whitehouse

Whitehouse (William Bennett and Philip Best), since its formation in London in 1980, have been the leaders of the most extreme, brutal and toxic faction of the noisy electronic music, of which they have undoubtedly been pioneers (the same faction who has had later on found in Japan its best followers). With a long career behind them exposed in 18 albums (compilations aside), from the seminal "Birthdeath Experience" (1980) to the recent "Asceticists" released this same year 2006, the sonic/vital career of Whitehouse is a continuous flirt to the catharsis by the use of extreme noise and manipulation. They haven't ceased for a moment their pitiless obstinacy towards their audience's ears. Twenty-six years of shows/performances completed with provocation and chaos, bursting all limits with tons of white and pink noise as a subsonic presentation tsunami/card: overamplified terrorism actions, vocal violence and lethal electronic cacophonies... Who offers more?
Simply mentioning its name affects the nervous system. That is because Whitehouse have been responsible for some of the most extreme moments offered by music (or whatever it is or whatever you call it). While one allows his/her auditive health to be demolished by the twelve minutes of electronic coma provoked by "Daddo" (included in their 1998 album "Mummy And Daddy") or without going so far by the killer frequencies that accompany William Bennett in "Guru" (from their last record "Asceticists"), you finish understanding that we are talking about a machinery capable of destroying Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music". It goes much further, scaring the ears with more virulence and capacity to sculpt in the noise's pain a physical matter that has been used as a model by outstanding investigators of the matter such as Merzbow or Bruce Gilbert (Wire).
But one would have to start by remembering how this factory of acoustic transgression lighted up on the first days of the year 1980 from the hand of William Bennett (age 18). Before, in 1978, Daniel Miller (The Normal at those times, leader of the label Mute for history) who encouraged Bennett in his idea of creating a sound/all-powerful capable of conquering the audience into utter submission. Armed with an old uncontrollable synthesizer, Bennett would end up creating the sound that would finally shape Whitehouse, but that first lighted Come as the previous step to what would come later.
Come was the bridge project that Bennett gave birth to in 1979 with the complicity of Daniel Miller and Peter McKay, giving place not only in 1980 to the start of Whitehouse but before to the creation of Come Organisation (also in the year 79), label aimed to edit at first Come's material and later on dedicated to electronic extreme music and specially to Whitehouse. Come Organisation would stop working on 1985, after the publication of the legendary album "Great White Death", partly due to the temporal dissolution of Whitehouse that occurred at the time. Returning to Come, that by the way never gave a live performance, the group edited the LP "Rampton" in that 1979 and after its disappearance another album was released, "I'm Jack", in 1981. But really in 1980 the project had ceased to exist to allow Bennett's creation of Whitehouse... The name came from a word game: Whitehouse was both the name of a porn magazine and the surname of Mary, an English activist in constant war against the emission of "rubbish" on TV and other media.
Their debut couldn't have been more brutal: "Birthdeath Experience" (LP, 1980, as all their records until 1985 edited by Come Organisation) was a sonic exorcism exposed in six themes that belong already to the black legend of electronic noise: "On Top", "Mindphaser", "Rock And Roll", "The Second Coming", "Coitus" and "Birthdeath Experience"... No truce was offered after such a statement of objectives, immediately after their continuation followed with "Total Sex" (in 1980 as well) with other six classics of noise terror: "Total Sex", "Phaseday", "Dominate You", "Politics", "Roller Coaster" and "Ultrasadism".
In 1981 Bennett's productivity is exceeded even more. Three new LPs in one year giving place to a progressive spiral of sonorous tortures parallel to the level of influence that Whitehouse obtained among the future generations of noisy musicians: "Erector", "Dedicated to Peter Kürten" and the fifth album of their career, "Buchenwald"... Today, one could say that "Dedicated to Peter Kürten", his fourth LP, carries the sound of one of the most extreme and brutal electronic records ever.
With the edition of "New Britain" in 1982 a first cycle finishes, marked by these six LPs all produced by William Bennett and Peter McKay. It was then that Peter Sotos and Philip Best entered the project. Sotos, living now at Chicago, has achieved certain fame through his underground books such as, for example, "Index" and "Total Abuse". And Philip Best (Consumer Electronics), that entered the band when he was only 14 years old, is nowadays the 50% of the Whitehouse project.
1982 also saw Whitehouse's first live action (at London) and the edition of a new album: "Psychopathia Sexualis". A year later they published "Right To Kill", of which less than 300 copies were pressed, being a practically clandestine edition, previous work to the release on February 1985 of the classic masterpiece "Great White Death". Recorded on November 1984, "Great White Death" culminates without a breath, until exhaustion, the electronic corrosion process started in 1980.
Following the disappearance of Come Organisation in 1985 there's a period of inactivity until in 1988 the label Susan Lawly is created in Chicago (at the Steve Albini studio) during the recording sessions of what would be their next album "Thank Your Lucky Stars" (1990). Susan Lawly's first reference was the single 7" "Thank Your Lucky Stars / Sadist" (1988; "Thank Your Lucky Stars" co-written by Bennett and Dave Tibet) followed by the compilation "Cream Of The Second Coming" already in 1990.
After "Thank Your Lucky Stars" (1990) Whitehouse published five more albums during the next seven years: "Twice Is Not Enough" (January 1992), "Never Forget Death" (1992), "Halogen" (1994), this one coproduced again in Chicago with Steve Albini, the same as the following "Quality Time" (1995)...; and finally, finishing the nineties' decade, the already mentioned "Mummy And Daddy" (1998).
The new century keeps them alive and dangerous. "Cruise" (2001, last official work with Peter Sotos, that leaves Whitehouse towards the end of 2002) and "Bird Seed" (2003), that presents unsuspected evolution aspects, are a good example of it. Sotos' participation in the theme that gave title to "Bird Seed", using external elements, direct recorded testimonies about gender violence, rapes, etc… it has a devastating effect... In the same way as "Cut Hands Has The Solution", the following theme, drove Whitehouse into a minimalism as surprising as the superb use made here of the voices.
And back to the beginning, to the year 2006 and to the recent edition of their last and unappealable album, "Asceticists", with seven themes that show us their present real dimension. William Bennett (voices, instruments, Sony) and Philip Best (voices, instruments, Roland) breaking preconceived schemes to create the kind of electroterror that one would now expect from Whitehouse faithful overall to their own sense of being, but also with a certain progression that opens new dimensions to their sonorous violence. Subterranean rhythmic sequences, minimalist noise, a latent complexity in the electronic wall that sweats beneath the voices. "Dans", "Language Recovery", "Guru", the instrumental "Nzambi Ia Lufua", "Killing Hurts Give You The Secrets", "Ruthless Babysitting" and "Dumping The Fucking Rubbish" sound contemporary, chaotically contemporary...
William Bennett: "The wider personal reactions we elicit are undoubtedly an integral aspect of the art itself. It's designed to create intense reactions, and is thus extremely revealing. In this way, we look into a mirror reflecting our own, occasionally troubled, souls".
Links: www.susanlawly.com - http://www.neox.demon.co.uk/whitehouse/index.html
Saturday 7th October - 22 h Exp'06 Program

