Exploring sound-based artistic expression on the Dancing Ground of the Sun, Santa Fe, New Mexico


 

New Release: Weightless - Alt Tracks & Revisions  5.1.2026

Track List

01.    Weightless (with drums)
02.    Halycon Counterpoint No. 1
03.    E-Girl
04.    We Watched Together (Alternate Take)
05.    Fade Away
06.    Sky Written

Weightless - Alt Tracks & Revisions

Black Sun High Desert

Six track EP compiled from the recording sessions for "The Weight of the Night Sky" featuring "Weightless (with drums)", Alt version of "We Watched Together" along with revisions and unused tracks. --------------------- Read more
Six track EP compiled from the recording sessions for "The Weight of the Night Sky" featuring "Weightless (with drums)", Alt version of "We Watched Together" along with revisions and unused tracks.

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The Weight of the Night Sky is an ambient electronic album built from drifting ambient textures, spectral harmonies, glitched tones, choral haze, orchestral shadow, and occasional pulses of rhythm.

Inspired by vast skies, weathered landscapes, and the quiet mystery of places older than memory, the works unfold with a sense of emotional gravity creating their own listening spaces to enter, linger within, and slowly decipher.

A recurring Rhodes-inspired sonic tone acts as the album’s emotional core, threading together its shifting environments with a sense of fragile luminosity. The result is a work that feels expansive yet intimate, cinematic yet weathered — music suspended between earthly ruin and celestial distance.

🎧 recommended.
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Weightless - FREE BANDCAMP DOWNLOAD CODES

To Redeem Visit: blacksunhighdesert.bandcamp.com/yum

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New Release: The Weight of the Night Sky  4.16.2026

Track List

01.    Without Memory
02.    Points of Gravity
03.    Shizukana kūkyo (Quiet Emptiness)
04.   Before The Stars Had Names
05.    The Night Accepts The Fire
06.   The Weight Of The Night Sky
07.    We Watched The Sky Together
08.    Without Memory (Revisited)

The Weight Of The Night Sky

Black Sun High Desert

The Weight of the Night Sky is an ambient electronic album built from drifting ambient textures, spectral harmonies, glitched tones, choral haze, orchestral shadow, and occasional pulses of rhythm. Inspired by vast skies, Read more
The Weight of the Night Sky is an ambient electronic album built from drifting ambient textures, spectral harmonies, glitched tones, choral haze, orchestral shadow, and occasional pulses of rhythm.

Inspired by vast skies, weathered landscapes, and the quiet mystery of places older than memory, the works unfold with a sense of emotional gravity creating their own listening spaces to enter, linger within, and slowly decipher.

A recurring Rhodes-inspired sonic tone acts as the album’s emotional core, threading together its shifting environments with a sense of fragile luminosity. The result is a work that feels expansive yet intimate, cinematic yet weathered — music suspended between earthly ruin and celestial distance.

🎧 recommended.

BandCamp FREE Download Codes


To Redeem Visit: blacksunhighdesert.bandcamp.com/yum

hpzn-wcqv
472v-hcy8
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Darker SLOWER on Bandcamp 9.5.2025

Track List

01. Darker, Slower
02. Inescapable Progress
03. Drift on Solace Strings
04. Of Shadows Against the Night
05. When The Raven Flies Too Close to the Moon
06. Electric Night:Where Dreams Depart
07. Noctambulism

Available on BandCamp

Darker Slower

Black Sun High Desert

Darker, Slower is a haunting ambient-glitch record. Disruptive minimalism, where time stretches, textures unravel, and silence takes on shape. Composed of interwoven guitar lines, decayed drones, and analog hiss, each Read more
Darker, Slower is a haunting ambient-glitch record. Disruptive minimalism, where time stretches, textures unravel, and silence takes on shape. Composed of interwoven guitar lines, decayed drones, and analog hiss, each track holds tension between stillness and entropy. The darkness doesn’t mean hopelessness; it’s about obscured emotions, sonic textures, and a meditative resonance. Made in solitude, intended for the same.

🎧 recommended.

Modulations & Revisions (Tilts & Rotations + Of Land & Sky)

Black Sun High Desert

"Modulations and Revisions" were made to tracks originally appearing on the Tilts & Rotations EP and the Of Land & Sky EP. In most cases, these versions suffer from tempo changes, alternate arrangements or Read more
"Modulations and Revisions" were made to tracks originally appearing on the Tilts & Rotations EP and the Of Land & Sky EP. In most cases, these versions suffer from tempo changes, alternate arrangements or wholesale swapping of instrumental voices. As a special bonus, Aequus Nox is an original work created in celebration of Piano Day 2024 (March 28, the 88th day of the year). In addition, my Piano Day 2023 work, aka Rhapsody for an Open Sky received a drastic makeover, slowing it down to 10 bpm and making edits to accommodate the change.
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The original version of tracks from Tilts & Rotations EP and Of Land & Sky EP are available on Not Yet Remembered Records. Linked here: https://notyetremembered.bandcamp.com/album/tilts-rotations-of-land-sky

