Peretsky "It Doesn't Get Cold in October Anymore" LP Release

DOORS 7PM | FIRST SET 8PM

ABOUT PERETSKY

Max Alper (fka LaMeme Young) is a composer, improviser, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist originally hailing from Boston. Max composes and performs an eclectic range of styles of music, from electro-acoustic soundscapes for film and other visual media, to north Indian ragas, to free improvisation for acoustic and electronic instrumentation, to all sorts of cool experimental pop and rock projects.

Following his 2023 EP Pianovoz Electroacústica on seminal experimental imprint Deathbomb Arc, composer, educator, and technologist Max Alper, known to many online for his commentary on the state of music education and the industry at large as La Meme Young, returns for a biting full length collection of minimalist songs for piano, voice, and electronics under the Peretsky moniker entitled It Doesn’t Get Cold In October Anymore. As the title implies, this collection of tracks evokes a pessimism while reflecting on a rapidly changing landscape, both at home and abroad, physically and mentally, internally and externally. Each song represents a familial story, whether it be on the subject of marriage, parenting, vocation, political leanings, or religion.

As described by the artist himself: “I began conceptualizing this LP when I first moved back to New York in August 2023 after 4 years abroad teaching and recording in Puerto Rico. I had felt the need to “come home” musically during the years prior, having shifted my practice from noise, sound art, and free improvisation over the 2010s back towards more consonant, minimal, and through-composed song structures, and this finally culminated in me literally coming home stateside in 2023. This feeling of warm optimistic embrace returning to friends and family in the Northeast was abruptly cut short at the start of the War in Gaza on October 7th, and we have been living in a charred October ablaze ever since. This collection of songs, some of which having first been composed as far back as 2018, has since taken on an oeuvre of doubt and shame when they were once moments of joy and triumph. As a long-time believer in Yiddishkeit, Bundism, and liberatory theology, I will never forgive the powers that be that have replaced so much of the initial joy that sparked these works with this seemingly endless weight of sorrow. I release these new recordings as a continued act of reclamation of what was once mine and how I once felt, in hopes of a more just world and the liberation of all peoples from oppression.”

Produced by longtime collaborator Jaydee DeLeon (Enamoured Sound) and mastered by Joshua Eustis (Telefon Tel Aviv, Little Women, Nine Inch Nails), It Doesn’t Get Cold In October Anymore combines the impressionist and blues piano influences of Erik Satie, Charlemagne Palestine, and Emahoy Tsegue Mariam Gebru, the drone doom Americana of Dylan Carlson, and the minimalist vocal pop sensibilities of Anohhi and FKA Twigs to create a sonic palette that is entirely its own. While many shy away from such vulnerability and intimate means of song arrangement and subject materials, Peretsky leans in, all in hopes of being a better, kinder person on the other side, for both listener and artist alike.

ABOUT OMAR AHMAD

Omar Ahmad is a Palestinian-American composer, producer, DJ and sound artist. He is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist whose desire to derive the essential elements of sound has grown towards found-sound immersions, globally-influenced musical storytelling, and lush atmospheric compositions. He has been a stalwart member of the underground Brooklyn electronic scene for many years and has been a guest performer with Radio Alhara, The Lot Radio, Karachi Community Radio, and more.

His debut solo record, Inheritance was released to a wide spectrum of praise, including Electronic Sound, Bandcamp’s Best Ambient Music, and DJ Mag’s “Eight Emerging Artists You Need to Hear.” A full remix album entitled Inheritance • Remixed was released the following year with contributions from Tammy Lakkis, Sam O.B., Otodojo, Solpara, and more. Ahmad has not rested in his support of sonic resistance and collective liberation through the Palestinian lens via live performances and new improvisations, and his single Tala’ al-Badru ‘Alayna was highlighted on Resident Advisor through PTP's Palestinian Resistance compilation and featured via The Wire. Omar was also recognized as a Pioneer Works Music Resident for their 2025 cohort in support of his next album.

Alongside Alicia Coleman (Sweet Kicks) Ahmad is co-founder of a recurring global music series called Ūmboma, which emphasizes the complementary nature of African, Arab and Latin American contemporary sound. He is a contributing DJ at Laylit, the largest and fastest-growing contemporary Middle Eastern and North African music community in New York.

ABOUT CASSANDRA CROFT

American songwriter Cassandra Croft, whose delicate voice conjures a deep emotional response, writes intimate songs from dreamlike impressions. Raised in California and the Pacific Northwest—now living in New York City—she draws imagery from the natural world and from meditations on time, memory, love, and loss. Before studying voice and chamber music, she learned to write songs at an early age from her father, inventor of hypersonic sound, who privately played improvisational piano.

With an innate sense of melody, her voice disarms the listener with stark, vulnerable lyricism and resonant warmth. As a performer, she places her voice at the forefront of ephemeral arrangements for acoustic guitar and piano, offering a wide view into an expansive sonic world, drawing from the sincerity and structures of American folk traditions and the hypnotizing qualities of dream pop.

Composed methodically for minimalism, yet lustrous and dense in layers of piano, guitar, and synth, her recorded songs position euphoria as softly restrained, and beauty as the line where melancholy meets with life-affirming hope.

On her 2024 debut single ‘Country Of Your Mind’, produced by Randall Dunn, Lyndsay Knecht of Red Hot Org wrote, “In this first drop by Cassandra Croft under her solo artist name, we meet a fully inhabited performer with an obviously exacting ear. Croft looms ominous as a songwriter just as her delivery hits the listener straight on with the unforgettable lines: ‘Hold the year / As a smile / Cast down / By a star / In revolt.’”

Croft’s vocals first appeared in 2020 on compilation by Grouper. She has recorded with contemporary experimental icons Julianna Barwick, Rachika Nayar, Nina Keith, Brent Arnold, Ben Greenberg, and many others. Her vocal work was featured on the critically acclaimed TRANSA album via Red Hot Org, and she has performed at Knockdown Center, NYC, opening for Alessandro Cortini. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, where she deepened her lyrical studies on the natural world, with support from the National Science Foundation. She is presently touring North America.