Liquid Architecture: Sound Artists at Wine Cellar

THURS 17th August ­ 7 pm
Philip Brophy (AUS)
Thembi Sodell (AUS)
Rosy Parlane (NZ)
Jane Austen (NZ)

SAT 19th August ­ 8 pm
Machina Aux Rock (AUS)
Yannis Kyriakides and Dean Roberts (NETH) (NZ)
Richard Francis and Clinton Watkins (NZ)
Hamilton/ O'Connor/ Winstanley (NZ)

Wine Cellar, K Rd, Auckland

Liquid Architecture in association with the Audio Foundation and Kolumbard, proudly present two evenings of music showcasing the works of Australian and New Zealand sound artist and musicians who work at the extremities of their mediums, from Computer Music, Noise, Rock and Improvisation to Songs. The underlying concept is to represent the common interests across diverse mediums, in that all artists present a unique approach to their craft and often, extreme approach to their given genre.

Liquid Architecture is a Festival that over seven years has presented a wide ranged of experimental, post-avant-garde, improvisational and experimental musics in Australia.

Founded by Artistic Director Nat Bates in 2000, Liquid Architecture is the only festival in Australia that celebrates the diverse methods of sound making and sound theory by promoting artists practicing in the periphery of music and sound culture. Liquid Architecture suggests that listening is a vital activity that is often overlooked within the dominance of visual media in our environment.

The Auckland project features two nights of music, Thursday 17th and Saturday 19th of August. The event will be hosted in the back room of the Wine Cellar in St Kevin's Arcade.

The Audio Foundation is a charitable trust created to support, facilitate and represent New Zealand innovative audio culture. We define this work as art practice primarily concerned with the use of sound, but predominately sitting outside of the infrastructure of the music industry and academic institutions.

At present, we provides an online hub with a database of practitioners, critical discourse, linkage, a discussion list, documentation of festivals, collaborative projects and events for the NZ community of noise/soundmakers. http://www.audiofoundation.org.nz

ARTISTS

Phil Brophy (Melbourne)

Compositional process and method is experimental by consequence, not desire. Through it, Brophy does not seek to efface himself in the wonder of sound, but to encode his presence and absence within the many voices that make up sound. His function as a `composer' is to take part in a cultural dialogue. In this sense, Brophy is a user, rather than composer, of music. Nearly every musical construction (or deconstruction) he has executed has been spawned by something extra- or ultra-musical; something that the music - viewed as a primary, singular or hierarchical discourse - cannot (and is not expected to) contain or withhold. As a writer and speaker on music, Philip Brophy specializes in three interlocking areas: (i) the film soundtrack; (ii) pop/rock record production; and (iii) the history of experimental noise and sound. He is widely published in all three areas internationally and occasionally writes for THE WIRE, London. His most recent book is 100 MODERN SOUNDTRACKS for the British Film Institute, London. Philip will be presenting I AM PIANO. Based on sample fragments from classic modern jazz piano performances. I AM PIANO thrusts an ironic barb into the piano's mythological status and aims to perceive it purely as a sound machine whose melodiousness is but a mirage of musical languages.

Thembi Soddell (Melbourne)

Thembi Soddell is a sound artist from Melbourne, Australia. Her work lays deeply routed in the density and complexity of ones emotional world. Drawing inspiration from dreams and personal psychology, she works primarily with the sampler to manipulate and abstract the external world into both a vicious and alluring sonic experience. With a focus on texture and depth, she plays with the extremes of dynamics, pushing the threshold of both silence and noise, toying with the listeners sense of expectation. Her compositional style has a distinct, highly stylised edge, rigid and concisely constructed, at times referential of electroacoustic and classical composition, whilst indulging in a somewhat grunge aesthetic. She does work for CD, gallery installation, and live performance, and has recently formed a collaborative duo with cellist, Anthea Caddy, with plans to tour Europe in October 2006. She is a graduate with honours in sound art from RMIT's Fine Art Department. She also assists in running the Australian experimental music label, Cajid Media. www.cajid.com

Thembi Soddell typically performs solo. She places the audience in darkness and performs from the back of the space, emphasizing the manifestation of sound in space, whilst shifting the focus away from the (non) performative aspect of playing the sampler. Working with field recordings, instrument textures, generated sounds and anything else that comes her way, she samples and mixes these into ambiguous and dynamic compositions, suggestive of time, space and place, whilst never explicitly placing the listener anywhere.