Released on Not Yet Remembered Records

Tilts & Rotations / Of Land & Sky

Black Sun High Desert

// Two EPs on One Release Bandcamp Exclusive - Name Your Price for a Limited Time // Notes from the artist: Both EPs share a common tonal palette and compositional approach, employing a range of orchestral instruments, Read more
// Two EPs on One Release Bandcamp Exclusive - Name Your Price for a Limited Time //

Notes from the artist:
Both EPs share a common tonal palette and compositional approach, employing a range of orchestral instruments, choral arrangements, guitars, and electronic textures that provide a foundation for exploring a more ambitious scale of creative expression. Each EP reflects this sense of scale in a different way. Tilts and Rotations is focused on planetary movements and alignments along with the cultural weight of human observation and response. Of Land and Sky places the listener in the vast spaciousness of Southwest landscapes where the horizon is often an arbitrary division of the spatial experience.The common themes of scale, environment and the human instinct to negotiate meaning and purpose both organizes and unifies these sonic works.

Enjoy with headphones or some good stereo speakers!

Passion Variations: Inspired by Peter Gabriel's music for the film, The Last Temptation of Christ

Black Sun High Desert

There are moments in life when the random stream of events, experiences, thoughts and feelings converge and illuminate a knot in your conscious and subconscious being. An awakening, a resonance and an epiphany all at Read more
There are moments in life when the random stream of events, experiences, thoughts and feelings converge and illuminate a knot in your conscious and subconscious being.

An awakening, a resonance and an epiphany all at once. It is understandable to relate to these moments in a spiritual way, using religious words to describe it.

For me, this moment materialized when I first heard and deeply felt the sonic world of "Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ"

I have never considered myself a fan of Peter Gabriel's music and still do not, save for the swathe around the inspiration, the research, the recording and the work of "Passion".

Capturing one's own "lighting in a bottle" is a forever challenge, so artists often borrow, copy or if they are lucky, they "steal" from others in the words of Picasso. I am not sure where I landed but the process of re-imagining, re-framing and re-working through the lens of Gabriel's Passion fueled the journey that became my "Passion Variations".

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Also available for sale at IFMACA productions: https://blacksunhighdesert-ifmacaproductions.bandcamp.com/album/passion-variations-inspired-by-peter-gabriels-music-for-the-film-the-last-temptation-of-christ
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High Desert Sonatas

Black Sun High Desert

Often more soundscape than melody, the High Desert Sonata series features an expanded palette of virtual instrumentation including five-string violin, modular piano, samples of electromagnetic fields, and wolf howls. Read more
Often more soundscape than melody, the High Desert Sonata series features an expanded palette of virtual instrumentation including five-string violin, modular piano, samples of electromagnetic fields, and wolf howls. Textures and tones color the edges of harmony obscured with crackles and the static of lonely desert winds. These sounds are made for shimmering diamond sky nights and a good pair of headphones.

“Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa.” - Ella Leya

Trinity

Black Sun High Desert

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" - J. Oppenheimer ---- New Mexico's association with nuclear weapons is long and complicated. From the exploitation and poisoning of Navajo lands via uranium mining to the Read more
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" - J. Oppenheimer

----

New Mexico's association with nuclear weapons is long and complicated. From the exploitation and poisoning of Navajo lands via uranium mining to the secretive Manhattan Project in Los Alamos to the Trinity site where nuclear bombs were detonated in the heart of this enchanted state and last but not least the controversial storage of weapons generated nuclear wastes in an ancient salt cave outside of Carlsbad.

Trinity is an attempt to combine textures, tones, noises and narrative elements expressed via original spoken word recordings. A mix of electronic and virtual instruments were used to build tension and experiment with edges of dissonance in an attempt to capture the Reagan era cold war anxieties. Dystopia manifests differently through the ages but the existential angst rarely deviates.

From The Tower

Black Sun High Desert

From The Tower is a collection of works that combines narrative elements from the transmissions of Air Traffic Control personnel and raw miniature modular sounds from Bastl's Kastle, along with assorted computer based Read more
From The Tower is a collection of works that combines narrative elements from the transmissions of Air Traffic Control personnel and raw miniature modular sounds from Bastl's Kastle, along with assorted computer based synths. The collaged sounds create challenging but listenable results. Bonus tracks include instrumental versions along with a work based on ancient Japanese poetry.

