Thursday 19 April 2018, 7.30pm
The excellent Discrepant record label celebrates its seventh anniversary with a diverse and vital cross section of artists from the roster.
Pierre Bastien’s is a French gentleman born 1953 who builds his own machineries, at the cross between music and visual art, blending live trumpet sounds with screen projections of on-site mechanical sound sculptures in a very poetic way. His work is described as “a timeless sounding orchestra, both futuristic and slightly dada, conjuring ancient traditions in its surprisingly sensuous music.” His work has been called a “mad musical scientist with a celebrity following” by The Guardian. In 1986 he formed his own self made one-man orchestra, Mecanium and made over 20 records over the years. For this concert Pierre presents Quiet Motors, a concert with his home-made machines as heard on his latest record for Discrepant.
“My sound machines cannot be found in the music shop. I slowly construct them in my studio, with a screw driver and a soldering iron. They don't hide in a steel case labelled by a Japanese top brand. Instead they exhibit their mechanisms from the electro motor that activates the wheels and gears, to the final movement that produces the sound. Along the concert they are filmed and projected in real time and in a big scale. The large projection shows every source of sound and magnifies every mechanical activity. Then the listener becomes also a viewer and an explorer: he travels into the sound, he discovers the music both by listening and watching, as if he were having a walk inside the composition.” Pierre Bastien, 2017
Carlos Casas is a filmmaker, visual artist and musician whose work is a cross between documentary film, cinema, and contemporary visual and sound arts. He will be joined by David Toop for a special presentation of his last album for Discrepant, Pyramid of Skulls.
Inspired by the common task (Fedorov) and the people of Pamir in Tajikistan, Pyramid of Skulls deconstructs far away sights and sounds to create a unique field recording experiment that equally worships past, present and future traditions. Nikolai Fedorov thought the Pamir to be the cradle of humanity, the hidden and forgotten nest, a Pyramid of skulls that holded the secrets of past human kinship. He believed that most Asian myths of human origin pointed the Pamir region as their inception. For the Chinese, Indian and Semitic myth, this mountainous region of Central Asia, often referred to as 'the roof of the world' was the key to understand and start his resurrection plan.
Tasos Stamou is an electroacoustic music composer, performer, alternative music technologist, instrument builder and tutor. He will premiere a live version of his recent electroacoustic music project ‘Musique Con Crete’ for Discrepant (CREP54). The record is the result of a three-year creative research project across Crete (GR) where for a 3-year period Tasos was collecting field recordings, performing and recording with local musicians, producing electronic compositions and gathering old records and tapes of traditional music of the region. The project resulted in an assembling of a unique sound collage which reflects his personal experience as a music visitor to this part of the South Mediterranean with one of the richest ancient history and living traditions.
