Murmurists

Murmurists is the name Anthony Donovan gives to what he makes as a composer. Murmurists began as a solo art project as long ago as 1991; subsequently developing, through myriad fluid stages, to include small-scale live groups, usually improvised, to more recent highly-structured recordings, wherein speech and narrative are central components, with an international array of voice-artists performing Donovan's prose. Murmurists is by now also a large-scale cross-disciplinary live act, of anywhere between 10 and 20 persons, and encompasing spoken word, contemporary dance and theatrical elements, around musicians and artists drawn from the best of the UK experimental scene, all reacting to graphic scores and timings devised by Donovan as a strategy to offer live, semi-improvised versions of his written material.

Members are associated with projects such as Henry Cow, Stars of the Lid, Juxtavoices, Faust, Black Howler, Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere, Acid Mothers Temple, Crush!!!, Dunning/Webster, Destroyevsky, The Artaud Beats, Redstart, London and Birmingham Improvisers Orchestras, Echo City and Union Furnace, as well as collaborations with artists as great and diverse as John Zorn, Adam Bohman, Chris Cutler, Bryan Lewis Saunders, Bob Cobbing, Lol Coxhill, Mark Wastell, Mick Beck, Pat Thomas, Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Evan Parker, John Langford, Gary Lucas, Sharon Gal, Damo Suzuki, Ingrid Plum, Paul Hession, Charlie Collins, Bela Emerson, Steve Beresford and Yoko Miura.

On this occasion, Murmurists will be: Martin Archer (bass clarinet, recorder, voice), Mark Browne (soprano sax, percussion, voice), Michael Clough (foley, voice), Annie Dee (foley, voice), Anthony Donovan (voice, bass, film), Jo Dyer (dance, voice), Geoff Leigh (flute, soprano sax, voice), Jane Munro (dance, voice), Anthony Osborne (alto sax, voice), Rosie Osborne (foley, voice), KT Reeder (trombone, voice), Carolyn Roy (dance, voice), Walt Shaw (percussion, voice) and Paul Shearsmith (trumpet, voice).

https://www.facebook.com/Murmurists
https://alrealonmusique.bandcamp.com

HARMERGEDDON

Harmergeddon is Nathan and Fae Harmer, London based a/v performance art duo formed in 2010. From the unwanted, unheard and unseen they create instruments, installations, sound pieces and visuals improvised as a feedback loop between gesture and combined consciousness. Consumed electronics, kinetic pulse, drifting texture, undulating drone, amber cloud, alternating current, corrosive rain, dots behind the eyes, light becomes sound, rebuilt from the ground up with whatever comes to hand.

harmergeddon.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/harmergeddon
twitter.com/harmergeddon

GUY HARRIES & YUMI HARA

Yumi Hara (vocals, found objects) / Guy Harries (electronics, vocals, found objects).

Yumi and Guy’s first performance of their ’Sound Rituals' was at a Kurt Vonnegut tribute event at Café OTO in 2011. Inspired by Vonnegut’s novel Galapagos, the duo’s improvisations are a form of retro-futuristic shamanism in a post-apocalyptic world where musical instruments have been lost and a new music is created using the debris of civilisation.

Since then, the duo has attracted international attention and has performed at Druskomanija Festival in Lithuania and across Japan, including the JASMIM conference in Kyoto. Their releases include Sonic Rituals (2014, Migro) and WHEELS within WHEELS (2015, Sombre Soniks), and they are currently working on a new album in collaboration with Haco.

They are also highly active individually in avant-rock and contemporary art music. Guy is a member of the POW Ensemble, and Yumi performs with The Artaud Beats (with Chris Cutler, John Greaves and Geoff Leigh), Tim Hodgkinson and Tatsuya Yoshida among others.

http://www.guyharries.com
http://yumiharacawkwell.co.uk/