LIVE PERFORMANCE > DUSTIN ERICKSEN & DAMIAN GRIFFITHS ‘The eye aint heard, the ear aint seen’

A psychedelic musical lecture on the electrodynamic spectrum with apologies to Richard Feynman.


“Working in response to Damian Griffith’s presentation of works in the exhibition Light, observed, Dustin Ericksen will present a public lecture to partially explain the making of some music which will also be going on and there will be photography as well and all those things will be explicitly affecting one another.”

Artist and performer Dustin Ericksen brings Light, observed to a close with his Finissage Event ‘The eye ain’t heard, the ear ain’t seen’. With banjo and synthesiser, Ericksen will create improvisational music. The musical aspect of the performance will be interfered with by two outside elements. First, the photography and light of Damian Griffiths, will trigger changes in the synthesised sound. Simultaneously, Ericksen will attempt to give a didactic explanation of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes the light we see, and other wavelengths, like x-rays and microwaves.

Dustin Ericksen lives and works in London and is an artist, performer, writer and teacher. More information: dustinericksen.com

LIVE PERFORMANCE > Outlands Tour #5: Fracture Patterns – EARTHEATER & SEMICONDUCTOR

Fracture Patterns is a live collaboration between UK artist duo Semiconductor and New York musician and producer Eartheater. This original commission by the Outlands Network combines large-scale multi-channel video works by Semiconductor with an original live soundtrack and performance by Eartheater, fusing both into a compelling theatrical production.

This tour is an investigation in absorption and the spectrum between empirical research and human emotion, via large-scale, sublime projections, vocals, movement and sound that linger playfully and productively at the blurred edges between dissonance and harmony. Semiconductor and Eartheater invite audiences to join them as they explore the collision and collusion of their respective practices.

LIVE PERFORMANCE > +gamma+

CONTRASTATE / ALICE KEMP / NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS

 

KARST and Electric Knife presents GAMMA, the third in our series of experimental sound performances.

NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS
https://nocturnalemissions.bandcamp.com/

The legendary Nocturnal Emissions, one of the best kept secrets of the industrial genre since the 1970s, set the bar long ago for industrial, dark ambient soundscapes. Founder Nigel Ayers presents a live audio visual show of dazzling organic and chemical animation with a unique sound world of wildlife and machine sounds that feels earthly & mysterious; mechanical yet human.


ALICE KEMP
http://alicekemp.net/

Alice Kemp lives and works in the south west of England, continually developing a practice of experimental music, audio composition, public and private performance, doll-making, drawing and painting. Subtle trance states, dreams, and disturbances inform her personal and cryptic yet coherent body of work, and her live [in]actions suggest a private mythology evolving through stillness, boundaries and aural stimuli. She has delivered these live obfuscations in England, Scotland, Germany, Belgium, France, Austria and Switzerland, and released sonic contemplations through the labels Fragment Factory (DE), Harbinger Sound (UK), and Erratum Musical (FR).


CONTRASTATE
https://www.contrastate.com/

Founded in 1987 by Stephen Meixner and Jonathan Grieve, with Stephen J. Pomeroy joining in 1992, Contrastate boasts one of the richest experience pools among the groups of the post-industrial movement. Initially embedded firmly in the tradition of industrial music and physical confrontation through sound Contrastate did not cease to evolve and slowly moved away from extremes and towards more balanced, subtle compositions. Their current style on the recent releases: A Breeding Ground for Flies (2012 Dirter Promotions) and the live album No Eden Without Annihilation (2016 Tesco Organisation) are situated somewhere in the realm of the avant-garde variety of dark, ritual ambient music combined with elements of experimental noise. Their diverse musical heritage exhibits unique electronic manipulations combined with stentorian vocals embedded in a heavy, surreal industrial background. They have long abandoned any attempt to reproduce studio work live, new material is specifically written for their performances, combining live electronics, acoustic instruments, sound manipulation and performance art. Contrastate is indeed a prime example of experimentation in music. Its artists constantly feel the need to try out different ideas, different ways of recording and different ways to use instruments.


