Friday 4 October 2019, 7.30pm
"We live in a musical era defined by historical reappraisal - a noble moment which has rescued a near countless number of incredible albums from lingering neglect and loss. As wonderful and exciting as this is, it has come with an unexpected, but increasingly acknowledged consequence. With so many eyes on what was, we risk allowing history to repeat, subjecting today’s artists to the same forms neglect which plagued the past. It’s becoming increasingly rare to encounter record labels which entirely dedicate their energies to our contemporary landscape of sound, but this is what the French / English imprint, Hands in the Dark, has done - taking it a step further with an emphasis on those discrete, subtle, and understated efforts which take time to percolate and unfold." (text is courtesy of Soundohm)
Drawing on a diversity of approaches and influences, Piotr Kurek creates hypnotic music centered on the human voice and occasionally composes for film and theatre. Known to work as a solo musician, but also as part of various collaborations, he has released music on Unsound, Edições CN, Mondoj, Hands In The Dark, Black Sweat Records, Dunno, Sangoplasmo and other labels.
Piotr Kurek has performed extensively, presenting his work at numerous music festivals like Unsound, CTM, OFF, TodaysArt and UH Fest, as well as participating in extensive tours in Poland and abroad. He is an alumni of SHAPE platform and OneBeat by Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation. In recent years, he was also invited to residencies at EMS in Stockholm, Sweden and Gyeonggi Creation Center in Ansan, South Korea.
He has scored both short and feature length films, including Sebastian Mihăilescu "Mammalia" (Berlinale 2023), Magnus von Horn’s “Sweat” (Cannes Official Selection 2020). He is a regular collaborator of an acclaimed Polish theatre director Grzegorz Jarzyna from TR Warszawa, as well as Tian Gebing from Beijing’s Paper Tiger Theatre Studio. Among his recent productions are Jarzyna’s "Solaris 4” which opened the New Stage of the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, as well as Tian Gebing's "Heart Chamber Fragment" for Münchner Kammerspiele. Music from his various theatre productions was collected into a release titled “A Sacrifice Shall Be Made / All The Wicked Scenes” released by Warsaw imprint Mondoj in 2020.
Parisian Matthias Puech released his debut for Hands In The Dark in Autumn 2018, the unique album ‘Alpestres’. A researcher by day, he transforms into a nocturnal narrator of sound travel by night, his album seemingly taking us on a mythical, magical hike up to the inaccessible heights of the Alps. Puech creates a vast collection of untouched electronica landscapes with modular synthesisers built by his own hands. With his various devices, he emulates the sounds of nature and gives sonic form to feelings, forming an alternate reality. The invitation to immerse yourself here brings with it a share of paradoxes: sublime nature can be as fragile as it is violent, and the intimacy of finding yourself alone in the face of it contrasts with the multitude of rare, silent creatures that inhabit such places.
Papivores is French violinist Agathe Max and British musician and producer Tom Relleen. Both have been leaving their mark on the field of contemporary music for a number of years - Max within numerous solo and collaborative projects - Kuro, Mésange, etc, and Relleen as half of Tomaga. Death And Spring marks the duo’s debut, offering a incongruous and unexpected, yet somehow entirely logical collision of highly individualised creative worlds. A sweeping, scratching, deconstructed melodic realm of depth and ambience - acoustic timbres, textures, rhythms , and tones basking in an electronic expanse, Death And Spring unfolds as an immersive conversation, ranging from tense and uneasy, to the hormonic and sublime. Growing from a fascinating conceptual approach to writing, using a novel by Catalan writer Mercè Rodoreda as its departure point, it folds the author’s magical realist reverie into questions which address oppression and authoritarianism, becoming, in Papivores’ hands, a politicised spectrum of sound which unveils the rich sense possibility for human concern, still possible and evolving within the world of experimental music.
