The debut album Charter by Municipal Sentiment is the product of a year and a half of process-heavy sound design rooted in Supercollider coding, algorithmic unpredictability, and a visual art concept turned sonic framework.
Rather than a traditional narrative or lyric-driven release, the album presents a loosely structured audio space—at once abrasive and intentional—that builds from raw code into something resembling a record.
We’re presenting the new video for “Forced Air,” a stop-motion animation created in-gallery at the Buffalo Arts Studio as part of the 2022 exhibition Big Trash Day. The installation featured large-scale sculptural work and custom-printed ASCII art road signs. The video pairs with the track “Forced Air” from Charter, continuing the project’s dialogue between decayed physical space and algorithmic audio.
As Kyle Butler explains, Municipal Sentiment uses “algorithmic synthesis to create oblique audio textures that are then modified and built upon,” mixing Supercollider programming, performed synthesis, and archived sonic fragments.
Municipal Sentiment is a name tied less to a band and more to a mindset. The artist behind the project describes the term as a way of identifying “fallow space that seems to have intention or sentience”—as if a municipal presence were behind the distribution of decay, wear, and discarded sound. Originating in a visual art practice, the phrase becomes a thematic foundation for the music, which leans into the chaotic and coded.
Each track starts with algorithmic patches written in Supercollider, a language for real-time audio synthesis. The artist explains: “The code is algorithmic; like a convoluted math equation built around fundamental sound components and modifiers.” These patches—sometimes branching into families of variations—are recorded if they hold enough potential. The source material tends to skew “more textural and noisey than musical,” which is then sifted, edited, and expanded using additional programmed elements, synths, keys, and occasional samples. The final product is intentionally difficult, shaped more by process than by predefined form.
Influences include experimental electronic pioneers like Oval, Autechre, and Jasmine Guffond, but the artist also points to a local community as a source of motivation. “There is also a small, devoted, and really inspirational community of experimental artists in Buffalo (where I live) that get me enthused about pursuing similar work myself.”
The Charter album isn’t a one-off. The project is meant to continue. New patches are already being coded for future work, with the aim of making Municipal Sentiment a regular outlet for this mode of algorithmic composition.
