembers the Gilda Radner skit from SNL where she is dressed as a Brownie Scout, jumping up and down on her bed in her own world— but I believe in creating your own universe where you are in charge. Whatever that needs to look like. Block out the many voices in marketing, branding, stats, and go be the unique kids you still are. Take note when you like something— a song, an object, something visually, a moment in the woods. Ask yourself why. Keep notes. It’s easy to drown your own unique perspective out. I want to leave this interview with a really great nugget of wisdom— but instead I’ll simply say—stay weird.
Best online places to learn more about Carolyn are her website, Instagram + her interview via Mystery Circles.