"You're a singer who reaches the outer limits with her vocals," adds Britt succinctly.
That exchange may well exemplify the duo's collaborative process: bandying ideas back and forth, rethinking them from different angles, and finally refining them to their sparest, most streamlined form. The austere, fugue-state tracks on Yesterday's Machine are the result of just such a process, two years of experimentation on stages in Philly, New York, and beyond.
Saturn Never Sleeps began life in July 2009, when the Institute of Contemporary Art asked Britt to curate a performance in conjunction with an exhibit dedicated to eccentric jazz legend Sun Ra (the very definition, incidentally, of a "science-fiction jazz artist"). Britt created loops from samples of Ra's music as the basis for an improvised multimedia performance with Rucyl, guitarist Tim Motzer, keyboardist Damon Bennet, and visual artist Jason Senk.
"It was an amazing night," Britt recalls. "We looked at each other and said, 'Whoa, we ought to keep this going.' It was exciting for us to play in an improvisational setting as electronic laptop instrumentalists."
That was their first performance together, but Britt and Rucyl had known each other since the early 1990s, when she was in a local hip-hop band called the Goats and he was gaining notice as a pioneering DJ and producer and touring with alternative-rap trio Digable Planets. They reconnected in New York in 2008, finding common ground in their wide-ranging love of music and cutting-edge technology. (While at New York University for graduate school, Rucyl built a wearable MIDI controller she christened the Chakakhantroller.)