The track "Something Was There" can also be found on the Netherlands based label. FIXREC release, "Aliens In/Humans Out"
https://fixrec.bandcamp.com/album/aliens-in-humans-out

vacation suitcase no.1

blacksunhighdesert

one take recording

instruments: bastl kastle 1.5, drum and dude, moog werkstadt 2, meng qi crackle box.
pedals: zoom ms-70cdr
recorded with the zoom h2n

Atmospheric Dynamics (w/ Tukahdus)

Black Sun High Desert

Much gratitude to TUKAHDUS !! It was an honor and inspiration to collaborate with you on this project ! May our paths continue to cross. https://tukahdus.bandcamp.com/ Many thanks also to Marla Van Horn for the great Read more
Much gratitude to TUKAHDUS !!
It was an honor and inspiration to collaborate with you on this project !
May our paths continue to cross.
https://tukahdus.bandcamp.com/

Many thanks also to Marla Van Horn for the great cover art.
https://marlavanhorn.bandcamp.com/

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ARTISTS INTERVIEW:

How does collaborating with other artists affect or change your music?

Collaborating can be like working on a puzzle with pieces you never knew existed…sometimes the musical pieces fit easily and sometimes not at all. In the case of the “Atmospheric” collaboration, finding ways for the pieces to fit the puzzle I was working on gave me the freedom to explore the edges of my compositional boundaries.
– BSHD

It’s a great opportunity to get out of the comfort zone, enrich the vision and progress as an artist.
-TKHDS

For this collaboration, both artists supplied musical materials to the other for the composition. Was it harder to create and release your sonic materials to another artist or harder to use another’s sounds in your work? Why?

I put a lot of time and thought into sound design. Creating sound materials for another person to create music was harder than I thought. This challenge was made easier knowing that Tukahdus’s abilities and talent would shape these materials into something great. He did not disappoint. At the same time, I was careful to be respectful of the sound materials he sent me. I am not sure I did them justice but it was a fun journey to undertake.
-BSHD

Actually it was easier than working with my own sounds and I felt that I could compose the whole album with the material that BSHD sent to me. Working with the material provided by the other artists is a huge privilege to me. What comes to my sounds, I was confident that BSHD will make miracles with every kind of noise that I will send to him.
-TKHDS

What types of collaborations are you interested in pursuing for the future?

I would love to collaborate more with musicians and artists from outside the United States. The ideas and sonic perspectives of those living in other parts of the world offers challenges but breaking through can result in truly unique works.
-BSHD

Out of the box and minimal.
-TKHDS

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Quarantine Sketches for 4 NTS-1s

Black Sun High Desert

Quarantine Sketches for four Korg NTS-1s is an experimental workout of Korg’s pocket-sized DIY synthesizer unveiled just before the worldwide breakout of Covid-19. These three pieces were created during the height of the Read more
Quarantine Sketches for four Korg NTS-1s is an experimental workout of Korg’s pocket-sized DIY synthesizer unveiled just before the worldwide breakout of Covid-19. These three pieces were created during the height of the pandemic’s uncertainty and tragedy in a small town in southwest New Mexico. 

The interplay and structure of musical ideas shared within a classical music quartet and the free expressive instrumental conversations of a jazz quartet always fascinated me. The compositional structure of a four-part work inspired my approach to the Quarantine Sketches. These pieces are not a fully fleshed-out classical work but instead a loose collection of sounds created by this new instrument.  No post-production effects, sequences, or custom oscillators were used, only the Korg NTS-1 and an audio mixing workstation to compile and collage the recordings.  

Enjoyed best through a set of good headphones.
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Compilations

Visuals

Collaborations

Bio

Biography  

 Kevin Lenkner grew up in pastoral south central Pennsylvania, rooted between Amish country and the battlefields of Gettysburg. A fellowship led Lenkner to the epic Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico to attend a Deep Listening Retreat conducted by the late Pauline Oliveros, a key figure in experimental and post-war electronic art music. 

Inspired by the Southwest’s landscapes, culture, and historical significance, Lenkner relocated to New Mexico, intent on developing new artistic practices. Adopting the Black Sun High Desert moniker, Lenkner combines his lifelong passion for music and sounds with the exploration of visual materials. This exploration includes investigating memory, perception, and appropriation through sonic landscapes. Other works weave narrative and emotive elements for an experiential gestalt manifesting through recording projects, new media works, performances, and audiovisual art installations. 

Lenkner currently resides with his wife and son in Santa Fe, NM.

Artist Statement  

I am interested in sounds; the shape of sounds, their colors, edges and surfaces. I am interested in the expressive properties of sounds and how they interact with visual materials to communicate narrative and emotion through audition. Sometimes my works contain only suggestions of sounds or the visual metaphor of a silent audio speaker. Collecting, constructing and crafting describe the methodology for both the visual and audio materials of my works that manifest in sculptures, or installation formats.   

Philosophically, I am influenced by composers John Cage and Pauline Oliveros among others. Composition forms and methods are drawn from musician/producer, Brian Eno, soundscape composer Barry Truax, and artists, Martin Puryear, Anselm Kiefer and director, David Lynch. The artist I am most indebted for inspiration is German born, Rolf Julius, whose work, Ash at the Mattress Factory sparked an artistic epiphany for bringing together visual and audio elements.