Wednesday 24 July 2024, 7.30pm
Please note that Andrea Belfi has had to drop out due to an accident. He will be replaced by Mohammad Reza Mortazavi.
A special 10 year anniversary show from the great exploratory Toronto-based record label, Marionette, who have been publishing a wide spectrum of experimental music and visual art for the past decade.
Tonight's line-up features Iranian percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, Max Loderbauer, and Hungarian electronic music producer, Laurine Frost, plus a DJ set from Marionette label founder, Ali Safi, aka grimwig.
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi is a virtuoso percussionist from Iran, known for playing traditional Persian instruments such as the tombak and daf. After developing more than thirty new striking techniques and progressing to be one of the most prominent players in Iran, Mortazavi travelled to Germany, eventually settling in Berlin to record and perform regular concerts the world over. His acclaimed performances have taken place in venues such as Berlin Philharmonie, Paris Pantheon, Villa Medici and Sydney Opera House. In recent years, he has been embraced by the experimental electronic music community, collaborating with artists such as Burnt Friedman or Mark Fell. His latest album, Ritme Jaavdanegi, was published by Latency.
From the legendary Sun Electric, to the Moritz Von Oswald Trio, his Vilod collaboration with Ricardo Villalobos, Non Standard Institute with Tobias Freund, and more recently the Ambiq improvisational live act - Max Loderbauer’s career in music spans the last 3 decades, yet he’s still managed to keep his listeners hungry by releasing only 3 solo albums to date. Two of those releases (Transparenz, 2013 and Donnerwetter, 2020) were on Tobias Freund’s label Non Standard Productions – his long time collaborator and Templehof studio mate. In between those releases, Loderbauer graced Marionette with Greyland in 2016, revealing a previously unheard youthful and sentimental side. In 2022, the seasoned mind voyager presented Petrichor, making yet another rare and treasurable solo appearance. Max Loderbauer will be marking his Cafe Oto debut to celebrate 10 years of Marionette.
Surgically layering dub-infected sounds and psychedelic jazz elements into complex contemporary compositions that challenge heads from the avant-garde to the IDM scene, Laurine Frost gained a reputation for being an outlaw when it comes to the norm of musical standards. Operating within unpredictable structures, unusual programming of rhythmic formulas, and narrative driven concept albums, Frost consistently eludes trends and classifications. In 2020 he co-founded the Budapest-based independent label LYKA, which is meant to be the new platform for his advanced electronic works, including his debut album ’Lena’ (2020), and the second part of the series ’Nimfa’, released in mid 2021.
Founder of the Toronto-based Marionette label, Ali Safi, relies on intuition to form a dialogue bridging the disparate worlds that inspire a growing catalogue of oddball releases. Under his grimwig moniker, he carefully selects and blends records into seamless mixes suited for bean bag ambient nights all the way to the smokey afterhours.