carter tutti

photos: CTI

The presence of Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti (Carter Tutti, before Chris & Cosey) in Experimentaclub'06 immediately connects us, as it occurred in 2005 with Psychic TV, with the absolutely necessary name of Throbbing Gristle. Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Christopherson and Genesis P-Orridge created in 1975 Throbbing Gristle and changed the experimental and electronic music of the future, assimilating the techniques of classical groups such as Faust to invent from there a new sonorous code, toxic and polluting as it had never existed before. Synthesizers, rhythm boxes, sequencers, tapes, effects…; and bass, guitars, violins…; everything arranged to perpetrate ultra violent hearing attacks, sonorous mud close to visionaries such as William S. Burroughs and ultrapsychodelic diabolical passages linked with Charles Manson… recorded sonorous evidence of all this barbarism exists in their first two LPs, "The Second Annual Report" (Industrial Records, 1977) and "D.O.A The Third And Final Report" (Industrial Records, 1978). And also of the surprising oasis of deceitful softness exposed in the form of electromuzak in a necessary and influential album, the unforgettable "20 Jazz Funk Greats" (Industrial Records, 1979).
Throbbing Gristle split in 1981 into Psychic TV (Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson next to Alex Fergusson) and the duet formed by Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, who alter signing a contract with Rough Trade published on that same year their first album as Chris & Cosey, "Heartbeat" (LP, Rough Trade), starting that way what would be an excellent and inspiring career already 25 years old. Their music dives in the limit between the most abrupt techno and a without-labels electronic: darkness, floating atmospheric mattresses, softly insinuated melodies...; a space to manipulate and combine, so that from that first moment onwards their sonorous mosaic feeds fusing in a solid container electronic sequences, sampling and rhythmic beats with Cosey's voice, cornet and guitars.
Their work, absolutely particular and personal, has allowed Chris & Cosey to be considered by many artists one of the most relevant groups of the electronic music scene since the eighties. During that decade the duet created innovating records like, for example, the legendary "Trance" (LP, Rough Trade, 1982), the maxi techno-pop classic "October (Love Song)" (Rough Trade, 1983) or their albums "Songs Of Love & Lust" and "Techno Primitiv" (Rough Trade, 1984 and 1985 respectively), gold mines of claustrophobic and obsessive techno combined with breaks of pop lights.
From all this production, authentic black Bible of technopopindustrialists, the works that have leaved a greater impact over the years have been "Trance" (with psychoelectro jewels such as "Impulse" and "Lost") and "Techno Primitiv", this last one including the cover with its electroanalogical fetish and the addictive themes "Hazey Daze", "Shivers" or the mysterious "Do Or Die". Both are those kind of records that one would sample from beginning to end capturing loops with that heavy smell of rhythms boxes and avant-techno keyboards, and the synth-pop of the mid-80s.
After the edition in 1987 of "Exotika" (CD, Play It Again Sam, 1987), the change of decade and their following landing in the 90s occurs after editing "Trust" (CD, Play It Again Sam, 1989): more electro-darkness in themes such as "Deep Velvet" or "The Ring" -with Cosey's voice changing plane- and obsessive rhythmic in "Percusex". In 1992 Carter and Tutti decide to drastically decrease their number of live performances to concentrate especially on their studio work and on their solo projects, publishing everything through their label Conspiracy International (CTI), created previously in 1983 to enable the edition of their most experimental recordings and parallel projects. CTI, as a project, produced two LPs in 1984: "Elemental 7" and "European Rendezvous", signed as CTI and as Chris & Cosey/CTI (edited by Doublevision and afterwards re-edited in 1990 in only one CD for CTI/Play It Again Sam under the name of "Collectiv Three, An Elemental Rendezvous"). The first was used as soundtrack for a video of the same name (with Carter, Tutti and John Lacey sewing electronic environments) and the second contained a compilation of live recordings from their 1983 European tour as CTI.
Returning to the 90s, Chris & Cosey's records continue to appear periodically, independent of the electronic reinventions of the moment. CDs such as "Pagan Tango" (CD, 1991) and "Muzik Fantastique" (CD, 1993), both still for Play It Again Sam, emphasise the feeling of this total independence, concentrated only on the inspiration of their own personal geography. Taking less risks than in their earlier works, songs such as "Take Control", from the first, or the total disembarkment in an acid swamp which occurs in the first themes of the second CD, pure synthetic dancing, connect immediately thanks to that strange specialness which has made them unique and impossible to classify. Without any asphyxiating formal corsets, their music has always obtained benefit from their own personality, that multicreative character which has made them consider themselves not only as musicians but also as artists, sound engineers, writers, performers and active agitators that have collaborated frequently with other artists and musicians such as Robert Wyatt, Monte Cazazza, Coil, etc. Their most important collaborations are united in their album "Core" (CD, Play It Again Sam, 1988). Due to their evident position as main figures of the 80s and 90s most incisive rhythmic electronic music, their works have been frequently remixed by important names such as Carl Craig ("Fantastique" in the remix album "Twist", T&B Vinyl, 1995), Andrew Weatherall or Daniel Miller, to mention only a few of them.
Since the mid-90s Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti have centered their work specially on the creation of two thematic series of CDs (all edited by CTI): "'The Library Of Sound" and "Electronic Ambient Remixes". "Metaphysical" was in 1993 the first volume of the series "The Library Of Sound". Works of sonic exploration constructed by dense atmospheric passages. The series would after continue with "Chronomanic" (1994), "In Continuum" (1995) and "Point Seven" (1998). Changing to "Electronic Ambient Remixes", this series has been formed by an alternation of works signed by Chris Carter ("E.A.R. 1", 2000, remix of his first solo LP from 1980 "The Space Between"; "E.A.R. 3", 2002, remix of rhythms and original loops from Throbbing Gristle) and by Cosey Fanni Tutti ("E.A.R. 2", 2000, remix of her solo 1983 cassette "Time To Tell"; "E.A.R. 4 - Selflessness", 2004). The music developed through these two projects has been used in sonorous installations, art galleries, performances, lives in electronic music festivals or in exclusive radio programs, such as the piece "E.A.R. 4 - Selflessness", for ResonanceFM (London) in May 2003.
Also among their works and most recent activities, mention the publishing of "C&C Luchtbal" (CTI, 2003, CD recorded at a live performance at Belgium with 68 minutes of audio and 3 videos) and the remasterised reeditions of old Chris & Cosey albums and of solo albums.
In 2003 Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti start their new era performing, editing material and DJ'ing, always under the name of Carter Tutti. Their first performance in the United Kingdom with their new name took place in the Queen Elizabeth Hall the 9th of October 2003. During 2004 they've continued performing and working on their solo projects as well, aside from releasing two remixes ("Hamburger Lady" and "Hot Heels United") in the Throbbing Gristle compilation "Mutant TG" (Mute). Also during 2004 they edited the excellent "Cabal" (CTI), first album signed by Carter Tutti: a perfect work of electronic architecture, dense environments, lazy rhythmic pulses and processed voices and guitars. And finally the live recorded in Barcelona "Carter Tutti Live At Lem 2003" (CTI, 2004).
To finish, they've been working on the reactivation of Throbbing Gristle achieving the creation of an album with completely new material: "Part Two - The Endless Not".
Links: www.cartertutti.com
Friday 6th October - 22 h Exp'06 Program

david thomas and pale gagarins

To talk about the North American David Thomas is to talk about one of the greatest talents that the experimental music has provided, experimental in the widest and more transgressor sense of the word. And of course, one has to talk as well of the band which he has led (and still leads) during decades: Pere Ubu, the quintessence of surreal rock, avant-garde punk, electronic expressed through minimal touches of synthesizer. Everything applied to an undecipherable and at the same time eloquent music: threatening and intelligent. Punk Dadaism.
And to talk about David Thomas + Pere Ubu is also to place oneself in Cleveland (Ohio) to amazingly realise how a province band broke geographical, time and, of course, artistic limits, to end up changing the concepts of art and rock and connecting them both without apparent effort nor pretentiousness. Born during the earlier seventies, officially founded in 1975, shaken by the punk tsunami, Devo neighbours (close and far at the same time) and contemporaries of Suicide and of the New Yorker no-wave, Pere Ubu walked free always emphasising that apparently involuntary sonorous complexity that made them unique and very influential.
But also this is a story of continuous extinctions and resurrections, evolution and changes, of a group that has never ceased to exist although it only emits life signs from time to time. Vital pills given in the shape of records, essential to decipher the existence of life outside rock (and punk and electronic) such as "The Modern Dance" (Blank, 1978), "Dub Housing" (Rough Trade, 1978), "New Picnic Time" (Rough Trade, 1979), "The Tenement Year" (Enigma, 1988) or "Raygun Suitcase" (Cooking Vinyl, 1995).
However, in this occasion what occupies us is to talk about David Thomas specifically. And his next performance in Madrid, in Experimentaclub'06, leading the trio that includes Keith Moliné (member of Two Pale Boys; guitars), Graham Dowdall (collaborator of Thomas and also known for his project Gagarin; synthesizers) and D.T. (vocals, melodeon) under the name David Thomas and pale gagarins. A unique occasion and a unique concert as well that according to Thomas it will sound close to Two Pale Boys but at the same time different as it revolves around Graham Dowdall's synthesizer. Either way, and with his own words: "I think it would be a very special show and a very exclusive one, too".
David Thomas and Two Pale Boys have always been defined as a project of avant-garde folk... performed with technology from the post-dance era. In fact Thomas has always considered himself (and Pere Ubu as well) a folk composer and performer (no rock no punk no... nothing). Traditional music reinventing itself. The use of the melodeon dampened with dark guitar, wind and electronic passages, mixed with his always peculiar voice, with wild electricity turmoil and with those passages where all that sound stream stops and enters a new type of song unknown until now, all that grand beauty and ugliness, are the magic ingredients that have made of this project (D.T. and 2pbs) something unique and as necessary as Pere Ubu. And CDs such as the excellent "18 Monkeys On A Dead Man's Chest" (Glitterhouse, 2004) one of the best record works published in this decade.
But before landing in this 2pbs period, it is useful to stop for a moment to analyse the figure of David Lynn Thomas (Miami, 1953; although moving very early to Cleveland, Ohio), Pere Ubu founder, that machine of found sounds, analogical synthesizers and concrete music mixed with the spirit and nerve of a garage band... And responsible, thanks to his multiple solo projects, of some of the more transgressor and uncomfortable musical episodes of the last thirty years. Episodes conceived at the same time as his work with Pere Ubu, sonorous investigations that leave in 1981 their first record legacy his album "The Sound Of The Sand" (Rough Trade), created next to the British folk-rock guitarist Richard Thompson. Since then, the record career of David Thomas has been marked by an eclectic and unpredictable production. In the 80s decade the following works were released in succession: "Variations On A Theme" (Rough Trade, 1983), "More Places Forever" (Rough Trade, 1985), "Monster Walks The Winter Lake" (Rough Trade, 1986) or "Blame The Messenger" (Rough Trade, 1987), published during one of Pere Ubu's hibernation broken with the edition in 1988 of "The Tenement Year".
Back to Two Pale Boys, these were created in 1994 as one of the multiple projects developed by Thomas aside from Pere Ubu, conceived always as vehicles with which the role of the voice and the instruments would be redefined to search for new sonorous expressions. Something that he successfully managed and with which he has been able to create most of his best works. This trio formed by David Thomas, Andy Diagram (Diagram Brothers, James, The Honkies, The Spaceheads; in charge of the trumpet, filtered by all kinds of echoes, radios and delays, generating layers of overlapping electronic sounds) and Keith Moliné (They Came From The Stars I Saw Them, Infidel; polyrhythmic guitars, violin and static electricity), has shaped in this way during these last ten years some of the most brilliant and supernatural musical passages that one can imagine. With "Erewhon" (Cooking Vinyl, 1996), their first album, they opened the box of an intense mysterious sound charged with surprises, exposed later in "Meadville" (live bonus included in 1997 in the box of 5 CDs "David Thomas, Monster"; Cooking Vinyl) and in "Mirror Man" (Cooking Vinyl, 1999, another live under the name of David Thomas and The Pale Orchestra). Later on "Surf's Up!" (Glitterhouse, 2001) they would sow the exact dose of mystery, emotion, nerve and uncertainty that would reach their peak in "18 Monkeys On A Dead Man's Chest" (Glitterhouse, 2004). From the epilepsy converted into neo-rock that covers "New Orleans Fuzz" and "Numbers Man", going through the dense darkness enveloped by "Habeas Corpus" and the surreal folk that inhabits "Brunswick Parking Lot", until reaching the legendary "Nebraska Alcohol Abuse" and finalising in "Prepare For The End", all the CD takes place along the edge of a sonorous knife that leaves no one unaffected.
Now is the moment to let David Thomas and pale gagarins surprise us, in what is for sure going to be one of the main performances at Experimentaclub'06. And for that we have to talk about Graham Dowdall: percussionist, creator and sonorous environments' mixer, collaborator of artists such as Nico or John Cale both on live performances and on records, music composer for both theatre and dances... Dowdall, who has previously worked with David Thomas, has also developed a large career in the electronic music field under the name of Gagarin.
Links: www.ubuprojex.net - www.ubuprojex.net/pbs.html
Wednesday 4th October - 22 h Exp'06 Program

