Sonic Acts Festival confirms new names for the audiovisual programme on Saturday 28 February in Paradiso, a collaboration with Rewire. John Foxx and Steve D’Agostino present the European premiere of Evidence of Time Travel, a sinister sonic architecture of drum machines and analogue synths with visuals by Karborn. There is also knife-edged techno from enigmatic Swedish duo Shxcxchcxsh; drum legend Jaki Liebezeit performs with Burnt Friedman and Le Révélateur (Roger Tellier-Craig and Sabrina Ratté) delivers ‘twinkling aesthetic resonance’. Robert Curgenven brings a visceral psychogeography of settler colonialsm via field recordings, pipe organ, guitars, dubplates and film, while Grischa Lichtenberger stages evocative sculptural beats. Mexican master of electronic music Murcof performs in a new collaborative project with visual artist Rod Maclachlan on 27 February at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ.
Previous confirmations for the programme in Paradiso (Saturday 28 February) include Jacaszek & Kwartludium performing Catalogue des Arbres – instrumental and vocal improvisations set against an organic drone of outdoor recordings – and the world premiere of Metaphysical, the new audiovisual project by Shapednoise with sYn.
The performance programme on Friday 27 February in Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ starts with a performance of Otto Piene’s (1928–2014) spectacular Die Sonne kommt näher (The Proliferation of the Sun). Sound recordist BJ Nilsen and experimental filmmaker Karl Lemieux perform their new work unearthed; Jana Winderen premieres new work inspired by the Dark Ecology Journey in North Norway & Russia, Herman Kolgen performs Seismik, and Mario de Vega presents his brand new installation Dolmen, a collaboration with Donaufestival (Austria).
An overview of the Sonic Acts Festival programme for each day can be found here.
John Foxx & Steve D‘Agostino feat. Karborn - Evidence of Time Travel
After the premiere at the British Film Institute last November, Sonic Acts Festival is honoured to present the European premiere of
Evidence of Time Travel, a unique sound and video investigation into the terrors and pleasures of temporal displacement. It combines the sinister sonic architecture of John Foxx (Ultravox, Tiger Lily and Nation 12 a.o.) and Steve D'Agostino (who has worked with a.o. ADD N To (X), Thurston Moore, Depeche Mode and David Sylvian) with Karborn's haunting visuals. They describe
Evidence of Time Travel as: “Span forty years in a moment . . . Ultimate time transfusion . . . skin crackles, a rhapsody in flames... witness images of torn, ruthless smiles through the crashed distortion; try to recall the future memory of a figure lost on a distant shore.”
Evidence of Time Travel was released on the 6th October by Metamatic Records. Graphic volumes created by Karborn are released digitally monthly for free on
www.evidenceoftimetravel.com. A limited collector’s edition book with all the graphic volumes and associated media will be available early this year.
Boomkat: “Superb darkside electro & techno-pop instrumentals run thru VHS and Betamax for proper, tape-warped tension and metallic atmosphere”
Shxcxchcxsh
The once industrial city of Norrköping in eastern Sweden may not be the techno mecca of the world, but the two members of Shxcxchcxsh find their hometown a perfect place to focus on music. Their sound is a deadly serious techno born out of the elements of noise, drone, glitch, broken beats, and pounding industrial and much more. After releasing on Semantica and Subsist Shxcxchcxsh found a home in Avian, a sought-after contemporary techno label run by Shifted and Ventress. Their debut album
STRGTHS successfully etched their unpronounceable name onto the audiences’ minds. The duo’s second album
Linear S Decoded saw the light in September 2014 and was received with much appraise.
Pitchfork: "Shxcxchcxsh have a light touch with heavy sounds, and as a result
Linear S Decoded is the rare album that allows you to wallow in the techno muck and come out feeling vitalized."
Resident Advisor: “this is still one of the most ferocious and uncompromising techno albums you'll hear this year— Shxcxchcxsh have just made it sound a bit friendlier with the loony disposition of '90s electronica rather than the corrugated textures of recent industrial techno. Whether they're surging through blackened tunnels of reverb and rumble or just bouncing along happily, Shxcxchcxsh have found a way to make faceless techno fun.”
Burnt Friedman & Jaki Liebezeit
For more than fourteen years electronic producer Burnt Friedman and legendary Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit have been collaborating on the
Secret Rhythms series. It's been a fruitful partnership, generating umpteen records and countless live performances. Central to the secret rhythms concept is Liebezeit’s radical drum code in unison with Friedman’s range of archaic metal percussion and synth instruments.
