Two day residency presented in association with Berlin's PAN records exploring the intersection between free improvisation and electronics/mutant techno/bass music with saxophonist/composer André Vida and Rashad Becker on trombone and electronics joined by special guests Kouhei Matsunaga (aka NHK) and electronic savant Bass Clef on trombone/synthesiser.

ANDRÉ VIDA / saxophones, electronics

Andre Vida (b.1974) is a Hungarian American saxophonist, composer, and lyricist living in Berlin. Vida has been at the forefront of several major developments in experimental music, including his membership in Anthony Braxton’s original Ghost Trance Ensemble, his world record 403 performances at the Serpentine Gallery responding to Anri Sala's film Long Sorrow, performances with The Tower Recordings, and his extensive collaborations electronic music visionaries Jamie Lidell, Tim Exile, Kevin Blechdom, and Rashad Becker.

André Vida photo by Shumon Basar

vidatone.com





RASHAD BECKER / trombone, electronics

Becker is a shadowy figure, generally more comfortable behind the scenes of Good Music (TM) and as an engineer at Dubplates & Mastering where he is widely considered to have some of the most finely tuned ears in music. He describes his music as “playing the traditional music of imaginery species”

"Becker’s name will be known to a lot of people – indeed it appears on many, many records – but his music won’t be. His day job is as the mastering and cutting engineer in Berlin’s world-famous Dubplates and Mastering, where his role involves entering into a creative dialogue with the music of others, helping them to achieve what they set out to with their compositions in the final product. Before he got the D&M gig, he was originally a musician in his own right, and he continues with this as an irregular sideline, making and manipulating loops and electronic sounds. What wasn’t a surprise about his performance at Cafe Oto was how precise it all looked and sounded as he carefully twisted dials to produce a sequence of very crisp and discrete tones, sparse and improvisational (if you had to pick something from Becker’s other work to compare this to, it sounded like an early, experimental, Mego, a less harsh Pita or Hecker). What was more unexpected was just how conversational it all sounded. Aside from the samples of human voices that he dissected and looped, most of the other frequencies used were within the range of the human voice – it sounded like a long stream-of-consciousness sentence made up short syllables, electronic oohs and wahs, sections of muttering, and occasionally bickering. Whatever he does, it seems Becker has the knack of giving sound its voice." The Liminal

Robert Henke interviews Rashad Becker (on Mastering)

Rashad Becker @ White Rabbit / GdK Berlin from Stephane Leonard on Vimeo.

KOUHEI MATSUNAGA (NHK) / electronics

Born in Osaka, Kouhei Matsunaga is a musician and an illustrator. He started drawing during childhood under the influence of his grandfather. He grew up listening to hardcore-techno and hip hop, studied architecture and has been mainly making music since 1992. Under many different aliases (NHK, NHKyx, Internet Magic, Koyxen) he has released numerous albums on labels such as Skam Records, Wordsound, Raster Noton and his first ever album "Upside Down" on Mille Plateaux in 1998. He has also collaborated with artists like Merzbow, Jungle Brothers' Sensational, Autechre's Sean Booth, Mika Vainio, Conrad Schnitzler, Anti Pop Consorium's High Priest, Rudolf Eb.er, Puppetmastaz crew, Asmus Tietchens, Ralf 'RLW' Wehowsky and so on. His own label Flying Swimming was founded in 2002 with the main purpose being to publish and curate events of experimental contemporary music and art.

NHK'Koyxeи 'Dance Classics Vol.I' (PAN 24)

NHK'Koyxeи '476/572_2' (PAN 24) from Bill Kouligas on Vimeo.

BASS CLEF / trombone, synthesizer, electronics

Ralph Cumbers aka Bass Clef has been unnervingly productive recently, laying down solo and collaborations on tape and 12” under numerous different guises, many on his own Magic + Dreams cassette label. The music has seen him delve deep and weird with Ekoplex, modular and zonal with Some Truths, uplifting and rave-wards with the Bass Clef 12” Rollercoasters Of The Heart and backwards and forwards with Coseph Jonrad. His sought after mixes have flown the afro-disco flag which, via the world of deliciously un-smooth groove, brings us to the NEW album, its title lifted from the lysergic prose of a Brian Aldiss novel. ‘Reeling Skullways’ on Punch Drunk features understated textured 4×4 journeys into the heart of dance, trks that hum and hiss with machine-soul reflecting some key techno/house influences as well as emotional soundtrack pieces too. Reeling Skullways fashions new tricks from old books.

He is dance artist who criss-crosses boundaries making friends where ever he goes, armed with his trombone, effects, and percussive instruments of choice he is a potent mix of dance(hall) inspirations – 21st Century urban roots music, Caribbean rhythms, pulsating techno, hypnotic brass, machine soul and classic ‘hands in the air’ rave dynamics which all swirl around the Bass Clef sound-system experience.

“He’s a badass one-man band of bass. He shakes songs out of his arms and lungs that come in somewhere between dubstep and wonky carnival with his club sets sneaking in splashes of old school UK garage and blasts of full frontal techno” – Clash

PAN website