Monday 13 June 2022, 8pm
An evening with performative gymnastics sauced by sound. Organic, synthetic and robotic.
With Coolhaven (nl), Lore Lixenberg (uk), Duncan Harrison (uk)
Coolhaven is one of the subway stations in the most modern town of The Netherlands -Roffa. These aspects (underground, modern, Dutch) reflects themselves in the work and attitude of this mid career trio. Experimental, interdisciplinary and critical. Not as a genre, but as an ethic thanks to Liquid Architecture.
Coolhaven looks like a band based on the principle of diabetics. Their music might be inspired by the disturbance of balance between centrifugal and centripetal energies. The first and last thing Coolhaven has is some kind of concept or idea about how the noises they make should sound. They think about the idea that making ‘good' music is kind of obsolete, and they still havent figured that out yet.
Their UK Tour 2022 is the start of their first performances since Covid 19 hit the breaks. Their latest project concentrates on forgotten Rotterdam based composers and they will perform a potpourri of these works in combination with stretching pieces and avant garde strip-gestures from earlier projects such as Stromboli, Anna, Stromblocque Phantasien, HAAR and the like. Coolhaven can be considered as the godfathers of Roffa underground, but of course the Roffa undergound doesnt think so. But with their regular projects since 1999 they implemented a lot of good and healthy meat into the Rotterdam scene, like fake news (long before Trump), fashion shows, moustache-wearing (long before hipsters) and gabberpunk (long after the 90ties). Coolhaven made a whole lot of records, check their site (no FB or Insta please); coolhaven.org
Lore Lixenberg has evolved a practice based on voice, that has three major features. Firstly, exploring extended vocal techniques and hyper-extensions of the voice (‘BIRD’ and ‘THE BIRD STUDIES’, pieces, that explore language and syntax through birdsong) Secondly, drawing on socially engaged practices (PRET A CHANTER, THE VOICE PARTY) and thirdly, exploring digital technologies and apps for their operatic dramatic potential creating a new form - the APP-ERA, (SINGLR, VOXCOIN, IDENTITY THEFT). Incorporating comedy into her compositions applying bel canto singing into physical theatre, comedy and free-improvisation she works with Simon Munnery, Richard Thomas, Stewart Lee and Complicite (McBurney). She has performed internationally on concert platforms and galleries, opera houses, in operas and has collaborated on experimental installations and vocal performances with experimental composers visual and sound artists like Acquaviva, STELARC, Bruce Mclean, ORLAN, Georgina Starr, Imogen Sidworthy and David Toop. Her stuff has been shown at at The Hamburger Bahnhof , Galerie Nord Berlin, Ikon Gallery UK, The Armory NY, Emily Harvey Foundation NY among others. She published an artist book ‚Memory Maps’, monographic CD ‘The afternoon of a phone’ (£@B). She started THE VOICE PARTY standing in British election of 2019 and will satnd again in 2024. Her vinyl release NANCARROW KARAOKE, a record of Nancarrow piano rolls she transcribed for her own voice multi-tracked is on the De Player label.
Duncan Harrison, poet and sound maker, is one of the strong holders within the South English Weird Noise scene. His music displays a broad array of cut-up sound poetry, improvisational strategies and audio collages with sonic left-overs abstracted from daily environments. No surprise he regularly collaborates with the likes of Dylan Nyoukis, Karen Constance, Pascal Nichols, Ali Robertson and many more.
