"I heard the joyful shrieks of the cherubim singing and shouting ‘Hosannah,’ and the thundering shout of rapture from the seraphim, which made heaven and all creation shake.” -Ivan Karamazov in "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Sampling and swirling storms of textured noise, bottomless drones, and ethereal melody into an unearthly rhapsody, Cherubim is the collaboration of guitarist, sound artist Yuko Pepe and trombonist, computer musician, composer Brett Sroka. Pepe, from Tokyo, Japan, and Sroka, from Boston, Massachusetts, met as part of 12,000 Trees, an experimental music collective that gathered every Sunday for many years in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, before splintering off as a duo, with a strange, yet overlapping aesthetic. They released their debut record, “The Joyful Shrieks of the Cherubim” on the stalwart experimental music label Zeromoon in 2013 and released the 2015 archival recording "falling" in 2025.

recordings:

Falling

Brett Sroka - trombone, computer, Yuko 'Pepe' Shimizu - guitar, percussion

2025

The Joyful Shrieks of the Cherubim

Brett Sroka - trombone, computer, voice Yuko 'Pepe' Shimizu - guitar, percussion

2013