otomo yoshihide

The artistic career of the Japanese Otomo Yoshihide (Yokohama, 1959) is above all a continuous exploration of the sound's nature, a search through the different expressive/sonorous media: from free jazz to minimalist electronic, from electroacoustic to turntabilism, from free improvisation to sampling (plunderphonics)... A prolific career, risky as few, that has allowed him to create projects such as Ground Zero (1990-1998), Sampling Virus Project (1992-1998) or the actual I.S.O., Filament and the Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra. All of that without forgetting his solo production, with specific guitar or exclusively with turntables (as will occur at Experimentaclub'06) projects. An untiring artist, full of ideas and specially full of fight regarding free appropiation and free sampling, themes about which he has widely spoken in articles and books.
Early enthusiastic of free jazz and of artists such as Ornette Coleman and Derek Bailey, Otomo Yoshihide starts as a guitarist in jazz and punk formations until in 1981 he played free improvisation professionally (using guitars, tapes, radios, etc) at a Tokyo club. During the following years he played both in a duet next to the saxophonist Junji Hirose and in a band called No Problem. Already in 1990 he starts to collaborate frequently with other musicians of very different styles and he goes on tour through Japan next to Hirose and the percussionist David Moss. On that same year he creates his own band, Ground-0 (later on called Ground Zero), with which he would work intensely until its dissolution in 1998.
In April 1991 he gives with Ground-0 his first concert outside Japan (in Hong-Kong) and in December he plays for the first time in Europe (Berlin) with Koichi Makigami (voice), Yuji Katsui (violin), Hiroshi Higo (bass), David Moss (percussion) and Frank Schulte (turntables). Between 1992 and 1994 he creates two more projects different to his work with Ground Zero. We are talking about the Double Unit Orchestra (formation made up from two groups simultaneously directed by Otomo) and Celluloid Machine Gun, of a cinematographic style based on the films made in Hong Kong. Also towards the end of 1993 he created Mosquito Paper, active project only until 1994. Both Celluloid Machine Gun and Mosquito Paper were eventually absorbed by Ground Zero when the band released its work "Revolutionary Pekinese Opera" (Trigram, 1995). Before, they had already published "Ground Zero" (God Mountain, 1993) and "Null & Void" (Tzadik, 1995).
Another of his multiple projects of those years, and in this case without a doubt one of the most interesting, was Sampling Virus Project (between 1992 and 1998), centered obviously in the possibilities of sampling and the creative processes derived from its use, capable of acting as an informatic virus, invading, transforming and multiplying through the other works by Yoshihide, to finally create something new at a global level. This project was developed by Otomo through his solo works, his bands, collaborations with other musicians, etc...
Since the end of Ground Zero the sonorous spectre of Otomo Yoshihide has evolved largely. During these last few years he has developed a clear passion for minimalist electronic music and low frequencies. Something which can be observed in his actual projects: I.S.O., his trio with Yoshimitsu Ichiraku (drums, electronic) and Sachiko M (sampler); and Filament, his duet with Sachiko M. The sound here searches for simplicity, minimalism and textures instead of dynamism and instrumental interpretation. Static waves, micronoise, silences… "I'm interested in the dichotomy between silence and noise and the imprecise border that separates one from the other. The most interesting, in my own opinion, is the subjective view that each one uses to decide what is music and what is an intrusive sound".
But his creativity has always been multidirectional and so, changing of direction, in July 1999 he starts a new jazz project with a quartet formed by Naruyoshi Kikuchi (sax), Kenta Tsugami (sax), Hiroaki Mizutani (bass) and Yasuhiro Yoshigaki (drums), that interprets themes of legendary jazz figures such as Charles Mingus and compositions by Otomo Yoshihide himself.
His really large curriculum also includes during the nineties decade his active participation in other groups and projects such as P53 (next to Chris Cutler), Novo Tono (Phew), his duet with Tenko under the name MicroCosmos, collaborations with Jon Rose, etc. Plus his special dedication to the composition of film, TV and video soundtracks, on which he has always demonstrated a great talent. In this sense his closeness and the relationship he has had working with China's and Hong Kong's cinematographic creators has to be mentioned. He has also been musical director of the theatre group Rinkogun from 1992 to 1995, creating music for works such as "Bird Man" or "Hamlet Symbol".
All that enormous activity has been reflected on a huge discography, exposed in all kinds of formats. Solo works, turntables solos or guitar solos, with his actual Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra (such as "Out To Lunch", Doubtmusic, 2005), with his New Jazz Quintet, Filament, I.S.O., etc (all his discography can be consulted at http://www.japanimprov.com/yotomo/disco.html).
Finally special attention needs to be paid to his extensive activity as a writer. Since the 80s Otomo Yoshihide has presented his ideas regarding subjects as the problem of distribution and the situation of the musical industry or about considerations referring to matters such as sampling and free improvisation. All of it in countless articles and essays for different magazines and books.
Links: www.japanimprov.com/yotomo
Saturday 7th October - 20'30 h - Gramophonia Exp'06 Program

chris cutler

Chris Cutler is without a doubt one of the most active and prestigious musicians of the experimental British scene of the last 40 years. His curriculum is simply impressive: ex-percussionist of the legendary Henry Cow (1971- 1978), involved in multiple musical avant-garde projects such as Art Bears, News From Babel, Cassiber, P53, etc, appearing in several records by Pere Ubu and David Thomas, collaborator of artists such as Lindsay Cooper, The Residents, Gong, Otomo Yoshihide... And, if this wasn't enough, Cutler was besides the founder in 1978 of the label Recommended Records, absolutely necessary in the development of the experimental music of the last few decades.
On the earlier 60s Chris Cutler started to play the drums on soul and rhythm'n'blues groups. Later on, in 1967, it will be in psychodelic groups of similar styles to Soft Machine and the earlier Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, performing in the same clubs as they did. But it is not until the year 1971 that he initiates the first of his thousand experimental projects. It is The Ottawa Music Co., created with Dave Stewart (at that time member of Egg and main figure of what would be called Canterbury Sound): an orchestra formed by musicians from the less conventional rock scene created to perform both its own creations and others from other artists. In its short life, it only lasted from 1971 to 1972, the orchestra increased its number to 22 musicians. Important names such as Mont Campbell, Steve Hillage, Barbara Gaskin, both Stewart and Cutler... and also, all the components of Henry Cow: Fred Frith, Tim Hodgkinson, John Greaves...
Henry Cow is one of those unavoidable references of the earlier 70s (such as, for example, AMM, Faust, Can or Kraftwerk, each inside its musical coordinates) whose influence has been decisive in the development of avant-garde and experimental music. This legendary collective formed by musicians without creative limits, independent of everything and everyone, broke during its years of existence all the possible sonorous moulds. Innovating, antidogmatic, furiously free, Henry Cow took exploration and rupture as their method: in their hands, terms such as contemporary music, improvisation, free jazz and progressive rock exploded in the air to create something completely new, centered exclusively in the totally free inspiration.
Chris Cutler formed part of the band from the year 1971 until its disappearance in 1978, but the group had been created in 1968 at the Cambridge University by Fred Frith (guitar) and Tim Hodgkinson (organ, sax), later John Greaves (bass) would join them. After Cutler's (drums) incorporation, the group will create in 1972 the first of its two theatre productions (the music for an adaptation of the classic by Euripides, The Bacchae) and after some time the group would be joined by a new member Geoff Leigh (wind instruments). After composing the music for a ballet with the artist Ray Smith and the Cambridge Contemporary Dance Group, they initiate a series of concerts under the name of Henry Cow's Cabaret Voltaire, in which aside from the music, performance and theatre are also included, inviting other artists to participate in each of these shows. In 1973 they start a new series of performances called The Explorers Club to which they invite Derek Bailey, Lol Coxhill, Ivor Cutler, Ron Geesin, The Scratch Orchestra, David Toop, Paul Burwell and Christine Jeffries, plus the writer D.J. Perry and Ray Smith, who had already participated in the earlier series. At that same time, they also start the recording of "Leg End" (Virgin, 1973), their first album. This period of extreme activity will include as well a legendary two-month tour next to Faust, combining this with the creation of the music for a new musical-theatre project: an adaptation of The Tempest (Shakespeare). Later on, Geoff Leigh decides to leave the group and they find in Lindsay Cooper the perfect substitute, as she feeds Henry Cow's music with the oboe and her voice. With her in the group, they record "Unrest" (Virgin, 1974), their second work and probably the more creative one of their entire career.
Also in 1974 a fortunate meeting occurs with SlappHappy, project by Peter Blegvad, Dagmar Krause and Anthony Moore, with whom they had collaborated earlier on, and their integration on the next two albums of Henry Cow: "Desperate Straights" (Virgin, 1974) and "In Praise Of Learning" (Virgin, 1975). On the concerts following the edition of these works, Dagmar Krause became part of Henry Cow. And John Greaves would leave the group one year later to collaborate on new projects with Peter Blegvad. Meanwhile the new sextet performs in places all across Europe. In April 1975 their concert next to Robert Wyatt in Paris is an incredible success. In 1976 "Concerts" (Caroline) is released and one year later (as they had done before with SlappHappy and Wyatt) they associate again with another group: The Mike Westbrook Brass Band with Frankie Armstrong (aka The Orckestra).
After a period of multiple comes and goes (Dagmar Krause left due to health problems, etc) Henry Cow's definite musical legacy arrived with "Western Culture" (Broadcast Records, 1979) although their last concert had taken place in the Piazza del Duomo, Milan, the 25th of July 1978.
On that same year Chris Cutler creates, with Nick Hobbs, Recommended Records: independent label, launching pad for experimental music and without a doubt, another option for the until then unheard-of promotion of this type of music outside the common and conventional record companies. At the same time, Cutler also creates Re Records (exclusively created for the edition of his own projects), although he will finally fuse both companies together in 1987 under the name ReR.
In 1978 he performs for the first time in concerts with his improvisation duet next to Fred Frith and he starts his new project Art Bears also next to Frith and Dagmar Krause, publishing three splendid albums between 1978 and 1981 (all through Re Records): "Hopes And Fears" (1978), "Winter Songs" (1979) and "The World As It Is Today" (1981). During this period he collaborates among others with The Residents, Gong and David Thomas.
During the 80s he works on new projects such as News From Babel (with Lindsay Cooper, Dagmar Krause and Zeena Parkins) and Cassiber (with Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth and Christoph Anders). He also continues to work frequently with Fred Frith and also with Tim Hodgkinson and Peter Blegvad until in 1987 he becomes part of the new group with which David Thomas restarts Pere Ubu.
Among the many projects and collaborations in which he takes part during the 90s, a special mention needs to be made of his duet with Zeena Parkins, his works next to P53 (with Marie Goyette, Zymunt Krauze, Otomo Yoshihide and Lutz Glandien) and the edition of three live-recorded albums of his performances with his duet with Fred Frith.
Since 2000 he has frequently worked alone. And it has been in these last few years that Chris Cutler has published his first two solo albums: "Solo" (Recommended Records, 2001) and "Twice Around the World" (Recommended Records, 2005). Aside from this, he has continued to work in many projects and maintains active his duet with Fred Frith.
During his concert at Experimentaclub'06 he will combine drums, percussion and electronic sounds.
Links: www.ccutler.com
Saturday 7th October - 19'30 h Exp'06 Program