Rosy Parlane (Auckland)

Parlane presents a brilliant example of how more abstract sound fields can produce some truly heart-stopping, intensely deep music. Acclaimed recording artist rare local live performance. Parlane was a member of the highly regarded noise ­rock trio Thela. Parlane went on to produce a series of magnificent solo albums on Sigma Editions and Touch between 1996 and the present. He has worked extensively with Dion Workman as Parmentier, as well as producing recordings with Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg and as a member of Plains. For this event he will Showcase work from his forthcoming Touch CD.

Jane Austen

Expect extraordinary compositions crafted with loops from this Auckland Laptop composer. Her work has been performed at Allelujah Nose Festival, Artspace, and is geared toward the listening environment. Her Current CD is out on the Claudia label. Austen mediates field recordings with a laptop. Often leaving the actual recordings relatively untouched, she arranges loops into sound narratives. With a performance that involves the diffusion of such domestic sounds as, small animals, nice pets, and the like. Describing herself as a household field recordings artist, she works with quiet, domestic, enclosed soundworlds. Treating sound as narrative rather than calling things 'compositions'.

Machina Aux Rock (Nat Bates and Stephen Masterson)

Machina Aux Rock is an experimental art rock duo that began as a recording project in 2002. Since then the duo has performed throughout Australia and recorded two EPs and one full length album. Consistingof sonic and musical experiments in minimalist dub techno applied to the sonic textures and musical gestures of rock, the project was also informed by an investigation into ways in which existing material from popular culture can stimulate, feed, generate and ultimately produce new work. Specifically, Machina Aux Rock look at iconic examples of rock music in order to identify the elements that are essential to rock music, and then appropriate, quote and assimilate these.

Yannis Kyriakides and Dean Roberts

YK has written over fifty compositions, ensemble, video, live electronics. As a composer he strives to create new forms and hybrids of media, synthesizing disparate sound sources and exploring spatial and temporal experience. He has focused in the majority of his work on ways of combining traditional performance practices with digital media. He regularly composes works for ensembles such as ASKO (NL), Icebreaker Ensemble (UK), Ensemble Integrales (D), and MAE (NL) , of which he is the artistic director. As an improviser he is involved in the Amsterdam electronic improv scene, he has a regular duo with Andy Moor (the Ex). He will collaborate in a duo NZ with guitarist Dean Roberts active in the experimental scene since 1995, recording for Mille Plateaux, Erstwhile, Kranky, Staubdold and our MC for Liquid Architecture.

Richard Francis and Clinton Watkins.

Richard Francis (Eso Steel) has been active as an experimental music composer and improviser since 1996 and has featured on over 40 published CD and vinyl record releases. His work over the years has explored different techniques of sound generation and processing, with a focus on the collection and processing of various natural and artificially produced sounds from the surrounding environment. Clinton Watkins(White Bass) is a highly active and well regarded experimental audio practitioner & conceptual artist who deals with the extremities of sonic language. This is the debut of the duo of these two intense individuals, anticipate accordingly.

Hamilton/O'Connor/ Winstanley Trio

Explosive trio of electric improvisation, guitar bass drums this trio take a high energy approach to the rock format and create a transcendental noise drift. Hamilton is a highly active Auckland musician and sound artist extrapolating on electric guitar for this set, Percussion virtuoso Chris O'Connor and Bass/Electronics legend Paul Winstanley together treat no sound as innocent.

ENDS

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