Saturday 17 August 2024, 7.30pm
The final night of Elvin Brandhi's 3 day residency welcomes two tantalising new first-time group sets, as well as a performance lecture by Ayesha Hameed and Tom Hirst, and interventions by Illana Blumberg.
Elvin Brandhi is an improvising lyricist, producer and sound artist from Bridgend, Wales, who builds aberrant beats from field recordings, tape, vinyl, instrument and voice. Using sound and voice as an expansive language transgressing intrinsic systemics and inherited syntactical etiquettes, her live shows are unyielding bursts of erupting animation where her caustic stream of consciousness cavorts with restless, glitched out heaviness. Her creative momentum comprises a range of collaborations and an endless nomadism.
Her first E.P ‘Shelf life’ was released on ‘C.A.N.V.A.S’ in 2018. She one half of father / daughter noise-improv berserkers Yeah You who released on Alter, Slip, Opal, Psychik Dancehall and Good Food. She also performs in collaborations such as the Avril Spleen project with Joseph Jadame (maltash), Bahk with Daniel Blumberg (MUTE), as well as contributions to Drew Mcdowall’s agalma, just to name a few.
PETRONN SPHENE (the solo project from Xapheena aka Q.Q. Utslekk aka Urocerus Gigas of GUTTERSNIPE) is the singular manifestation of queer punk cyborg convulsing body music known as “No Wave Rave”. Deploying disrupted polyceleratrix rhythms via MPC1000 drumviolence in symbiosis with icy, futuristic synth flashes and alien femme fatale vokills, PETRONNE SPHENE induces a deranged state of hyper-mobile xenofeminist hysteria recalling ADHD manic episodes, acid flashbacks from speedcore parties and abduction on the dancefloor! Miss XQQU will have several new traxx prepared especially for the fest so prepare yourselves to submit to yet further psychotic results of the eminent Radical Queer Formula for Rhythm and Tonality applied to dance music structural paradigms. Check out new album ‘Exit The Species’ out now on Arcane Pariah!
https://arcanepariahrecords.bandcamp.com/album/exit-the-species
Kenichi Iwasa is a London based improviser and multidisciplinary artist from Japan, also known for his legendary Krautrock Karaoke night, and collaborations with visual artists and musicians such as Beatrice Dillon, Maxwell Sterling and Linder Sterling.
He currently performs with Naima Karlsson under the name Exotic Sin and released LP on Blank Forms.
Ayesha Hameed (London, UK) makes videos, sound works, textiles, and performances. She is also a creative writer, critical essayist and poet. She has appeared on the BBC on several occasions as an artist and thinker. Hameed’s work explores the legacies of indentureship and slavery through the figures of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Her speculative approach examines the mnemonic power of the media she uses and intermixes: their capacity to transform the body into a body that remembers. The motifs of water, borders, and displacement, recurrent in her work, offer a reflection on migration stories and materialities, and, more broadly, on the relations between human beings and what they imagine as nature.
Recent exhibitions include solo exhibitions at Kunstinstituut Melly, Netherlands (2022) and Bonniers Konsthall, Sweden (2022); and group exhibitions at Zeitz MOCCA, South Africa (2022), Liverpool Biennale, UK (2021), Momenta Biennale, Canada (2021), Gothenburg Biennale, Sweden (2019, 2021), Lubumbashi Biennale, DRC (2019) and Dakar Biennale, Senegal (2018). She recently co-directed the residency The Weapon of Theory as a Conference of Birds at the Banff Centre for the Arts (2022) and was an Art Explora Resident at Cite des Arts Paris (2023). She is co-editor of Futures and Fictions (Repeater 2017) and co-author of Visual Cultures as Time Travel (Sternberg/MIT 2021). She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University of London and a Kone Foundation Research Fellow.
Tom Hirst (b. 1978) is a London based musician working out of his studio in Woolwich. His music takes inspiration from hauntological pop, heavy guitar music, computer generated and modular synth-based generative music and science fiction soundtracks. Since the early 90’s he has been producing, collaborating and playing in bands in the UK and abroad. Performing and recording under his aliases Design a Wave and American Sound, his chameleon-like style has seen his music released by a variety of record labels including Alien Jams, Alter, Subsubtropics and Rush hour's no label. He plays guitar in Alice Band and writes and performs with Freya Barlow as synth pop duo Sugar Daddy. Past projects have seen him working with artists including Alice Theobald, Lizzie Homersham and Ayesha Hameed.
Kenichi Iwasa is a London based improviser and multidisciplinary artist from Japan, also known for his legendary Krautrock Karaoke night, and collaborations with visual artists and musicians such as Beatrice Dillon, Maxwell Sterling and Linder Sterling.
He currently performs with Naima Karlsson under the name Exotic Sin and released LP on Blank Forms.
MICROCORPS is the new project by artist and musician Alex Tucker (Grumbling Fur, Alexander Tucker, Imbogodom) exploring electronics, cello and voice.
Tucker’s ever-evolving soundworld continues to unfold with this collection of harsh realms centred around processed electronic systems, strings and vocal manipulations. On the new album, MICROCORPS employs altered voices, sound synthesis and atomised beat constructions. In a move away from previous projects XMIT investigates erasing the self, removing obvious traits of the hand and voice, and allowing a focus on the humanoid rather than the human. Instead of recognisable lyrics and coherent imagery, MICROCORPS evolved synthesised voices to generate alternate characters.
Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award winning composer, turntablist and performer. She previously led experimental arts project TOPH, TUSK FRINGE and TUSK NORTH, and in November 2022, received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards For Artists in recognition of her contribution to music composition. Her music has recently been described as ‘genuinely ground-breaking’ (London Jazz News 2022) and ‘high-velocity sonic surrealism’ (4* The Guardian 2022). Recent releases include ‘BOWN’ on Heat Crimes, 'SADTITZZ' and ‘SKEEN'. Recent performances include Turntable Trio with Evicshen and Maria Chávez at Counterflows/ REWIRE 2023, and as soloist and co-composer of ‘6 Scenes for Turntables and Orchestra’ with Matt Shlomowitz for ICTUS/Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, for the final concert at IM Darmstadt 2023.
knitted installation and live interaction and hats
Driven by a relentless appetite for boundless experimentation, Ziúr has been subverting expectations since she was a teenager, corkscrewing through hardcore, metal and punk before veering towards electronic music's turbulent fringes. She produces just like she DJs, gathering a wide variety of ingredients and figuring out the most intriguing, unexpected ways to simmer them into a coherent narrative that helps listeners synchronize the conflicting messages that surround them. Genre isn't a fixed point for Ziúr, but a color in a vast palette that stretches across history and borders, helping illustrate music that's powerfully subversive - a vivid crack of light in a dim, lifeless cultural landscape. It's easy to see why Pitchfork labelled her "a master storyteller" in 2019.
Currently, Ziúr is working with Lebanese contemporary artist and composer Tarek Atoui on a series of projects that have included contributions from legendary percussionist Susie Ibarra and versatile multi-instrumentalist Nancy Mounir. And she's sharpening her engineering and production skills, having worked with Vietnamese collective Rắn Cạp Đuôi on their debut album 'Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế', and with Mexican-American producer Debit on her forthcoming album. Constantly evolving and eagerly surveying the world's shifting cultural topology, Ziúr's forward motion is her greatest strength.