keith rowe

The British Keith Rowe is a capital figure among the sonorous avant-garde of the last four decades. Total artist, impossible to typecast due to the constant search and exploration of his musical career, Rowe exceeded at his time the free jazz context to revolutionize improvised music (for example AMM; unforgettable his performance at Experimentaclub'03) and to later on finish turning into an admired figured in the field of electronic improvisation (MIMEO).
His own perception of the guitar as a generator source of sound instead of as an instrument, his treatment of it as a found object, developing a new language and also putting it to a different use, have always singled-out Keith Rowe's work. Also using painting as a motor (inspiration, complicity) capable of feeding contents and ideas to many of his works (Klee, Pollock). And a good part of that visionary talent to take the instrument out of context and guide it across sonorous creations thrown into outer space, across his personal revolutionary view -inherited from precursors such as John Cage- close to the margins along where musical creation occurs, he has developed with the legendary collective AMM in the experimentation and improvisation area.
AMM was created in 1965 due to the meeting of several British free jazz musicians around the nucleus formed by Keith Rowe, the percussionist Eddie Prévost, the saxophonist Lou Gare and later on, the composer Cornelius Cardew (piano and cello). They edited their first album "AMMMusic1966" in 1966, with which they already broke the usual patterns of the free jazz to investigate the unstructured improvisation and the exploration of new sounds.
In 1972 AMM splits into two duets: Prévost and Gare on one side and Cardew and Rowe on the other, continuing these last ones their association in projects such as the Scratch Orchestra and People's Liberation Music. In 1976 they work together again until first Lou Gare and later on Cornelius Cardew quit the group leaving Prévost and Rowe alone. In 1979, under the name AMM III, they record "It Had Been An Ordinary Enough Day In Pueblo, Colorado" (ECM). Some time later AMM, on what would be its final version, is completed with the incorporation of John Tilbury. Since then, 1980, they've published a big number of records and participated in many projects, festivals...
But aside from this enormous sound generator that has been and still is AMM, Keith Rowe has taken part in many solo projects and collaborations with other artists. In 1979 his association with Trevor Watts under the name Amalgam produced two albums, "Over The Rainbow" (Arc) and "Wipe Out" (Impetus), clearly influenced by the development of new languages and codes within the use of the guitar. But it has been from the middle nineties and onwards that Rowe's activity has been greater and has grown more productive. Apart from his work in AMM, during these last years he has enlargened his field of action to new projects, for example, MIMEO and to collaborations with other artists such as Evan Parker, Jeffrey Morgan, Günter Müller, Taku Sugimoto, Burkhard Beins, Otomo Yoshihide, Toshimaru Nakamura, Christian Fennesz, Marcus Schmickler, Kim Cascone, etc.
MIMEO (Music In Movement Electronic Orchestra) is without a doubt one of the most interesting projects in which the always anxious Keith Rowe has been involved. This open collective groups a select number of electronic musicians obsessed with giving a new formal energy to the field of improvisation, with important names such as Fennesz, Marcus Schmickler, Rafael Toral, Peter Rehberg, Thomas Lehn, Gert-Jan Prins, Phil Durrant, etc, all of them grouped around Rowe. They've produced some of the more outstanding passages of the experimental electronic music of the last ten years. Intense electroacoustic improvisation whirlpools with abrupt and shaking recorded evidence, such as "Electric Chair And Table" (2000, GROB).
Between 2002 and 2003 Rowe makes more specific the open connections with MIMEO in a duet formed with Christian Fennesz ("Live At The LU", Erstwhile Records), duet that from time to time they make it function again, or through the trio with Thomas Lehn and Marcus Schmickler ("Rabbit Run", Erstwhile Records), later on growing into a quartet with the incorporation of Toshimaru Nakamura (CD in 2004 for Erstwhile Records).
His collaborations with Fennesz include as well the Four Gentlemen Of The Guitar project, in which they are accompanied by Oren Ambarchi and Toshimaru Nakamura again, publishing in 2004 "Cloud" (CD, Erstwhile Records).
Links: www.scaruffi.com/avant/rowe.html - www.shef.ac.uk/misc/rec/ps/efi/musician/mrowe.html
Wednesday 4th October - 19'30 h Exp'06 Program

dat politics

photos: Paul Tahon

The laptop trio from Lille (France) returns with their brand new album, "Wow Twist" (Chicks On Speed Records, 2006), going one step forward in their search for the perfect electroparty: paranormal techno-chewinggum, infectious under the manipulated voices, the bip-bip from the Nintendo galaxy and the cybernetic punk/pop bursts... Everything is intelligently arranged with an outstanding imagination stream, delirious lyrics, science-fiction of the Z-series and the ability to create risky electroshocks and ultrastatic mystery spaces. Like B-52s that had landed on the digital era (instead of the analogical), the Dat Politics of 2006 change, irritate, seduce, refresh, itch, amaze, choke, electrocute and happily transport the audience to an unknown robotic universe.
But first you have to look back and comprehend the curious evolution followed by the best -and maybe the only- laptop "band" in the world, formed on October 1998 first as a quintet and then reduced to a trio. Since their debut in 1999 with the LP "Tracto Flirt" (Ski-pp, their own and exquisite label, with which they edited for example in 2003 Felix Kubin's CD "The Tetchy Teenage Tapes Of"), Dat Politics (Claude Pailliot, Gaëtan Collet and Vincent Thierion) have recooked the base of their sonorous potion so that little by little they could move it from the instrumental clickminimalism, made of sequences and micromelodies, to a more or less formal synth-pop format, creating songs... but subversive songs completed with crazy noisy emissions. This entire journey has been parallel to their visits to different record companies such as A-Musik, Mille Plateaux or Tigerbeat6, until their landing on Chicks On Speed Records, where they have published their last three albums: the ones that have in some way marked the rhythm of this change. From "Clicks And Cuts" (in volumes 2 and 3) to the technicolour digital punk/pop in expansion.
The microelectronic included in the already mentioned "Tracto Flirt" (reedited later as a CD by Tigerbeat6) and the following "Villiger" (A-Musik, 2000) and "Sous Hit" (Digital Narcis Corporation, 2001), finds its way in 2002 with the release of "Plugs Plus" (Chicks On Speed Records) to an intelligent and innovating popsification process. Here the songs have their own identity (something unheard-of before), vocal ingredients are added and collaborators, such as Felix Kubin or Jo Zimmermann (Schlammpeitziger) take part producing very interesting results.
With "Go Pets Go" (Chicks On Speed Records, 2004) the popsification is completed with hypnotic melodies and improved with complex digital compositions. The minimal mechanic of their first three records is fused with the freshness and pop character of the previous one, extracting from the combination their best ideas and presenting them with a colourful and irritating calmness(?). Digital folk melodies obtained through collaborations with Nathan Michel and Kristin Erikson (there is even a banjo!), technonintendo mini-hits, compositions based on bees and insects in general, etc, etc, etc... A disco/zoo that can't be missed.
Returning finally to the recent "Wow Twist" (Chicks On Speed Records, 2006), its eleven themes navigate through the cyberspace as a crazy missile driven by the ultraprocessed voices of Claude and Gaëtan. From "Viper Eyes" and its anphetaminic technopunk choruses, the song carousel of electroparty turns and turns inviting the listener to surf the galaxy. "Turn My Brain Off" connects electrodes to toy Beach Boys, "Gravity" is as if the new wave had been recycled and reinvented in four minutes to define the next century's pop, "My Toshiba Is Alive" (great names!) is an hymn of surreal technochildism and "Roll" is a great song that addicts you completely: simply wonderful...
Links: www.datpolitics.com - www.ski-pp.com
Thursday 5th October - 22 h Exp'06 Program

