AFUM 2009 Gig Last Night

AFUM 2009: Tristan Louth-Robins (20/04)

Tristan Louth-Robins presented an interesting live set at the AFUM last night. The exploitation and exploration of artefacts and limitations is something that lies close to my heart, and as such the acoustic soup of run-out grooves and snippets of speech and melodies alongside the iPhone music apps worked really well.

With a strong grounding in performance, Tristan certainly delivered throughout his set with some excellent transisitons and manipulations. The rhythmic repetitions worked especially well, building up clusters of sounds in real time using the record player and an assortment of records as source material.

AFUM 2009: Christian Haines (16/04)

There is something almost magical about the power of (music) technology to help us as humans transcend the limitations of our senses and perception - whereby even a process as simple as amplifying the melting of ice must be listened to with some level of reverence, as acoustic events outside of the normal sphere of our existence are revealed.

The concept of failure aesthetics was somehow captured very nicely in Christian Haines' performance. The highlight of the show was the reinterpretation of Ligeti's Poème Symphonique for 100 Metronomes for mobile phones. Although there was some waiting involved (in order to get all of the perfomers' mobile phones set up correctly) it was well worth the wait.

I love phase-based rhythms and melodies, and so this work was a special treat especially with the unique spatialisation of having the performers as part of the crowd. The mind seems to wonder from one phase relationship to the next, and it is reminiscent of listening to a complex chord / drone for an extended period, in that one will focus on a particular part of the timbre for a certain amount of time before moving on to other elements. This was the rhythmic equivalent.

A good dose of humour was present as well.

AFUM 2009: Jason Sweeney with Tristan Louth-Robins (15/04)

Jason Sweeney and Tristan Louth-Robins presented an improvised laptop performance, consisting of droning samples, synthesis material and real time recording.

The mesmerising nature of the performance proved very successful, as the sonic material slowly drifted and traveled from one audio 'landscape' to another. With live sets like these, one can't help but to wonder about a subconscious underlying, internal narrative - perhaps not in a linear sense, but in an overall descriptive one. The use of field recordings to enhance this feeling alongside the spatialisation of the audio and the subtle sonic morphologies all gave rise to an excellent set, one which I was happy to have been present at.

Hidden Village Presents: Paul Slocum's You're Not My Father

Hidden Village are proud and honoured to present the first Australian screening of Paul Slocum's You're No My Father at our next concert at the Adelaide Festival of Unpopular Music.

This work was a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Programme Announced for AFUM09

Adelaide Festival of Unpopular Music - AFUM 2009

April marks the end of the fourth year of musical activity at de la Catessen. To celebrate, a selection of musicians with a special emphasis on those working in Adelaide’s underground, experimental, and academic fields will present a series of concerts from April 12-23. The programme is as follows:



Sunday, April 12th, 3:30pm
Monday, April 13th, 6:30pm
$20/$15
ALEKSANDR TSIBOULSKI & JACOB CORDOVER
Classical Guitars

Five years after their intensive collaboration at the Banff Centre in Canada, two of Australia’s most gifted young guitarists come together for a one-off reunion tour across Australia. The versatile programme will feature solo sets, and duos, including the rarely heard contemporary virtuosic masterwork “Clocks” by American composer Joan Tower, Antonio Jose’s “Sonata”, and “Three Duets” by Australia’s own guru, Phillip Houghton.

Jacob Cordover resides in Barcelona, and this will be his first concert performance in Adelaide.



Monday, April 13th, 3pm $10/$8
DAVID KOTLOWY: prepared guitar, ruined piano, shakuhachi
ADE SUHARTO: dance
STEVEN KOTLOWY: bowed metallophones

Leading Adelaide composer David Kotlowy gives his final performance here before embarking for an extended stay in Japan as the 2008 recipient of the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Japan Travel Fund.



Tuesday, April 14th, 10pm $5
DEREK PASCOE
saxophone

Derek Pascoe is among the leading free improvisers in Adelaide, whose rigorous approach to musical self-discipline gives a profound assurance to his rare extended solo public performances.


