Sunday 4 March 2018, 7.30pm
Fantastic line-up from Chinabot – a platform and collective created to change the dialogue surrounding Asian music.
"In 2017, a digital diaspora community, a multi-disciplinary label and network of Asian artists decided to cooperate on a new way to collect and promote exciting Asian music. We want to show a slice of what we like, the cultures we come from and our own ideas. We’re an online community and a virtual home celebrating the music that falls between the gaps -- a place for adventurous listening.
Chinabot is positioned at the junction point between the influence of Asian music on contemporary/traditional sounds, music outside the mainstream and the development of experimentation. We work with composers, sound artists, improvisers and musicians to develop projects that rearrange the furniture of the musical world. We want to question our assumptions about what music is and where it can go."
"A stellar beginning to a new project well worth keeping an eye on as it gathers speed" – The Quietus
Samin Son is a Korean artist working in a range of mediums including painting, sculpture, video, installation and sound with performative strategies.His work has featured in exhibitions throughout New Zealand and on an international platform including Germany, Serbia, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, USA and Australia.
He has also organised live music and art events with magazine White Fungus. For Solo 2014 Samin has created a deeply personal performance work based on a 1930s song from the Japanese occupation era of Korea that his grandfather taught him and how this song relates to his own experiences growing up in New Zealand and attending military service in Korea.
Pisitakun is from Bangkok, Thailand. He started making visual arts and music in 2014 and is interested in music in different media environments. He uses a variety of inspirations in his songs, such as historical events, synthetic sounds, and musical instruments. In 2016, the album "Black Country" began to be prepared. In this album, Pisitakun is talking about a country full of dialogues between dark voices.
As Thai history currently unfolds under martial law following the military coup d’état on 22 May 2014 – the thirteenth since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932 – Pisitakun’s practice represents a decisive break from many of his Thai peers: he questions fundamental and increasingly universal values without merely decrying the fact of corruption or offering neat palliatives.
Pisitakun's works are based on political speculation and the external and internal frustrations artists are subject to.
LAFIDKI is a London-based sound/visual artist, and founder of Chinabot, a platform and collective created to change the dialogue surrounding Asian music. LAFIDKI is the moniker of Saphy Vong, who has been releasing experimental electronic since 2008. He was born in a refugee camp in Phanat Nikhon (Thailand) to Cambodian refugee parents who fled Pol Pot's regime and was raised in France. He released his EP ‘Absynthax’ via Orange Milk records. He's a sound artist and conceptual collagist who performs around the world. His music is an confluence of ideas, synthesising multiple underrepresented histories, geographies, musical genres and cultural signifiers into compelling, colourful sonic material that packs contemporaneous dancefloor weight.
LAFIDKI has played at a number of international festivals: Donau Festival 2018 (Krems), VIA 2012 (Pittsburgh), Nuit blanche - French Institute 2016 (Kyoto/Japan), represented Cambodia at Tallinn Music Week. He has shared stage with Hype Williams, KXP, Tzusing, James Ferraro, Nightmares on Wax, Molly Nilsson, Andy Stott, Varg, Tropic of Cancer, Laurel Halo, Amnesia Scanner, Faka and James Holden.
Ayankoko is the solo musical effort of French-Laotian multi-instrumentalist and composer David Somphrachanh Vilayleck; a fusion of jazz, sound design, traditional, noise, ambient, computer music, and classical. He studied at the French conservatories of Perpignan and Strasbourg and has a PhD in jazz guitar, improvised music and composition. Vilayleck has been working for 20 years in the fields of jazz, dub and experimental music. Ayankoko is an ever-evolving project which questions the ear about sound perception, its raw nature, the definition of music and the concept of ugly-beauty. Ayankoko uses syncopation, abnormal time signatures, and polyrhythms to explore new conceptual frameworks and create an overwhelming feeling of weightlessness. On his new album ‘Kia Sao ກ້ຽວສາວ’, Ayankoko advances his technique, pushing it as far as he can, from complex abstraction to blissful bursts of melody. He's a co-founder of Chinabot, has released Kia Sao and Khmu Thidin on the label.
"Laotian outfit Ayankoko crafts an electrified molam track full of insane noodled wig out jamming." – The Quietus
“Ayankoko’s “beneath the stains” squeals and shrieks through scratchy glitches and signals that crackle on a ghostly transmission.” – The Wire Magazine
"Listening to Kia Sao ກ້ຽວສາວ, it’s easy to just take its scatterbrained electronic mayhem at face value and revel in Vilayleck’s endlessly spiraling melodies and floor-rattling rhythms; but such distraction also feels tantamount to what AYANKOKO attempts to expose here. Kia Sao ກ້ຽວສາວ’s avant-garde party of sped-up signal jamming and multi-colored noise sits atop a past whose horrors live on to this very day, making Kia Sao ກ້ຽວສາວ an incredibly contemporary illustration of what it is to be alive in our current age. As thrilling as it is to take in such a futuristic fusion of styles from all over the globe, AYANKOKO asks how we arrived at such a cacophonous, hypnotizing intersection of sound and whispers of the scars we’ve left in our wake." – Sam Goldner for Tiny Mixtapes
