By DCist Contributor Ahmad Zaghal

Music is limited only by the imaginations of those who make it. A piece of music can contain as few or as many sounds and ideas as its producer wants it to, for better or worse (there are countless examples of both). Just when you think you’ve heard every unconventional musical idea, someone comes along to let you know that you haven’t. What makes these unconventional methods especially interesting is when they are used to make music that has more conventional structure. A noise album made with found sounds and home-made instruments (Francisco López’s Machines) is much more common than an album of pop songs made the same way (Matmos’ A Chance to Cut is A Chance to Cure,) for instance.

Enter: local musician Kai Orion, who just completed an example of the latter. Orion’s new album Pots and Pans, due out on November 4th, is comprised exclusively of his vocals and sounds from sampled field recordings, household items and home-made instruments. This is the first solo project from Orion, a singer and flautist, who plays in the local psych band Bare Left. A previous foray into pop music with found sounds saw him winning a contest for covering The National’s “I Need My Girl”. Hear that cover here.

Some of the sounds on the album’s first single, “Quiet Love,” which you can stream below, are more obviously discernable than others. It begins with the beeping and humming of what sounds like a microwave, the ticking of a clock and the chiming of a doorbell synched up in time with each other. A less discernable sound provides gentle percussion that becomes the backbeat for the song. Later on, the familiar ringtone of a fax machine can be heard; it provides some welcome dissonance. Orion’s light, airy vocals float above the rest of the music; making for a very pleasant listen that will leave you wondering about the rest of this album.