Sunday 24 November 2019, 7.30pm
‘Mechanosphere’ is Cam Deas’ abstract yet poignant 2nd album exploring ideas of rhythmic dissonance and head-spinning proprioceptions for The Death of Rave. Following directly from his cultishly-acclaimed mini-LP ‘Time Exercises’, which was surprisingly deployed in Richie Hawtin’s recent ‘CLOSE COMBINED - LIVE’ mix and hailed as “Holy F#ck-What is This?!?” by Brainwashed, his new album applies rich polychromatic colour to his signature rhythmic constructions with a greatly heightened emotive traction and broader appeal while only going deeper on his radical ideas about the fundamentals of sound and composition. Big recommendation if you're into Autechre, Xenakis, Ligeti, Rashad Becker.
Using a computer-controlled modular synth, Cam takes the simple idea of layering pitches in multiple tempi to Nth degrees, resulting in a sensational and warped sense of temporality and gravity-defying physics. Effectively placing pitch on a scale in a similar way to Conlon Nancarrow’s player-piano programming or even Ligeti’s famous metronome experiment, Cam explores solutions to the problem of grid-locked linearity, or at least perceptions of it, by effectively ripping the rug from under electronic music convention to make his music appear as though in perpetual freefall, or a process of omnidirectional contraction/expansion that never quite resolves - always the same, ever different. – Boomkat
Cam Deas is a musician and sound artist based in London. His work is not subject to straightforward categorisation, with output ranging from solo acoustic guitar exploration through live electro-acoustic performance, to pure synthesis and computer generative music.
In 2018 he released Time Exercises on The Death of Rave, consisting of five works for synthesiser and computer, his first full length purely electronic work. The pieces explore polytempos and relative ratios between pitch and rhythm in a dense electronic space, described as “disembodied music playing out a thrilling dramaturgy and syntax of alien dissonance and disorienting rhythmic resolution”.
Lia Mazzari is a sound artist and researcher working with open-source sound transmission technologies in environmental research as unique tools for alternative ‘live’ models of listening, responding to, and composing with more-than-human environments. Her solo and collaborative works span activist radio labs, cryospheric sound transmissions, whip cracking performances and experimental cello concerts. Winner of an Oram Award in 2022, Lia has developed works for Tate Modern/Britain (UK), Biennale Gherdeina (IT), Zone2Source Gallery (NL), South London Gallery (UK), V&A Dundee (UK), Q-02 (BE), and Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts (IN). She is currently an AHRC/Techne-funded PhD candidate at the Centre for GeoHumanities/Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Ecka Mordecai is a London based artist working with sound, scent and performance.
Her mode is improvisational and driven by a desire to explore the feel of things, be it through touch: making and preparing instruments (cello, horsehair harp, psaltery, eggflute, Bluetooth speakers), or emotionally: exploring the way different sounds, scents and gestures feel and produce feeling.
Notable projects include her solo album Promise & Illusion (Otoroku, 2022), Sound perfumes (Aequill, 2022), soundtrack and voiceover for filmmaker Kamila Kuc’s I was there (plus a written passage in accompanying book published 2025, Delere Press), and musical composition for Voyage Through the Diamond Realm (De Beers at Frieze Art Fair, 2025/2026).
Her viral Instagram project Cable Queen is an ongoing spite-piece inspired by the grind of her job working as a sound technician in a male-dominated industry/world, in which she silently coils audio cables whilst looking into the camera. The comments, written by strangers, expose the conditions of her labour.
She has performed and released music with David Toop & Christian Kobi, Valerio Tricoli (as Mordecoli), Andrew Chalk & Tom James Scott (as Circaea), and as a cellist with Vanishing, Thurston Moore and Alexander Tucker. She has performed the works of Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, George Maciunas, Antoine Beuger, Yoni Silver and Taku Sugimoto.
Threshing Floor the project of Rory Salter (Malvern Brume) and Ben Victor Waggett. As Threshing Floor the duo draw influences from folklore, history, psychogeography and performance actions. The music is built through improvisation using found objects, acoustic and electronic instruments, field recordings and whatever is to hand. The field recordings used are taken from walks and actions the duo have either done together or collected separately, always in sites of personal or historical significance to them both. Rory and Ben also run the label Infant Tree.