vladislav delay

The Finnish Vladislav Delay comes to Madrid to live present his last record released under his own name: the very personal "The Four Quarters" (Huume, 2005). Electronic landscapes exposed in long themes in which he retakes the microclickelectronic of his earlier works for Chain Reaction and Mille Plateaux, pasting it here in extensive melodic backgrounds, abstract spaces and minimal dub echoes. Reflection of a moment during which, besides his other projects such as Luomo, Uusitalo or AGF / Delay, he appears to have centered only on the search of sound and musical fluidity.
Vladislav Delay is one of the pseudonyms of Sasu Ripatti (born in 1976). His artist career has been marked, from each of the sonorous fronts on which he has moved (under the names of Luomo, Sistol, Uusitalo and Conoco, apart from Vladislav Delay), frequently extremely different between them, by a continuous progression, a search for new dimensions, that coincides with a certain critic dissatisfaction towards the general electronic music panorama. Initially marked by jazz and by African and Brazilian music, Delay landed on electronic music towards the mid-nineties with records in which he already experimented with abstract sounds, ambient and dub. Some of these works saw the light under the alias Conoco in the 12" "Kemikoshi" (Sigma Editions, 2000). His debut as Vladislav Delay occurred with "The Kind Of Blue EP" (1997). Already in 1999 his first album would arrive, "Ele" (Sigma Editions), and two of its themes ("Kohde" y "Ele") would also be included (in different versions) in his applauded CD "Entain" (Mille Plateuax, 2000). This is a period during which his activity is so intense that he publishes one more album, "Multila" (this time for Chain Reaction), following the line of minimal dub and ambient, without forgetting the previous release of "Sistol" (project of the same name, CD edited in 1999 with the label Phthalo).
Still in the year 2000 he has his debut with the projects Uusitalo ("Vapaa Muurari", Force Inc.) and Luomo, that slippery vehicle that walks on the rough tracks of minimal house, whose first album "Vocalcity" (Force Tracks) became a great hit.
Already in 2001 he retakes the records with his own name in "Anima" (Mille Plateaux, 2001), continued in 2002 by its live version "Naima" (Staubgold).
After releasing in 2003 a second chapter of his house incarnation as Luomo ("The Present Lover", BMG, directed to a wider audience), he returns in 2004 to his facet as Vladislav Delay with the publishing of his first record with Huume, his own label. "Demo(N)Tracks" is a collage with thirteen themes, more influenced by urban life than by any style or merely musical concept. It is really his more literal ambient work, a minimalist and sonorous frame that shows thirteen audiopanoramas with an absolutely personal musical instinct. Assuming new ideas and including acoustic recordings, real drums, etc.
Going back to his concept of electronic music to listen to in his last album, "The Four Quarters" (Huume, 2005), an introspective composition exercise that in some way connects with part of his earlier works' essence, placing him today in one of the most interesting steps of his complex career. After his collaborations with AGF ("Explode", Agf Producktion, 2005) and his participation in The Dolls (Craig Armstrong, AGF and Delay, with a record of equal name edited by Huume in 2005), the four extense themes of "The Four Quarters" show his new creative dimensions in his facet as Vladislav Delay. Meanwhile, and already in 2006, his last work, now as Uusitalo, has been "Tulenkantaja" (Huume, 2006).
Links: www.huumerecordings.com
Thursday 5th October - 19'30 h Exp'06 Program

philip jeck

The British Philip Jeck (1952) is specially known for his crushing and subversive work "Vinyl Requiem" (work done in collaboration with Lol Sargent): a performance for 180 record players of the 50s and the 60s, 9 slide projectors and 2 more 16mm film projectors, with which he won in 1993 the Time Out Performance Award. A sonorous galaxy of old machines, buzzes and vinyls colliding against each other in between grandness, error, chaos and harmony… A complex nonsense that has sense from its own confusion.
Philip Jeck's work, with seven published albums, is like a wide treaty of investigation and exploration, a showcase/catalogue of the infinite possibilities that the old record players and vinyls offer as sonorous tools (and also visual, of course), to transform into a different musical machinery capable of creating something totally new and unknown. In order to do so, Jeck has always played with the improvisation as an element of efficient perturbation: the method of luck, of error or of chance has played in that way the main role in many of his creations. But apart from this the majority of the loops, samples and scratches he uses, proceeding from his arsenal of old vinyl records, are altered by delays, connected and fused with the sounds generated by a Casio, manipulated with the turntables through the velocity control, etc...; a sonic labyrinth that creates a personal confrontation between the old, the analogical in the origin of the sonorous source he uses, and the highly innovating result that he achieves after manipulating the same (reaching in that way much further than the nostalgic fetish of a mere sonorous archaeologist).
During his performances, Jeck uses old vinyls and record players as real music instruments, creating with the sound accumulation that these produce a personal language constructed layer over layer, rhythm over rhythm, noise over noise. The result generates a sonorous architecture full of covering toxicity. But really what can be observed behind that language is how inseparables are the creation process (machines, materials, method) and the sonorous result he achieves: as conceptual as directly emotional.
Philip Jeck studied Visual Arts at the Darlington College Of Arts. He started to work with record players and electronic elements during the earlier 80s, working on both the creation of soundtracks and tours next to dancing and theatre companies and on his own concerts. After the release of the already mentioned "Vinyl Requiem" in 1993, Jeck had developed his musical career at the same time as he centered his attention again on the visual arts, creating countless sonorous installations and performances (between 6 and 80 machines). And also offering concerts for record players or for these combined with other instruments: Casio keyboards, violin, computer…
In 1999 he presents "Vinyl Coda I & II" (13 turntables) for the Munich Radio Bavaria, series continued on that same year with "Vinyl Coda III" and already in 2000 with "Vinyl Coda IV". In that same year he does an installation and performance "Off The Record" for 72 record players as part of Sonic Boom exhibition in the Hayward Gallery of London. And he also performed in the Saalfelden Jazz Festival at Austria with a duet next to Christian Fennesz (3 record players and powerbook). Between 2003 and 2004 he has worked on several occasions with Jah Wobble, highlighting a trio with him and the great Jaki Liebezeit (ex-drummer of Can) for a concert in Belgium.
Regarding Philip Jeck's work with Slant he edited two CDs: "Slant" (Sound & Language, 1993) and "The Canning Toen Chronicle" (Sound & Language, 1994). But it is in 1995 when he starts recording solo with the publication of "Loopholes" (CD, Touch). Later on would come works as interesting as "Surf" (CD, Touch, 1999), where Jeck gives a new twist to his sonorous exploration through the loops and the scratching. Already in the 2000 appears "Live At ICC, Tokyo" (CD, Touch) and the double CD "Vinyl Coda I-III" (Intermedium), editing the next year the definitive "Vinyl Coda IV" (doubleCD, Intermedium, 2001).
His last albums are two outstanding talent, imagination and search exercises. In 2002 "Stoke" (CD, Touch) is released containing seven themes edited from live recordings from their performances in Liverpool, Manchester, Osaka, Tokyo and Vienna, with the exception of "Lambing", track recorded for a Lucy Baldwyn film. "Stoke" was recorded using Bush, Fidelity and Philips record players, plus a Casio keyboard and a portable CD player.
Finally in 2005 Philip Jeck publishes his seventh and last record until now: the magnificent "7" (CD, Touch), presenting material created from home-made recordings and concerts in the United Kingdom, Germany and Belgium, using in this occasion Bush, Ferguson, Fidelity and Philips record players, a portable mini-disc and the usual Casio keyboards. The theme "Bush Hum", created from the amplification of the buzzing of a Bush record player manipulated with a delay pedal, is one of the most brilliant moments of this mysterious and surprising album: a harmonic sonorous swarm full of tiny tones. In "7" a certain control sensation stands out, very different from the rest of his works such as the previous "Stoke", where chance was the driving force of the themes. Here however he plans a certain predetermination, or at least that's what it seems, that makes the noises, scratches, repetitions, buzzes and all the rhythmic non-symmetry that compresses his sonorous speech, finish having a practically baffling sense until they generate something similar (although only slightly similar) to the form of a song. In that way they end up constructing pieces as stimulating as the opening theme, "Wholesome", or passages with soft static atmospheric noise such as "Wipe" (originally conceived for a Marisa Zanotti video) and the one that ends the CD: "Veil".
Links: www.philipjeck.com
Wednesday 4th october - 20'30 h - Gramophonia Exp'06 Program

rag-time (grimo + pierre bastien)

Grimo (Dominique Grimaud) and Pierre Bastien, two of the most relevant artists of the experimental scene not only the French one but also the European, propose a concert specially conceived for Experimentaclub'06 from the "Rag-Time" project, created by the first of them. Several 78 r.p.m. records, turntables and all kinds of mechanic machines manipulated until generating a complex rhythmic meccano full of magic and surprising textures, fusing with minimal synthesizer notes, sonorous effects, guitar and other traditional instruments. Fox-trots and waltzes dislocate, loop on a thousand scratches and their reproduction velocities disarrange until creating a sonorous unheard-of poetry.
Grimo, whose real name is Dominique Grimaud (Chartres, France), is a self-taught multiinstrumentist: guitar, mandolin, banjo, analogical synthesizers (Moog, AKS), sax, sampler, old vinyls and record players...; all of them form part of his particular instrumental arsenal. Grimo has worked during more than 30 years in the field of innovating music: free-jazz or free-rock, sonorous experimentation, electronic or improvised music, all conveniently used with the objective of creating his own musical language.
Grimo's long musical career starts in 1970 with the Camizole group (happenings, improvisations: psychedelia, krautrock, jazz). In 1978 he creates with Monique Alba the duet Video Adventures, project on which he works until 1990 with musicians such as Gilbert Artman, Cyril Lefebvre or Jac Berrocal. Already in the nineties he is co-founder of the Franco-American quartet Peach Cobbler, centered in providing an original revision of the Delta blues of the 30s. In his facet as musical chronist, Dominique Grimaud has made the two book/collages "Un Certain Rock (?) Français", after having collaborated during ten years with the musical magazine Revue & Corrigée.
During the last years Grimo has presented the audiovisual installation "Slide" at many places all around France. This work is again inspired by the blues, improvised music and native American Indian culture: shaman-like improvisations that invoke the natural elements, all of it done with the collaboration of musicians such as Pascal Comelade, Dominique Répécaud, Guigou Chenevier, etc. "Slide" was recorded on CD in 1999 for the label Vandoeuvre.
Aside from directing the collection "Zut-o-pistes", produced and distributed by Muséa Gazul, Grimo has created other three ambitious projects: the audiovisual installation "Les Discônes", the performance "Les quatre directions" and the concert "Rag-Time", whose recorded version saw the light in 2003 with the label In Polysons, the one that served as a basis and inspiration for this joint performance with Pierre Bastien at Experimentaclub'06.
Pierre Bastien (Paris, 1953), artist with capital letters, John Cage's follower, is a passionate fan of the universe of Jules Verne's creations. With a doctorate on 18th century French literature from the Sorbonne University, he wrote his thesis about the pre-surrealist Raymond Roussel. The literary influence in his work extends to Dadaism, Alfred Jarry or Raymond Queneau.
Artistically Bastien starts from a simple, but poetic idea: to combine traditional instruments and mechanical machines of his own invention. Something that has characterised him since he was only a child. The first instrument created by Bastien dates from when he was only ten years old: a two-string guitar constructed with the elements of the toy "Le Petit Physicien". When he was 15 he elaborates his first machine made up from a metronome flanked on the right by a cymbal and on the left by a small pulley.
Since then and during twenty years Bastien has constructed his own orchestra (Mecanium), formed by clever musical machinery constructed from meccano pieces and percussion instruments (drumsticks, bows, etc) that using temporisers and small electric motors they make musical instruments (percussion, string and wind) sound in a repetitive manner, as a loop ad infinitum. Hybrid sculptures, presented as sonorous installations that interpret series of small hypnotic musical compositions. Over this musical support, Bastien incorporates melodies with traditional instruments such as the trumpet or ethnic as the harp-lute dousso'n gouni from Mali, the rubab mandolin from Uzbekistan or the angklung from Indonesia.
But aside from being an unusual inventor, Pierre Bastien is a musician and a composer of enormous talent that has written music for string quartets or ballets. Aside from his solo works, he has always worked with great artists such as Dominique Bagouet (ballet), Pascal Comelade, Jac Berrocal, Jaki Liebezeit (Can), Robert Wyatt, Pierrick Sorin or Issey Miyake.
In the nineties, while the mechanic orchestra continued to grow until reaching the number of 80 elements, the Bastien+Mecanium tandem participated in music festivals and art exhibitions in Norway (World Music Days, 1990), Australia (Tisea, 1992), Japan (Artec, 1995), Canada (Fimav, 1995; Sound Symposium, 1998), Poland (Warsaw Autumn, 1995), USA (Flea Festival, 1996), etc.
Among his many works, records as brilliant as "Mecanium" (1988), "Musiques Machinales" (1993), "Musiques Paralloïdres" (Lowlands, 1998), "Mecanoid" (Rephlex, 2001) and the more recent "Sé Verla al Revés" (G3G, 2005), "Téléconcerts" (Signature, 2005) and "POP" (Rephlex, 2005) need to be highlighted.
Finally, it's necessary to mention the unforgettable performance that Pierre Bastien offered us at Experimentaclub'02, turning without a doubt into one of the best moments of the festival: surprising, unique and magical...
Links Grimo: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/grimo/index.html
Links Pierre Bastien: www.pierrebastien.com - experimentaclub data
Thursday 5th October - 20'30 h - Gramophonia Exp'06 Program

