Following the cancellation of their Central European tour as a duo in June 2020, Shakeeb Abu Hamdan and Sholto Dobie, together and apart, unveil a remote sonic partition between their respective abodes in Lebanon and Lithuania. Letting a melange of new and archival material wind around each other, swell back and forth and coalesce into a nebulous mass, they tease the temporality of real time improvisation, opting instead for a near mythical, ghost-like exchange.
Sholto Dobie was born in Edinburgh and lives in Vilnius. He uses loose structures and an array of sound-sources including home-made organs and hurdy gurdy. His performances are personal and intuitive, often coming across as delicate, evocative, and absurd.
He has recorded and performed with artists and musicians including Rie Nakajima, Judith Hamann, Lia Mazzari, Shakeeb Abu Hamdan, Mark Harwood, Marja Ahti & Niko Mahti Ahti, Antonina Nowacka, Malvern Brume, Lucia Nimcova and in the group Lo Escucho Lo Pinto.
He has released solo and collaborative music with labels such as Mappa, All Night Flight, Kashual Plastik, Infant Tree, Takuroku, Penultimate Press and Thanet Tape Centre and has toured widely, presenting performances at Cafe Oto (London), Fylkingen (Stockholm), KM28 (Berlin), Himera Festival (Turku), Kraak Festival (Antwerp), Organ Sound Art Festival (Copenhagen), Les Atelier Claus (Brussels), C3 (Milan), Jauna Muzika Festival (Vilnius), Braille Satellite (Lithuania), Counterflows Festival (Glasgow) and Glasgow International.
Shakeeb Abu Hamdan is an artist, musician and recording engineer living in Beirut, Lebanon. His visual work takes the form of publications and print/drawing installations in which he uses found images and texts alongside his own writings and drawings to examine the strange ways that historical narrative is constructed. His book A Life Like Mine, That’s Impossible was published by Samandal Comics in 2021. His sound recordings and live performances are mainly focused on the use of drums, metal objects, bells, and cymbals augmented and amplified with surface transducers, microphones, pitch and modulation effects, cheap looping megaphones and other lo-tech electronics. He has also worked on sound design and music for performance and film. Shakeeb Abu Hamdan live at Ashkal Alwan
