Five Players, Fourteen Ambient Chamber Pieces and a Vinyl Plan Built Around the Details
In September 2025, with the cardboard falcon still in production, Mico Nonet shared three things. There was a preview of the first piece, a video made with a mosaic pixelating lightbox, and a plan for the vinyl. The album would be pressed on 180-gram records as a double LP at 45rpm, using a high-resolution one-step lacquer process. That is an unusual amount of care for about 46 minutes of ambient chamber music.
Mico Nonet’s title track from the cardboard falcon is in the playlist below, with the classical and modern composition pieces this desk keeps on rotation, and the group’s artist profile gathers their coverage in one place. The album came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news sites. Press play, then keep reading for how the record was made.
Four Orchestral Players and a Synth Player From Matt Pond PA Built The Cardboard Falcon Together
On a working week, four of Mico Nonet’s five members play in major American orchestras. For example, Efe Baltacigil leads the cellos of the Seattle Symphony. Katherine Needleman is principal oboist of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. David Cooper holds the principal horn chair at the New York Philharmonic, a seat Cooper has also filled at the Berlin Philharmonic. Carrie Dennis now plays viola with the Phoenix Symphony, after years as principal violist in Berlin, Los Angeles and Sydney.
The fifth member comes from somewhere else entirely. Joshua Lee Kramer played with the rock band Matt Pond PA, and in Mico Nonet he handles the vintage synthesizers and the guitars. On the title track, the credits list all five players as composers and Kramer as studio producer. So the people who play the music also wrote it. The usual orchestral order, where a conductor and a score decide everything, does not apply here.
Kramer built the band’s visual side by hand as well. He made the mosaic pixelating lightbox himself and used it for the title-track video. That video arrived in June and has since passed 100,000 views on YouTube. Full-length videos for casimir and snowglobe reef followed in July and September. Fittingly, the album closes with a piece called pixelated lightbox.
Released by Ninevolt Labs on 7 May 2026, the cardboard falcon is the group’s second album. Its 14 pieces run from the 2:17 perilous driftwood to the 5:26 title track, and most sit between two and four minutes.
What Four Sides at 45rpm Give The Cardboard Falcon, and Who Has Been Playing It on the Radio
Both vinyl decisions serve detail. At 45rpm, the groove passes the stylus faster than at 33, so every second of music gets more room on the record. That is why audiophile labels often choose the speed for acoustic recordings. The cost is space, so 46 minutes of music needed four sides instead of two.
The one-step process works on the same principle. Normally, a factory makes several metal copies between the lacquer the engineer cuts and the stamper that presses the records. Instead, one-step skips them and makes the stamper directly from the lacquer. Because a stamper made that way wears out after roughly a thousand records, runs stay small. Mico Nonet chose both for a record where a French horn, a cello, a viola and a principal oboist share the space with vintage synthesizers.
Radio answered quickly. In the first week, KEXP’s Pacific Notions and Nailah Hunter’s Astral Gardens on NTS both lined up music from the album. Then WXPN’s long-running Star’s End aired elastic seesaw and stringless kite. Richard Chartier played perilous driftwood on dublab’s Between Two Points. In June, the NTS show Machines of Loving Grace with Midwife played the whole album. In July, WZBC’s Abstract Terrain added perilous driftwood too.
Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Brian Eno and an Older Habit of Odd Titles
Mico Nonet’s titles point to an older English tradition. The Penguin Cafe Orchestra liked to name pieces after the things that started them. Telephone and Rubber Band, for example, grew from a faulty phone line. In that case, a ring tone crossed an engaged tone, and Simon Jeffes caught the sound on an answering machine. jackson mollusk, square amoeba and pistachio macrochip share that playful, found-object instinct, and Kramer’s homemade lightbox does the same job for the pictures.
Brian Eno connects the two. He was executive producer of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s 1976 debut. He also released it on his small Obscure label, which carried his own Discreet Music. Eno’s idea of ambient music, something that can sit in a room without demanding attention, is the frame most listeners will bring to this album. The difference is the cast: here, the instruments belong to players who usually perform in front of full orchestras.
Who It Is For
the cardboard falcon suits listeners of ambient, electronic and modern classical music who still like to hear the players behind a sound. Spotify curators building nocturnal, spacious playlists will find pieces that sit easily together. Vinyl collectors get the most out of it, since the double LP is the version the group announced first.
NewMusic.News’s curator team:
“A double LP at 45rpm means turning the record every eleven or twelve minutes. the cardboard falcon makes those breaks feel like part of the listening, which is a rare thing to say about an ambient album.”
Stream the cardboard falcon in the player at the top of this page or on Apple Music. Follow Mico Nonet on Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, and watch the lightbox videos on the group’s YouTube channel.
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