augsburger tafelconfect

photos: baronesseA

Audiovisual German trio formed in Hamburg in 2002 by Jyrgen Hall, Sebastian Reier and baronesseA, three genuine representatives of this unique German electronic music that oscillates between the most radical experimentation and a pop-surreal-dada "attitude" (or something like that). The city of Hamburg is the main centre of operations: a city that will enter the history of the freakiest electronic music for having this crazy microscene of shaken sonorous experimentation created through characters as unique as Felix Kubin, Günter 'Nova Huta' Reznicek, the visual artist Mariola Brillowska, Tim Buhre, the members of Augsburger Tafelconfect or record companies such as Gagarin, Edition Stora or Nneon Records.
The oxidised sonorous turmoil of disarticulated melodies and noises that shapes Augsburger Tafelconfect's music forms part of the artistic panorama mentioned before. Their particular rhythms take the audience on a journey across a very special electroacoustic improvisation where both analogical and digital electronics mix with noise, concrete music and rhythmical disintegrations, all very far away from classics.
Jyrgen Hall (laptop, electronics, synthesizer, drum machine, bass) is known as well for the works he signs as Gunter Adler and for those by his project Groenland Orchester next to Günter Reznicek. Complementing the digital swarm provoked by Hall, Sebastian Reier (processed guitar , drum machine) converts the guitar sound into a permanent collapse of undistinguishable sounds: scratches, collisions, electric wails. To summarise, constant oscillations connected over backgrounds sometimes occupied by atmospheric effects and field recordings. Finally the process is completed on the live performance with the strong and atmospheric colour downloads obtained from the visual creations of baronesseA, designer of the label Nneon (directed by Sebastian Reier).
The debut in their discography of Augsburger Tafelconfect occurred in 2004 with "Fusion In The Slaughterhaus" (CD, Nneon, contains a video track with the magnetic visuals created by baronesseA). A carousel CD in which violent passages are followed by microspaces of apparent calmness, high sounds and backgrounds designed from those ambient recordings mentioned before. Twelve themes shown as chapters of a nearly cinematographic narrative in which the visual work creates the final dimension and the sense of argument unity found on the sounds originated by Hall and Reier. "Franz Müntefering"'s rhythmic short-circuit, cut abruptly from time to time by Reier's guitar, "Bahrenfeld Ausradieren"'s obsessive loop or the melodic subterranean notes submerged under five long minutes of atmospheres and circular noises that make up "ConfectHymne" (the longest theme in the CD), are some of the moments that turn this first album by Augsburger Tafelconfect into one of the most brilliant surprises inside the electronic experimental panorama of the last years.
Also from 2004 are the CDR (an edition of only 150 copies) "Hamburger 8 e.p." (Ultra Eczema), radiophonic session for Radio Centraal Antwerp containing four themes recorded live, among them "ConfectHymne" (mentioned before), and the live single on MP3 format for the netlabel Plakatif.net including the themes "Glitschko Bros. / Täglich Sechs Tassen Muscheltee". And in 2005 a new CDR is released with a live radiophonic session recorded for the Dutch radio: "Radio Worm #58" (CDR, Worm).
Links: www.augsburg.tk - www.nneon.com - www.no-text.net/artist_augsburger.htm
Wednesday 4th October - 21'15 h Exp'06 Program

a*class

photos: baronesseA

A*Class is one of the multiple projects undertaken by two of the most subversive and anxious artists of the German electronic scene: Patric Catani (Candie Hank) and Gina V. D'Orio (50% of Cobra Killer). Although they had already worked together in an earlier project, EC80R, both their careers have been unstoppable and also quite different until they have found each other again in this electro-sabotage-without-compassion project.
Patric Catani has created Candie Hank (a unipersonal Project in which surf waves, disco, mutant rock'n'roll, punk and synthesizers moog collide in an schizoid collage), with which he edited the 12" "Kimouchi" with the record label of Felix Kubin, Gagarin Records, and the CD "A Fistful Of Sweets" (Solnze Records, 2005). For this year's autumn he has planned the release of a new work of Candie Hank: "Groucho Running" (Sonig). He has also collaborated with other artists such as Gonzales, Angie Reed or Puppetmastaz.
Gina V. D'Orio forms part of Cobra Killer next to Annika Line Trost. This savage and explosive electronic-punk generator duo has published records as fierce as their debut CD released in 1998 by Digital Hardcore, the 10" "Heavy Rotation" (Monika Enterprise, 2002) or the "76/77" album (Monika Enterprise, 2004). Aside from the Cobra Killer works, Gina V. D'Orio has published "Sailor Songs" (CD, Dualplover.com, 2003) and as Like a Tim + Gina V. D'Orio "Bass Girl" (CD, Dub Rec/Clone.nl, 2004).
For the moment, as A*Class they've only had time to release the fantastic EP-CD "Ain't No Future But Our Future" edited by Nneon in 2004. Dadaist electropop soup served at high speeds in order to incite lecture at 160 bpm, to avoid wasting time doing nothing and to intellectually develop mind and spirit... although at the end it will be managed by fiesta and compulsive dancing self-whips on a perversely childish disco..; they are sadists with premeditation, and there's no doubt about it. All their message is amplified and served in technominimal pieces with names as emphatic as the sound that mechanically shapes them: "Let's Read A Book" (definitively the best of the lot), "I Don't Like The Prom" (eloquent), "Ain't No Teacher Like Our Teacher" (subnormalising until reaching delirium) and "You Smashed My Glasses" (no, maybe this is the best...; or no, well, really the best is to listen to the four themes in succession and experiment on oneself the secondary effects...). Summarising: discipline, education, learning, high school… and a provocative vanille sexytechnopunk milkshake flowing from your ears… right down to your toes.
Links: www.nneon.com - www.stora.de - www.no-text.net/artist_aclass.htm
Thursday 5th October - 21'15 h Exp'06 Program

jorge haro

photo: Jorge Haro	photo: Humberto Sosa

Jorge Haro (Buenos Aires, 1963), composer, sound and audiovisual artist, has behind him a long career dedicated to investigation in the fields of experimental music, audiovisual pieces, digital art and sound installations. The path he has followed and the quality of his internationally acclaimed works, place Jorge Haro as the most relevant name of that highly imaginative experimental electronic music that has found in Argentina during these last few years one of the most active and interesting scenes.
Until the present date he has edited four CDs: "Fin de siècle" (CD extra, Fin del mundo, 1999), "Música 200(0)" (CD extra, Fin del mundo, 2001), "u_2003" (CDR extra + net-disc, Fin del mundo, 2003) and finally "u_xy" (audio CD, fin del mundo, 2005), a specially outstanding work based on real time electronic sound construction, done by collecting recordings made in concerts at different European cities.
Jorge Haro also has musical pieces in different compilations published in Argentina, Canada, USA, Spain and Poland. He has made audiovisual concerts and installations at Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, USA, Spain, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Germany, Poland and Holland.
He has composed musical pieces in collaboration with Francisco López/Absolute Noise Ensamble, Zbigniew Karkowski and Mitchell Akiyama, among other artists.
Besides he has participated in international festivals such as Sonar, LEM, Observatori, Ertz, Confluencias, Jornadas de Arte Digital (Argentina), Interfaces_02 (Uruguay), Ares y Pensares (Brazil), 5hype (Brazil), Contacto (Peru), Sound Site (USA), 5ta. Bienal de Video y Nuevos Medios de Santiago (Chile), Champ Libre (Canada), Internationale Filmmusik Biennale (Germany), etc...
He is co-director of the site Fin del mundo (www.findelmundo.com.ar) and the LIMb0 project (Laboratory of Multidisciplinary Investigations buenos aires ø) (www.limb0.org).
Finally he is professor in courses of Audiovisual Design in the Palermo University (Buenos Aires) and in courses of Cultural Management and Electronic Arts in the Tres de Febrero University (Buenos Aires Province).
Links: www.jorgeharo.com.ar - experimentaclub data
Friday 6th October - 19'30 h Exp'06 Program

