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Charmaine Lee
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Audience Advisory: the opening performance by x/o includes loud sounds, haze, and strobe lights
Vocalist and improviser Charmaine Lee brings her singular approach to voice and live electronics, crafting intricate, spontaneous sonic environments. Known for a performance style that emphasizes improvisation, close listening, and the exploration of the human voice as a highly flexible sonic instrument, Lee’s work investigates texture, timbre, breath, resonance, and extended vocal techniques. Lee’s performances are typically created in the moment, responding to the acoustics of the space, collaborators, and the evolving musical environment. She employs whispers, multiphonics, glottal sounds, breath, vocal fry, overtone-like effects, and additional vocal methods that blur the boundaries between speech, singing, and abstract sound. With live electronic processing, Lee’s voice interacts dynamically with delays, feedback, looping, and other electronic manipulations.
Interdisciplinary artist x/o works with the Vietnamese one-stringed instrument đàn bầu, electronics, field recordings, and samples through original compositions and structured improvisation. Drawing from ambient, industrial, metal, and noise, the work combines live processing, synthesis, distortion, and feedback with the sound of the instrument.
Following earlier work centred on experimental electronic music, x/o’s recent projects have incorporated the đàn bầu as an expanding area of interest. Developed alongside an ongoing study of the instrument, the work draws on its performance practice while extending its sonic vocabulary through electronics and improvisation.
Charmaine Lee is a New York-based vocalist and electronics artist whose music explores the extremes of presence, intimacy, and noise. Known for her fierce improvisational approach and use of extended vocal techniques, she has collaborated with artists including Ikue Mori, Conrad Tao, and the JACK Quartet. Her solo sets use feedback, vocal fragments, and real-time processing to create live compositions that are as fragile as they are ferocious.
Together with Randall Dunn, Lee also runs a record label, Kou Records, dedicated to artists who have built singular music languages.
Veron Xio, also known as x/o (they/them), is a Vietnamese-Canadian electronic music producer, and interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver.
x/o’s discography spans solo releases and collaborations, including the full-length album Chaos Butterfly (Precious Metals, 2022); an epic narrative of catharsis and self-actualization, praised for its genre-warping blend of nu-metal, trip-hop, and experimental club production. Their debut EP cocoon egg (Quantum Natives, 2017), was described by The Wire as having “a complex, compelling affect hardly heard in digital music.” In 2023, they produced instrumentals for Sot Wa Sada by Egyptian-Canadian artist Almaazz, which was featured on Resident Advisor, named Bandcamp’s Album of the Day, and aired on BBC Radio 3 and 6 Music.
x/o has presented work internationally, most notably at Phoenix Central Park (Sydney), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Berghain (Berlin), House of Electronic Arts (Basel), MUTEK Montreal, 3HD Festival, Listen Festival(Brussels), and VIVID Sydney. x/o has been mentioned in various publications including The Wire, Billboard, Resident Advisor, and Bandcamp Daily.
x/o occasionally performs with the Đàn bầu, a Vietnamese one-stringed zither, using experimental techniques, and currently studies under a renowned Vietnamese instrumentalist to develop their technical foundation.
x/o has worked with artists including Animistic Beliefs, City and i.o, Dasychira, Estoc, Malibu, Meuko! Meuko!, Mobilegirl, Rui Ho, Sin Maldita, Toxe, Team Rockit, Yikii, and ZAH through various remixes and collaborations.
They have participated in several residencies, including the MUTEK Amplify program at Somerset House Studios (UK), Red Bull Bass Camp Calgary, and A. Farm Studios in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In 2026, they will perform the next iteration of hyaline and release an album under the same name through experimental label, Precious Metals.
As a composer and sound designer, Veron has scored various short films. In 2025, they scored Ripe directed by Solara Thanh-Bình Đặng, which premiered at TIFF50. The film received numerous awards including TIFF Canada’s Top Ten Short Films, Special Mention Festival du Nouveau Cinema, and Special Mention at VIFF Short Forum Award. Their composition and sound design work on motherland 母懷之地 (dir. Alger Ji-Liang) received the Artistic Committee Award at the Festival of Recorded Movement. They also served as music director for To Make Ends Meat (dir. Kimberly Ho), winner of the 2021 VAFF People’s Choice Award for Best Short Film, and composed original music for Jas Lin’s dance work Chrysanthemum River, presented at MOCA Los Angeles.
