*** No Signal ***

Featured Work

Older articles are also available.

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  True Colors EP

  2025-05-03

  I met Randall met via Chicago DJ Jeff Moyer's twitch.tv stream and we decided to collaborate on an EP. We worked together remotely and asynchronously blending my more experimental approach with Randall's happy synthpop roots. A mix of synthesizers, guitars and deep layers of sonic texture.

  The title track features samples from the speech that Lana Wachowski gave when she was awarded the HRC Visibility Award in 2013. That speech saved my life.

  Get your copy of "True Colors" on Bandcamp.

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  'Source' Reviewed on Other People's Music

  2025-10-10

  "Source (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)" was featured in this week's Other People's Music, "Synths and Sensibilities" by Fediverse music maven Ether Diver.

  The review describes the album as "an absolute smorgasbord of synthesized texture, timbre and tone". You can read the whole review here, and be sure to check out the other indie music featured in the issue!

  "Source" is available to stream for free at bandwagon.fm.

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  Source

  2025-09-23

  My latest album, "Source (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)", is now available! Inspired by the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus and the wisdom of Rick Rubin, "Source" is the soundtrack to a fateful journey through a dream-like Underworld in search of a doomed love.

  The 8 tracks on this album represent a departure from the post-punk sensibilities of my earlier work. Using a wide variety of vintage, analog, and modular synthesizers, "Source" is as much an exploration of the Underworld as it is a recontextualization of vintage sounds in a non-nostalgic, contemporary context.

  "Source" is available on Bandcamp, or free and federated on bandwagon.fm. You can also hear it as part of the regular rotation over at the Indiebeat fedi radio station.

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  I've Been Deleting Your Texts

  2025-08-15

  I came across an unfinished poem from 2017 and decided to put it to music. Features a spoken word performance over analog and digital synths.

  Listen to "I've Been Deleting Your Texts" by Coraline Ada Ehmke on Soundcloud, and please call me back, okay?.

Disquiets

Highlights from the weekly Disquiet Junto prompts. The full archive is here.

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  Back on the Rack

  2025-11-21

  Based on the true story of how I got my first synth, which was a Roland Juno, and my first gig, which was an epic disaster.

  This week's Disquiet Junto prompt asked us to imagine the sonic equivalent of "rack focus", a film camera technique in which focus shifts between the foreground and background of a long single shot. For example, there might be a close shot of our brave heroine with the indistinct blob of a highrise behind her, but then her face blurs and the background comes into focus, and we see a dark figure looking down at her from a high window across the street.

  Features the Moog Minitaur analog bass synthesizer, TR-08 drum machine, and the pièce de résistance, a Roland JU-06-- the tabletop boutique reissue of my selfsame old Juno synth!

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  Tea and Tempest

  2025-10-24

  Disquiet Junto 0721 invited us to provide musical accompaniment to a storm.

  This one made me think of my grandmother. She and I would sit in her glassed-in porch and drink tea while the storms of the Atlantic coastal summer raged outside, wind throwing sheets of rain against the windows, the sky purple with flashes of white, the thunder making the ground shake. She helped me understand the difference between awe and fear.

  Features vintage Korg M3R and a field recording I made of a Chicago storm back in July.

  Listen to "Tea and Tempest" by Coraline Ada Ehmke on Soundcloud.

Music Projects

• Sudre's Violin

  After wrapping up A Little Fire Scarecrow in early 2021, I started a new solo project, Sudre's Violin, to reconcile the guitar-centered approach of my pre-transition music ("Dust and a Shadow") with the synth-centered music of 2016-2020.

  You can listen to the first Sudre's Violin EP, "Five Lies Left", on Bandcamp, or stream it on Apple Music, Pandora, or Spotify.

  Following their 2022 debut is "The Nine Doors", a full-length album featuring 9 original songs. The wordless narrative of "The Nine Doors" unfolds through the dark instrumentation, hypnotic rhythms, broken synths, and haunted piano that is the signature sound of Sudre's Violin. The theme and feel of "The Nine Doors" is inspired by the modern literary classic "The Club Dumas" by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Listen or pick up "The Nine Doors" on Bandcamp.

  In 2024, Sudre's Violin released "Seven Souls", a journey through 7 sonic landscapes haunted by broken synths, throaty guitars, eerie pianos, and hypnotic rhythms. You can listen for free on Soundcloud or download the album on Bandcamp.

  The fourth and final release from Sudre's Violin, "Figure Six", was released on April 6th. Six new tracks explore new rhythmic territory while maintaining the dark, atmospheric, and literary mood that the project is known for. Get your copy of "Figure Six" on Bandcamp, or listen on bandwagon.fm.

• Auntie Kismet

  A collaboration with composer and experimental musician Craig Chin. We worked asynchronously, taking turns adding or removing layers to compose these pieces.

  The name is a reference to the band we were in together in the 90s, Uncle Karma. We had a manifesto. Like I said, it was the 90s.

  Listen to Auntie Kismet on Bandcamp.

• Shapes with Two Edges

  An unlikely collaboration with synth pop duo Eloquent,Shapes With Two Edges an experiment to see what happens when crisp, precise, crystalline digital meets messy, analog, and atmospheric. The name come from an obscure Euclidean degenerate.

  We've got plans for a 4-song LP, digital and vinyl. For now, you can preview our cover of Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors".

• A Little Fire Scarecrow

  A Little Fire Scarecrow was a recording project featuring percussion by Jeremy Greenand contributions from Kevin Chatham (bass), Frederick Wells (bass), and Alva Snædís (guitar and bass). It was my return to music after thinking I had lost my creative center. It was an important part of my journey, not only musical but also personal.

  4 years, 8 albums, 65 songs. Only 8 songs left standing. RIP 2016-2020

Bandcamp Friday

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  Coraline's music on bandcamp

  All my music is available free-or-pay-what-you-want on bandcamp:

  • Source (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
  • Sudre's Violin
  • A Little Fire Scarecrow
  • Auntie Kismet
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  Friends on bandcamp

  Some folks in my community I recommend checking out:

  • In Good Company
  • I Kong Kult
  • Errant Space
  • Savage Republic
  • Jenn Vix
  • Layer Cake