pap a rappper

MissHawaii	E-da

Pap A Rappper is a duo formed by the Japanese MissHawaii (Teppei Ozawa, one of the most singular characters of the bizarre electronic music of labels such as Edition Stora or 19-t Records, with recommended records such as "Hotel New Hawaii") and E-da (The Boredoms' ex-drummer, percussion turned into a real firing squad). Together they guide this crazy vehicle that is devised for live performances, with improvisation as its method: madness, rhythmic earthquakes, toy electronic, screams, cacophonic rap, electrofunk, chaos and noise combine inside the ¿pop? mixer of MissHawaii to turn everything upside-down. From Japanese noise to the new wave, from no-wave to free-rock. A sonic jungle anchored in the E-da drums and propelled by the sequences and melodies weakly drawn by the thousand and one machines that MissHawaii shoots whilst...he howls, screams and twists...
MissHawaii, as a sonorous concept and artist that leaks out over the character itself, the already mentioned Teppei Ozawa, as an electronic vehicle of pop redefinition through microsounds, infected by disco music hangovers, noise, lounge and minimal techno, is really the result of the more than ten years of Teppei Ozawa's musical experimentation. Initially as the drummer of a hardcore group and specially interested in the extreme noise and its Japanese faction represented by artists such Merzbow and groups such as The Boredoms. Later on, already centered on electronic manipulations, what would lead him to associate with the label 19-t Records and to achieve in parallel with it his electrosubversion manoeuvres marked by his own personal background and by the use of accessible melodies and 100%pop influences. Although really, under the varnish of that accessibility, beats a more toxic product...
MissHawaii has published until now two works with 19-t Records: "Untitled" (2001) and his brilliant "Hotel New Hawaii" (2003). The first is the result of five years of thick soup digestion made up of noise, Latin sounds, country, hardcore and electronic, until obtaining a unique and minimal synthesis of complex definition. The second is shown already as a multishaped sound explosion with enough space to play with the lounge-moog in "LastSong", with the elevator and waiting-room lounge in "Poronno", with the chemical and melodic pop in "Zen Nature" or the rhythmic collision in "I Want Do". Seductive bizarrelectronic. In between the publishing of both records, MissHawaii contributed with a theme ("Pyramid") to the 19-t Records compilation "Apa" (2002), accurately defined as Nintendo krautrock...
The other component of Pap A Rappper, E-da, percussionist full of imaginative resorts, ex-drummer since the mid-90s of the legendary The Boredoms (main activists of the extreme Japanese experimentation with the leadership of Yamatsuka Eye), who he met thanks to Mark Ibold (Pavement), lives at present in Brighton (United Kingdom). E-da has also worked with Hilah (who played the bass with Boredoms) under the name AOA and has been collaborator for, among others, Damo Suzuki (ex-Can) or CEK, Mark Clifford's project (Seefeel).
Links: www.rappper.com
Links MissHawaii: www.19-t.com/misshawaii - www.stora.de
Links The Boredoms: www.boredoms.co.uk - http://wiki.theppn.org/The_Boredoms
Friday 6th October - 21'15 h Exp'06 Program

incite/

Incite/ (Hamburg) is an audiovisual electronic duo formed in 2002 by Kera Nagel (who also has her own solo project called Axiomatic Integration: www.a.i.radylon.com) and André Aspelmeier (who also works as GradCom: www.gradcom.org).
Electrominimalism, digital fragmentation and broken rhythms synchronized with abstract videos of cold and grey environments. The sonorous field of Incite/ appears from a rhythmic subterranean punch, austere and at the same time rich in an enormous variety of shades, that acts as a mattress over which they create a musical spectre (multifrequencies) of wide registers and tones, served in the form of layers of a minimal character that progress gradually through loops and patterns that break constantly. All of it with the additional incentive of the conciseness of their compositions: not very long themes, schematic and direct to the nervous centre of the listener.
With the release of their last album (split-CDR, Authorised Version, 2005), shared with the Dutch Staplerfaher, Incite/ have become one of the most solid proposals of the European microelectronic scene of the last few years. Before they had already published "Minimal Listening" (CDR self-edited, 2003, all tracks performed live) and a 7" containing the themes "Neop" / "Procedure" (Fragmented Media, 2004). Sonorous works that adjusted during performances to the video images obtain their definite dimension. And besides Incite/ is a project that has paid since the very beginning a special attention to performances, making them so intense that it contrasts with the rational coldness of the sound.
Aside from their work as musicians and videoartists, Incite/ organize concerts of improvised music in the so-called Audiounit Series (www.audiounit.gradcom.org) and as part of the Hörbar collective (www.hoerbar-ev.de), meeting point for musicians and audience of the electronic, electroacoustic and industrial music scene at Hamburg.
Links: www.incite.fragmentedmedia.org
Saturday 7th October - 21'15 h Exp'06 Program

alfredo costa monteiro

The Portuguese Alfredo Costa Monteiro (Oporto, 1964), who has lived since 1992 in Barcelona, has developed a multiple activity based on plastic arts, sonorous/visual poetry and sound.
Since finishing his studies of Sculpture/Multimedia at the Fine Arts School (Paris), he has already presented several individual exhibitions (from "Sobre las Ruinas" in 1995 to "Linia de fuga" in 2005), participating as well in a wide number of collective exhibitions and being resident at Hangar (Barcelona, 2001-2003), Astérides (Marseille, 2000) and Batofar (Paris, 1999).
Since 1998, he is a member of 22a, an independent collective for contemporary art. Besides, since 2001 he belongs as well to IBA Col.lectiu D'improvisació.
In the sonorous poetry field, he usually collaborates with the French poet Léos Ator, writing and reading during live performances in Portuguese, French and Spanish. He also has several published works, for example, "Axiomáticas" (F30km/s, Barcelona, 2005).
Alfredo Costa Monteiro plays the accordion, the electric guitar and the turntables. Aside from having taken part in Superelvis next to Anki Toner (until he left), Raimon Aymerich and Meteo Giráldez, he has worked with many national and international improvisators (musicians or dancers). He is at the moment member of the following goups: Cremaster (with Ferran Fages), i treni inerti (with Ruth Barberán), Neumatica (with Pablo Rega) and Mut (with Pablo Rega, Ferran Fages, Avelino Saavedra and Artur Fernández).
He has published five solo albums: "Rubber Music" (Hazard Records, 1999), "Les silences de la BnF" (Labofar, 1999), "Paper Music" (Hazard Records, 2001), "Rumeur (for solo accordion)" (Creative Sources, 2004) and "Stylt" (Absurd, 2005). Besides this he has a large discography shared between all his different projects. With Cremaster he has edited five works that go from "Oomfsquawk" (2001) to "32,41 n/m2" (Absurd, 2003). And with i treni inerti two more CDs: "Ura" (Creative Sources, 2003, with Matt Davis) and "Aérea" (Creative Sources, 2005).
Another work which needs to be mentioned is "Small Damage Under Appearance" (Thin Ice, 2002), by the Margarida Garcia / Manuel Mota / Alfredo Costa Monteiro trio. Also his participation in "Atami" (Taku Unami, Masahiko Okura, Ruth Barberán, Ferran Fages, Masafumi Ezaki, Alfredo Costa Monteiro; Hibari Music, 2003), "Atolón" (Ruth Barberán, Ferran Fages, Alfredo Costa Monteiro; Rossbin, 2004), "Cesura" (Ernesto Rodrigues, Guilherme Rodrigues, Margarida Garcia, Alfredo Costa Monteiro; Creative Sources, 2004), "Octante" (Ruth Barberán, Ferran Fages, Margarida Garcia, Alfredo Costa Monteiro; L'inommable, 2004), "Istmo" (Ruth Barberán, Ferran Fages, Alfredo Costa Monteiro; Creative Sources, 2005) and "Diafon" (Ernesto Rodrigues, Barry Weisblat, Alfredo Costa Monteiro; Creative Sources, 2005).
He has also taken part in several compilations from the electropoetry French label L'Ovni Tendre, among which we can highlight "Doggy Style. Poèmes électroniques" (L'Ovni Tendre, 2004).
Currently at work is his next edition of "Z=78 (pt:195,09)" (turntables solo, Audiobot) and "Barcelona" (Cremaster + Mattin, Audiobot).
Links: http://collectiuiba.tripod.com/miembros.htm - www.cremaster.info - experimentaclub data
Friday 6th October - 20'30 h - Gramophonia Exp'06 Program

nista nije nista

Nista Nije Nista is a quartet that comes from Vienna and is formed entirely by women of diverse nationalities such as Croatia, Australia, Germany and Austria. Rebecca Harris (Australia; voice), Ute Marie Paul (Germany; sax), Hemma Pototschnig (Austria; computer and organ) and Natalija Ribovic (Croatia; voice), all with experience in the artistic field (dance, theatre, installations, performances), they coincided in Vienna's University on the year 2000. They rapidly decided to create a performance and experimental music group. Nista Nije Nista was born with the objective of creating an ambitious game of counterpoints between sound and language, a construction full of overlapped layers: atmospheric distortions, tension, sculpted atmospheres as sonorous weightless sculptures, sensual music fused with vocal passages, both talking and singing, both in English and in German (harmonious from Rebecca Harris and abrupt from Natalija Ribovic).
Their encounter with Hans-Joachim Irmler (Faust) will be decisive for the evolution of Nista Nije Nista. His influence and ideas, apart from his labour as producer, will mark the personality of this project, in constant movement between the performance and the strictly musical. During three years they firmly work with Irmler on sessions and more sessions previous to the recording of what would finally be their first record: "Nee Niemals Nicht" (CD, Klangbad, 2004). A complex and thorough creative process, with a big part as well of studio work, directed in the production by Irmler, shown as a puzzle that contains diverse artistic shapes. The international character of Nista Nije Nista is reflected as well in that hybrid character of their compositions. The technique used to finally give a compact structure is the collage (in some way the "Faust" method is present here). Ambient recordings, all kinds of noise, extracts from sax improvisations and fragments of voice, in between melody and cacophony, cut and pasted once and another time, overlap one another until the collage obtains that sonic sculpture character. Everything is constructed step by step by the whole band, sharing all kinds of sounds and sonorous sources with the mixture (for example, the sound of a sewing machine). The result is fascinating, a personal exercise of style that is always capable of being enriched by new contributions.
Links: www.klangbad.de/nista.htm
Sunday 8th October - 19 h Exp'06 Program

