Matthew Brannon’s HYENA is presented as a vinyl LP atop a plinth. Illustrating the effectiveness of packaging over content, the object exudes a precious quality as product and collectable. The recording itself, however is much more sinister. Featuring a caged hyena at a Berlin zoo, the soundtrack captures a disturbing symphony of clattering metal, audience rumblings, and breaking bones, beneath an aria of the animal’s frantic bark-laughter. In this discrepancy between outward appearance and contained turmoil, Brannon creates a haunting analogy for tenuity of human experience.