Wednesday, April 15th, 8pm $5
JASON SWEENEY with Tristan Louth-Robins:
Panoptique Electrical

Panoptique Electrical is both an experimental studio project by Jason Sweeney and occasional collaborations with Zoë Barry, Jed Palmer, Tristan Louth-Robins (live performers) and Steve Phillips (Sensory Projects record label). Sweeney has been composing sound and music scores for live theatre, dance, film/video and installation projects since 1998. The first album Let The Darkness At You was released in 2008. The new album Yes to Fear, Yes to Desire will be released in July 2009 on Sensory Projects/Inertia Music.



Thursday, April 16th, 8pm FREE
CHRISTIAN HAINES

This performance by Christian Haines will an eclectic exploration of the mobile phone, Ligeti, failure aesthetics and the highly relevant amplification of the sound of ice melting.



Sunday, April 19th, 8pm $5
TRISTAN LOUTH-ROBINS

Using a combination of laptop, turntable and iPod, Tristan Louth-Robins (red_robin) creates live electro-acoustic improvisations of rich sonic textures interspersed with restrained melodic gestures and deviations.



Monday, April 20th, 8pm $5
MINIMAX
featuring
LUKE HARRALD - computers
DEREK PASCOE - saxophone
CHRIS MARTIN - piano

As a collaborative project between electronic music teacher Luke Harrald and the gestalt of the accomplished free-impro duo of Martin and Pascoe, MiniMax offers a complex live audio-visual performance.



Tuesday, April 21st, 8pm
BITCHES OF ZEUS
solo sets and trio by
DANIEL VARRICCHIO
PATRICK SARACINO
MOURGOS GRUND

Post-rock-logged sponges of musical performance practice: intuitive, unpredictable, uninhibited, confronting, self-taught, and psychedelic, Bitches of Zeus members Varricchio, Saracino, and Mourgos Grund offer sibylline commentary on unpop-culture.



Wednesday, April 22nd, 9pm
ADAM PAGE SOLO

Adam Page Solo is at the forefront of a new and unique style of performing, recording live instruments into loop pedals and spontaneously composing intricate grooves in many different styles. Primarily a Saxophone player, the instruments Page loops are as diverse as Bass, Keys, Percussion, Vocals, Tuvan Throat Singing, Beat Boxing, Guitar, Flute, Clarinet, Mbira (African Thumb Piano), Didgeridoo and Nose Flute in styles ranging from Funk, Tango and Punjabi to Classical, Jazz and Metal. He has even dabbled in playing drilled out vegetables.



Thursday, April 23rd, 7:30pm
HIDDEN VILLAGE

As Hidden Village, Lauren Tomczak and Sebastian Tomczak are internationally recognised musicians of the online chiptune community. They draw upon an eclectic collection of retro game consoles, such as the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Vectrex and original Gameboy, utilising recently developed sound software to create a performance duo. They endeavour to explore the use of relatively unconventional hardware and software in music making, such as the use of mobile phones as homebrew portable instruments and the construction of self-designed digital sequencing devices from scratch as performance.

Additionally, they have designed and implemented a number of physical interfaces for use in musical performance involving light and water as well as an interface for the Vectrex videogame console. They have performed at the Australian Computer Music Conference (2006), the Tyndall Assembly Concert Series (2007), and expanded to perform as Hidden City for the opening of the 2008 Adelaide Festival of Arts, alongside Stephen Whittington, Luke Harrald, Derek Pascoe and the Zephyr Quartet.

The closing concert of AFUM is one of Hidden Village’s major performances for 2009, and will feature a keyboard controlled walkman-mellotron, singing bowls, and live VGA hacking.

Hidden Village @ The Festival of Unpopular Music (23.04.2009)

Hidden Village (Cloud Sparrow and little-scale) are playing for an evening as part of the 5th Festival of Unpopular Music. We will be running an array of Sega Master Systems (hopefully at least four), as well as keyboard-controlled cassette machines, circuit bent toys and gamelan wind chimes, and probably more.

If anyone is in Adelaide (Jacko and Freezedream, I'm looking you) you are expected to attend because it will be one of the main shows that Hidden Village will be playing at in 2009.

DETAILS:

Date: April 23rd, 2009
Time: 7.30 PM onwards
Cost: TBA
Venue: De La Catessen Gallery, Anster Street, Adelaide.


Be there and be square.

Still early days for this show, more details TBA as well.