Friday 2 October 2015, 8pm
Laura Naukkarinen, aka Lau Nau is one of the most interesting names in the Finnish music scene – a singer-songwriter, producer and film music composer. Her songs are imbued with a cinematic breadth of vision and her idiosyncratic, finely honed soundworld builds on fragile, spectral otherness. Her fourth album ”HEM. Någonstans” (Fonal records 2015) takes us to the fleeting borderline between contemporary classical and experimental music.
“[Lau Nau is] credited with 23 different instruments (including beer cans and colourful juice glasses), but her music is simple and uncluttered. Lone acoustic plucks, simple violin drones and sparse percussion rattles seem like vast universes when placed in Naukkarinen's divine hands.” – Marc Masters, The WIRE, review of ‘Kuuthartha’
LAU NAU, aka Laura Naukkarinen, is one of the most interesting names in the contemporary music scene in Finland. Her songs are imbued with a cinematic breadth of vision and her idiosyncratic, finely honed sound world builds on fragile, spectral otherness. She works using both acoustic and electronic instruments, from field recordings to analogue synthesizers, from vocals and traditional instruments to musique concrete and found objects.
Formed of musician and artist Rie Nakajima, Cafe OTO co-founder Keiko Yamamoto, percussionist and photographer Marie Roux and violin player Billy Steiger, O Yama O explores a certain domestic and democratic quality of everyday life, born through associations to folk music of Japan and a folding of myth, tradition, and routine; the non-spectacular and the sublime. They move between pop and the philosophical, defined by the overall space afforded to texture and movement. In small, delicate sound an intimate musical climate is established that reflects on life, telling stories of improvised clockwork, whispered dreams, small movements of the hand and the rhythm to be found in the shuffle of a deck of cards.
The group have performed since 2014 at venues and festivals such as noshowspace, Ikon Gallery, Wysing Arts Centre, Supernormal, Borealis Festival, Mayhem, and allEars Festival.
Billy Steiger was born in Howth on the 16th December, 1986. Now he plays the violin.
“Then he sat down by a pond and began to play a tune. As he played, the most extraordinary thing happened. One by one the fish in the pond began to jump out and fly about in the air. And what is more, they were all different colours and they were singing to the music.”
Patrick, Quentin Blake.
https://billysteiger.bandcamp.com/