LIVE PERFORMANCE > +beta+

UBIQUITUOUS MEH! / NORMAL TEA / FRIEND OF A FRIEND .An experimental music performance – industrial, electronic, DIY and beyond.

beta
DIY / EXPERIMENTAL / SOUNDS

FRIEND OF A FRIEND / NORMAL TEA / UBIQUITOUS MEH!+++

KARST and Electric Knife presents BETA, the second in our series of experimental sound concerts. We want to showcase artists who think about music and performance differently – across industrial, electronic, DIY and beyond.

FRIEND OF A FRIEND is the solo project of Alastair D. Smith. Until recently, Smith was playing in Nottingham outfits Society and Blunt Mountains, and had performed with the likes of Mary Ocher and Antoni Maiovvi. He has since relocated back to the South West and has been left to his own devices. FOAF’s music assembles elements of the organic and the artificial – analogue synth drones meet stringed instruments, found sounds, and digital pulses. These sources coalesce to form an end result that feels like the past and the future bleeding into the present.

https://lcpmusic.bandcamp.com/album/friend-of-a-friend-bir-split-tape-ltd-handstamped-cassette-lc010
https://amicablerecords.bandcamp.com/album/bez-et-esparon

NORMAL TEA is a succulent cesspit of musical experiences and flavours. Performing in various forms for nearly 30 years. With roots in experimental, blues and psychedelic music. NT works with aggressive beats and squawking analogue synth sounds. A heavy lean of improvisation, within structural boundaries. Bluesy bassy vocals dripping with delay… NT has been described as ‘The Canadian Electronic Captain Beefheart.’

UBIQUITOUS MEH! is an organist based in Plymouth, UK. In 2018 he recorded tracks for Baltimore rapper/producer Height, accompanied experimental film artist Katy Richardson with her Super8 loop that ate itself at the 9th SAR International Conference on Artistic Research, and recorded library music for Lo Editions/Universal. 2018 also saw the first public outings for the project, including the self-released debut mini-album of garagey electronica Minimal Wave For My Pals In The Grave and the Christmas tape Season’s Mehtings – the former seeing radio play at WXOX Louisville and the latter earning column inches from Mark Barton (Losing Today and The Sunday Experience) who called it ‘impishly tuneful and ridiculously addictive.’

https://ubiquitousmeh.bandcamp.com/

LIVE PERFORMANCE > Outlands #4 ‘Ecstatic Material’ BEATRICE DILLON / KEITH HARRISON

Ecstatic Material is a newly commissioned dynamic sound sculpture by musician and producer Beatrice Dillon and visual artist Keith Harrison which will expand and contract over back to back performances at venues across England.

This live experiment with sound and substance will be conducted through a modular system made up of malleable plastics, coloured light and multi-channel audio which is constructed, choreographed and diffused by the artists into the performance space.

Tour support comes from DJs Copper Sounds who spin copper dubplates, ceramic pots, and heavy icelandic rocks, using these materials to create a primitive and tactile form of turntablism. They will also lead a daytime workshop at each tour venue, where participants can design and cast their own playable wax 7” and take it home with them.

This tour was commissioned by OUTLANDS,
curated and produced by Jennifer Lucy Allan and Al Cameron and supported by Arts Council England and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

LIVE PERFORMANCE > Outlands Tour #3 ‘DRIFT ft. KYOKA / GRISCHA LICHTENBERGER / YTAC’

Fusing heavy electronics, hypno-chaotic grooves and pristine frequency control within a unique, audio-visual environment, DRIFT ft. KYOKA / GRISCHA LICHTENBERGER / YTAC sets forth an intoxicating, hyper-sensory experience.

Part club, part installation, part immersive environment, DRIFT takes shape within a specially constructed space, where motion sensors and microphones monitor the room, the crowd and the performers. The observations are fed to a central ‘brain’, which responds by projecting fevered machine-dreams back onto people and walls – the audience and the performance influence the visuals; feedback ensues, chaos builds. Inside this generated environment, artists Kyoka and Grischa Lichtenberger from acclaimed German electronic music record label Raster will diffuse their visions of experimental dancefloors.

https://www.outlands.network/drift

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
DRIFT
DRIFT is an immersive environment developed in collaboration by feral games developers and digital art technologists wetgenes and Fuse Art Space. Now in its second build version following an original commission by the British Science Festival in 2014, the system is housed within a specially constructed reflective enclosure inside which motion sensors and mics monitor the room, the crowd, the performers, feeding audio and visual observations to an array of processors. The array converts the data to graphics, projecting the output back onto the walls and people. Thus blurring the boundaries between the conventional stage and audience thresholds.