bruno & michel are smiling with skipperrr

An atypical close for an atypical festival… Experimentaclub specialises on exploring among the least conventional underground in a constant search for surprising projects, so why not finish Experimentaclub'06 with a live electrokaraokepunk show served by a couple of absolutely crazy singers/dancers/trash-stars? So, yes, this will take place when this impossible-name duo, formed by Oliver Bulas and Charlotte Arnhold (Hamburg again in Experimentaclub) turn on the electricity of their horror machine and honour us with their incredible microshow of electronoise trash and howling gameboys.
Bruno & Michel Are Smiling With Skipperrr is above everything a mixer. Or to be more exact, a shredder. They feed on a thousand references that include from philosophy and the socialist theory to contemporary music (Ligeti, Xenakis, Cage...), from Japanese noise to digital hardcore via the first Atari Teenage Riot, from the Gameboy and videogames to screams and after-after-afterpunk. After chewing this entire information avalanche, they vomit through music their electronic/vocal mixture, leaving you exhausted and at the same time totally addicted to this madness…; served, besides, with a surprising sense of (anti)performance: poses, costumes and trash glamour included.
But there's more. Their peculiar crossroad in between, for example, crazy trash punk in Jason Forrest's style, the extraterrestrial Dadaism like Felix Kubin and the retro sampling similar to People Like Us, is so personal and so them that, far from turning them into a mere mixture, makes them purely unique. Addictive. There's absolutely no doubt that they are special. Very. To start with, they themselves consider their music as a pure contradiction: on one hand they have spontaneity, gut reactions and improvisation; on the other, the abstraction exposed on their mathematical composition techniques via laptop, the same that provide as a result a complex collage of extracted samples (from where? impossible to know for sure), abrupt and extreme changes of rhythm in collision (mutant hardcore vs. childhood melodies vs. technotronic loops) and all the artillery of noises that one can imagine. All this mixture gets even more complicated by the fact that this duet is really formed by two unipersonal projects: Bruno & Michel Are Smiling (Oliver Bulas) and Skipperrr (Charlotte Arnhold).
The sonorous chronic of Bruno & Michel Are Smiling starts in 2002 with his participation in the CD sampler "Nanoloop 1.0" (Disco-Bruit), a compilation formed by material exclusively created in the Game Boy with Nanoloop (synthesizer / sequencer developed for the Game Boy), with the participation among others of Merzbow, Felix Kubin, AGF/Delay, Dat Politics, Pita, Pyrolator, etc. On this same year he includes the track "Oh, Look At All These Lovely Colorful Bubbles" in the 12" "Bio(Me)Tricks" (v.a., Sozialistischer Plattenbau). Already in 2003, now as Bruno & Michel Are Smiling With Skipper, they include the theme "Faith" in the double 7" EP "$kill$ Music" (2003, v.a., Sozialistischer Plattenbau). "Faith" is a 2 minute chaos full of the best ingredients of the couple: screams, howls and shouting, indiscriminate sampling, electrobeat, several varied distortions and madness without breaks.
Also in 2003 "Living-Room Music" is released, a 3" miniCD self-edited by Bruno & Michel Are Smiling, compiling material from between the year 1998 to the 2002: 14 microthemes in total combining pieces (electrodadapunk) and interludes (sampling delirium).
As Bruno & Michel Are Smiling With Skipperrr they are included in 2005 in the compilation "Tsunbosajiki" published by the Japanese Renda Records. And this year 2006 they enter the music panorama dressed as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the cover of their new exquisitively wild record, the 7" EP "The Beach Of Ruined Spirits" (Adaadat), with three new epileptic themes, close to the nintendoapocalypse. "The Beach Of Ruined Spirits", "How Do You Want To Pay For A Weekend Of Truth On The Countryside" and "The Great Millipede" are the three poisonous pills that make up the record and which will be on an electrocuting live karaoke at the Experimentaclub'06 closure.
Links: www.bamas.org - www.skipperrr.com - www.adaadat.com/artist.php?artist=12
Sunday 8th october - 22'15 h Exp'06 Program

peeesseye

photos: Josef Astor

peeesseye is a trio from Brooklyn (New York) formed by Jaime Fennelly (electronics), Chris Forsyth (guitar) and Fritz Welch (drums, percussion and objects). Its music, electroacoustic as regards the media used, is executed (in the literal sense of the word) from a radical personal attitude, breaking preconceived schemes to finish connecting in some way with the roughest and more experimental passages of no-wave. Bursting in a spiralling noise catharsis, hermetic and covering, sometimes similar to a static electricity mattress and others hammering in as a punch of extreme violence.
The three peeesseye's members have always been covered in multitude of parallel projects. The electronicist Jaime Fennelly has worked with Nicolas Field, Chris Heenan, Sean Meehan or Chris Peck. Chris Forsyth, guitarist whose work has always been directed towards the exploration of the limits and the uses of sound as a musical element and of the guitar as a generator appliance, has kept a long collaboration with Ernesto Diaz-Infante (with who he has published several records), Chris Heenan (with who he works in duet format), the Phantom Limb & Bison quartet (where Fennelly is also present) and the collective All Time Present. Finally, Fritz Welch gallops between the sonic and visual fields, working on sound installations, performances, live improvisations, etc, both in the United States and in Europe.
The first record of peeesseye was edited in 2003: "The ___ who had begun his career as a useful ___ of the ___ court later became the ___ of ___ and the ___ of ___." (CD, Evolving Ear). An "impossible" title for an impetuous freely-personal electroacoustic session. Already in 2004 they edited "Black American Flag", second CD, published as all their work through the Evolving Ear label, where the instruments appear to act as ultrasharp scalpels that cut the static microsounds with accurate blows, noise earthquakes of the highest intensity.
After publishing the single "Golden Showers / Catastrophe Of The Infinite Regress" (7", 2004), peeesseye edit halfway through the year 2005 a new CD: "Artificially Retarded Soul Care Operators". Both live and studio recorded, this is its most definite treaty about the encounter of the silence's voluptuousity, the static tension and the improvised fury. Eight themes and fifty minutes of sonic expressionism that in long pieces such as "We Broke The Sun" reach their maximum emphasise. A so "excessive" work that in some way marks a new start in the group's evolution. Something very visible in their next album, recorded live in October 2005 and finally edited in February 2006. We are talking about "oo-ee-oo (burnt offering)" (Evolving Ear), one surprising theme that lasts 31 minutes, improvised, and with which the trio offers a formal change of their sound (instrumentally reconverted here into a harmonium, a not-amplified guitar, percussion and voice) that with ceremonial progression produces much more devastating tension effects than those that inhabited their earlier records. A bridge-work waiting for what will be their new album, "Commuting Between The Surface & The Underworld" (Evolving Ear), whose edition is announced for this 2006 September coinciding with the presentation of peeesseye at Experimentaclub'06.
Links: www.evolvingear.com
Sunday 8th October - 20 h Exp'06 Program

william bennett

William Bennett is twice present at Experimentaclub'06, not only live performing with Whitehouse but also making one of those esoteric-style sessions (as he himself describes them) that he regularly does as a DJ. Whitehouse's founder and extreme electronic music pioneer, Bennett changes in his facet as DJ to mix without any problem Wendy Carlos with Yoko Ono, Esplendor Geométrico with Michel Polnareff or Current 93 with the Russian Red Army Choir.
Links: www.susanlawly.com
Friday 6th October - DJ - 19 to 22 h Exp'06 Program

tra$h converters

The Portuguese Tra$h Converters (Miguel Sá and Fernando Fadigas) represent the playful and more effervescent facet of the record label Variz, of which both of them are in charge.
In their transformation to DJs behind this eloquent name Tra$h Converters, Sá and Fadigas turn their sessions into rubbish shredders, unstoppable manoeuvres of electrobeat-coded recycling... with some constant space for surprising with the unusual and with the moments of retro archaeology. DJ sets where their proposal of electro-noise-techno-pop-acid-house gives place to DJ battles between sale-pop pills and minimal techno and sexy beat shots... impossible to stand still...
Their sessions are frequent at Lisbon, Leiria and Oporto and they have also participated in international festivals such as Hertzoscópio, Cosmopolis, SuperStereo Demonstration, Finnfest, Blue Spot, Boom, Experimenta Design, Belfast Festival at Queens, etc.
Links: www.superstereo2005.variz.org/subpages/tconvert.htm - www.variz.org
Sunday 8th October - DJs - 20'15 h Exp'06 Program

oriol rossell

Oriol Rossell (Barcelona, 1972) is a musician, journalist and independent music programmer. In his facet as critic, nowadays he shares his time among the magazines Ruta 66 and Trax, the journal La Vanguardia and his collaborations for RNE-Ràdio 4. Earlier on he worked for Rock de Lux, Factory or Voice, to name some of them. He has also been responsible of the magazine Hz, a publication specialized in experimental music with unforgettable articles about Japanese noise or about extreme sounds.
Aside from his work as DJ, with sessions in Madrid at clubs such as Radar, Oriol Rossell is also a composer, having collaborated on these last times on contemporary dancing and theatre spectacles for companies such as Teatre Lliure, Àngels Margarit/Mudances, Ballet Gulbenkian and Derivat (www.derivat.org).
As commissary, he participates in the preparation of the programs of festivals as important as Sonar and Offf.
In Experimentaclub'06 Oriol Rossell will prologuize Whitehouse's live act with a devastating punk session (pre1980), without neither concessions nor artys alibis...