Le Révélateur
Le Révélateur started in 2008 as a solo venture for Montreal-based electronic musician Roger Tellier-Craig (Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Fly Pan Am). Together with collaborator Sabrina Ratté, who creates the project’s videos and live visuals, they explore a common fascination for the combination of electronic image and sound, using a varying array of digital and analogue technologies. Le Révélateur has released recordings on Gneiss Things, NNA Tapes and Root Strata. Their most recent album
Extreme Events was released in early September 2014.
Factmag: “dense synthesized textures, unusual rhythms and melodies that get lodged in your brain for weeks. At a time when many of the legion of synthesizer fetishists that emerged in the wake of Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never have moved onto something else (minimal techno?), it’s refreshing to hear Tellier-Craig instead honing his sound and arriving on possibly the best material of his career.”
Vice’s Creators Project: “Some tracks buzz and hum in glitched-out cacophony, while others incorporate warped sonic bodies through use of Analogue Solutions’ Telemark synth. The stunning visuals created by Ratté for the live and video performances perfectly integrate with Tellier-Craig's music and offer a puzzling A/V performance from another dimension.”
Robert Curgenven – They tore the earth and, like a scar, it swallowed them
Robert Curgenven is a composer and sound artist drawing on the physicality of sound - not just the physical impact on the body but the way in which the auditory can shape our perception of space and the flow of time. “Behind his music lurk such presences as Alvin Lucier, King Tubby, Murray Schafer and Eliane Radigue”(The Wire). Previous performances by Robert Curgenven include, amongst others, TodaysArt festival (Den Haag/NL), Ultrahang Festival (Budapest), Club Transmediale (Berlin) and Audiograft Festival (Oxford/UK).
They tore the earth and, like a scar, it swallowed them is a very physical negotiation of territories voided by history, rendered via field recordings gathered over 10 years in over 30 remote locations across Australia alongside new work with pipe organ, guitar feedback, dubplates, turntables and low frequency oscillators.
Curgenven: “Amidst the heat and the dust, in a landscape populated only by the insinuation of characters, settler colonialists’ blind enactment of will and violence against and into an unforgiving, arid interior is manifestation of a mortal struggle. The album traverses the historical dynamics of the settler colonial trope through the eyes not of the invaded but of the invaders to a harsh, remote land.”
Murcof & Rod Maclachlan
Murcof, together with visual alchemist Rod Maclachlan, will rework his recent surround sound explorations into a mesmerizing experience of light and sound, especially for the Sonic Acts Festival.
Murcof is the performing and recording name of Mexican electronic musician and composer Fernando Corona. Brooding electronics and classical sound sources combine in the integrated sound world of Murcof. There is a limitlessness to his music that absorbs the listener, touching on themes of life, death and eternity. He draws on minimalism, post modernism and baroque music to create music that moves the mind and heart. He has released three critically acclaimed albums and an EP on The Leaf Label.
Murcof's international reputation as a staggering live presence has been enhanced with a number of special collaborations, including events at Greenwich Planetarium (in collaboration with the Royal Astronomer), Montreux Jazz Festival (collaboration with Talvin Singh & Erik Truffaz) and L'Auditori at Sonar Festival in Barcelona (with the pianist Francesco Tristano). In 2008 he toured a new work called 'Oceano' in collaboration with classical musicians BCN216 and light sculptor Flicker, and his ongoing collaboration with Simon Geilfus (AntiVJ) has become known as one of the most awe-inspiring audiovisual collaborations currently on the circuit.
Uncut: "Mindblowing, like Sunn 0))) playing Ligeti in a galaxy far, far away. SUBLIME"
Roderick Maclachlan is Bristol based visual artist working with light and movement in conjunction with objects and architecture. These combinations of media are chosen so as to reveal relationships between perception and imagination, the physical and the ethereal. Maclachlan’s approach to visuals for music is one of improvisation, retaining a sense of immediacy and sensitivity to the flow of the piece by creating visual elements live on stage. Recent exhibitions include
Disappearance, Enclave gallery, London and
Life’s An Illusion Love Is A Dream, Liverpool Royal Standard.
Soundcloud Murcof
Grischa Lichtenberger
Signed at 26 by high-standards experimental cult label Raster Noton, he released his debut EP ~treibgut in 2009, followed by his debut album and iv (inertia) in 2012. Lichtenberger defines himself more attracted to the creation process than to musical protocols. This young multidisciplinary artist has rewarded us with abstract but also very evocative work, full of fine “constructivist” refined sounds he has the knack for. He played audiovisual live sets on international festivals and realized several commissioned installations on both local and international sites.