Mira Calix: Mixed by Kelly Moran

Last month, Mira Calix passed away. 

Her longtime label and former employer Warp Records, to which she had been affiliated with for more than two decades, confirmed the news in a statement. “Mira wasn’t only a hugely talented artist and composer,” wrote the label. “She was also a beautiful, caring human who touched the lives of everyone who had the honour of working with her.”

As one of the first female artists to sign to the imprint, Calix – real name Chantal Passamonte – released six albums via Warp over the course of her career. Ever-exploratory, her work encompassed everything from electronic and classical music endeavours through to scores, sound installations and other multidisciplinary pursuits. Her last release, a “collage album” comprised of reassembled reimaginings of older compositions, entitled absent origin, landed in November 2021. 

Here, Brooklyn-based composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Kelly Moran pays tribute to her late label mate with a special mix built entirely from Passamonte’s own productions.

“I wanted to celebrate Mira Calix with a tribute mix that shows her incredible range of sonic expressiveness. Beginning chronologically in 1998, this mix encompasses 23 years of her musical output on Warp Records,” says Moran. “Mira’s artistic oeuvre radiates as a great testament to her personal character – engaging, fun, exploratory, spontaneous, sincere, brilliant, and creatively limitless.”

Continuing, she adds: “Her warm, inclusive spirit exudes brightly in philosophical musings about her own work: ‘I like to create the space in which the music exists and then you step into it. I find that so exciting. Even in my performance work, I’m not so interested in standing on a stage and beaming out to you. I want to be in there with you.'”

“Mira, we are grateful that through your music part of you may always be here with us,” concludes Moran.

Photography: Jana Chiellino