KYOKA
Berlin-based composer/producer Kyoka grew up in Japan, learning piano, flute and shamisen [a three-stringed traditional Japanese instrument] during her childhood and is known for her direct, chaotic musical approach and heavy-rough sound, resulting in a broken pop-beat with experimental yet danceable rhythms. Whilst recording radio shows to cassette, she became attracted by the possibilities of manipulating tape and soon began to use the tape recorder as her toy, cutting, editing and producing her first rough sounds. In 1999, she started to explore the potential of synths/computers, and in 2008, her first mini-album ‘ufunfunfufu’ was released on the onpa))))) label, followed by ‘2ufunfunfufu’ in 2009 and >3ufunfunfufu< as an exclusively digital release. She joined the raster-noton stable in 2012, and has progressed to become one of the most exciting, individual and original artists on the label.

GRISCHA LICHTENBERGER
Grischa Lichtenberger is an electronic music producer, visual and installation artist living in Berlin. Raised on a remote farm near Bielefeld, Grischa’s aesthetic developed from surveying the landscape – not only as a picturesque recreational facility, but as an interaction between the traces of history and the present surroundings. The aggressive tone in his sound design is countered by an emotional depth of the music which observes the introspective moods on the dancefloor and unsettling contemplations in an intimate listening situation. Tumbling between funky, highly energetic beats and trembling melodies, an almost tactile honesty reaches out to the individual listener.

YTAC
YTAC is the incendiary club electronics project of James Birchall, aka Rough Fields. His first bass-heavy percussion experiments appeared on the Bomb Shop label in 2010; by 2016 YTAC’s rave-centric workouts were being launched at high altitude EIS HAUS parties along the mountainous France/Spain border, and formed the first releases on the EIS HAUS label. The coming months will see the YTAC phenomena explode, as the newest signing to Glasgow’s hyperreal rave imprint, Numbers.

RASTER
Raster is a platform and international network for progressive electronic music that overlaps the border areas of pop, art and science. One half of former German electronic music record label ‘raster-noton’ established in 1999, Raster brings artists Grischa Lichtenberger and Kyoka from their roster to DRIFT.

LIVE PERFORMANCE > Das Hund – For Freedom Tour

Das Hund For Freedom is a new multi-disciplinary artwork by Samuel Levack and Jennifer Lewandowski, presenting a visionary exploration of our contemporary world.

Das Hund For Freedom explores the artists concerns about their place in a late capitalist society which increasingly seeks to commodify creativity. Spanning a four-year period (2015–18) in which the artists travelled across the UK and USA, filming the urban landscapes of London and Los Angeles and the deserts of Colorado and California. The work is a poetic reflection on the current global political turmoil and reimagines radical counterculture ideas that are returning to the popular imagination.

Das Hund For Freedom will tour across the UK between September and November 2018, in collaboration with nine venues partners. Sonic performances and poetic film projections combine to create a sensorial experience, raising questions about the fabric of our future communities.

To accompany the tour, Das Hund release their debut album For Freedom, featuring ten original tracks of spoken word poetry and songs, accompanied by guitars, bass, keyboards, drones and looped drumbeats, remixed to hypnotic effect using analogue tape delays.

For Freedom features extensive contributions from musicians Euan Hinshelwood, Bryan Michael Mills, Nicholas Pankhurst, Fancy Smith and Serafina Steer. Available on 12” vinyl LP and digital download. It is the first release on the new artist-run record label French Riviera Records.

Das Hund For Freedom is supported using public funding by Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grants.

SOCIAL MEDIA: #dashundforfreedom

ARTISTS’ WEBSITE: http://www.levacklewandowski.com

LINK TO WATCH FILM: https://vimeo.com/241174303

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION AND IMAGES: mail@frenchriviera1988.com

 

 

 

WORKSHOP > Transforming Symmetries

A crash course in reactive shaders with wetgenes.

Wetgenes are feral games developers and the creative technologists. Using art and technology to produce interactive works they create technology to drive immersive projects that encourage exploration and creativity.