Saturday 17 August 2024, 7.30pm
The final night of Elvin Brandhi's 3 day residency welcomes two tantalising new first-time group sets, as well as a performance lecture by Ayesha Hameed and Tom Hirst, and interventions by Illana Blumberg.
Elvin Brandhi is an improvising lyricist, producer and sound artist from Bridgend, Wales, who builds aberrant beats from field recordings, tape, vinyl, instrument and voice. Using sound and voice as an expansive language transgressing intrinsic systemics and inherited syntactical etiquettes, her live shows are unyielding bursts of erupting animation where her caustic stream of consciousness cavorts with restless, glitched out heaviness. Her creative momentum comprises a range of collaborations and an endless nomadism.
Her first E.P ‘Shelf life’ was released on ‘C.A.N.V.A.S’ in 2018. She one half of father / daughter noise-improv berserkers Yeah You who released on Alter, Slip, Opal, Psychik Dancehall and Good Food. She also performs in collaborations such as the Avril Spleen project with Joseph Jadame (maltash), Bahk with Daniel Blumberg (MUTE), as well as contributions to Drew Mcdowall’s agalma, just to name a few.
PETRONN SPHENE (the solo project from Xapheena aka Q.Q. Utslekk aka Urocerus Gigas of GUTTERSNIPE) is the singular manifestation of queer punk cyborg convulsing body music known as “No Wave Rave”. Deploying disrupted polyceleratrix rhythms via MPC1000 drumviolence in symbiosis with icy, futuristic synth flashes and alien femme fatale vokills, PETRONNE SPHENE induces a deranged state of hyper-mobile xenofeminist hysteria recalling ADHD manic episodes, acid flashbacks from speedcore parties and abduction on the dancefloor! Miss XQQU will have several new traxx prepared especially for the fest so prepare yourselves to submit to yet further psychotic results of the eminent Radical Queer Formula for Rhythm and Tonality applied to dance music structural paradigms. Check out new album ‘Exit The Species’ out now on Arcane Pariah!
https://arcanepariahrecords.bandcamp.com/album/exit-the-species
Kenichi Iwasa is a London based improviser and multidisciplinary artist from Japan, also known for his legendary event Krautrock Karaoke night, He has collaborated with visual artists and musicians such as Beatrice Dillon, Maxwell Sterling and Linder Sterling. He currently performs with Naima Karlsson under the name Exotic Sin and released an LP on Blank Forms.
https://linktr.ee/kenichiiwasa
Ayesha Hameed (London, UK) explores the legacies of indentureship and slavery through the figures of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Her Afrofuturist approach combines performance, sound essays, videos, and lectures. She currently teaches on the MFA in Art at Goldsmiths University of London, is a Kone Foundation Research Fellow and Artist in Residence at the Camden Arts Centre and is Professor of Artistic Research at Uniarts Helsinki.
Tom Hirst (b. 1978) is a London based musician working out of his studio in Woolwich. His music takes inspiration from hauntological pop, heavy guitar music, computer generated and modular synth-based generative music and science fiction soundtracks. Since the early 90’s he has been producing, collaborating and playing in bands in the UK and abroad. Performing and recording under his aliases Design a Wave and American Sound, his chameleon-like style has seen his music released by a variety of record labels including Alien Jams, Alter, Subsubtropics and Rush hour's no label. He plays guitar in Alice Band and writes and performs with Freya Barlow as synth pop duo Sugar Daddy. Past projects have seen him working with artists including Alice Theobald, Lizzie Homersham and Ayesha Hameed.
Kenichi Iwasa is a London based improviser and multidisciplinary artist from Japan, also known for his legendary event Krautrock Karaoke night, He has collaborated with visual artists and musicians such as Beatrice Dillon, Maxwell Sterling and Linder Sterling. He currently performs with Naima Karlsson under the name Exotic Sin and released an LP on Blank Forms.
https://linktr.ee/kenichiiwasa
MICROCORPS is artist and musician Alexander Tucker (Grumbling Fur, Brood X Cycles, Nonexistent, Imbogodom) exploring electronics, cello and voice.
Tucker’s ever-evolving soundworld continues to develop work around complex modular systems, cello, bass guitar and voice, creating tracks of heavy electronics, that meld machine rhythms with acoustic sound sources. Combining techno, contemporary composition, drone and vocal manipulations to create a dense and often psychedelic world. MICROCORPS has released on Alter, The Tapeworm and most recently on Downwards Records with Clear Vortex Chamber, featuring collaborations with Justin K Broadrick, Phew, Regis and Elvin Brandhi. Tucker uses MICROCORPS as both a vehicle for warped techno compositions and as a platform for fluid improvisation.
Mariam Rezaei (she/her) is a multi-award-winning composer, turntablist and performer whose work spans experimental new music, free improvisation, noise, mutant club music and hip-hop. The Anglo-Iranian virtuoso expands on classic turntablist skills by developing new techniques with vinyl, allowing her to manipulate an expansive range of samples in real time. Rezaei’s approach has been recognised by The Wire’s Peter Margasak as a “radical expansion of the artform.” Her innovations include free juggling, turntable sines, needle dripping, fractured loops and needle weaving. Across solo, duo, ensemble, orchestral and operatic works, Rezaei takes the philosophy and aesthetics of turntablism into new territory, creating wildly inventive, energetic and beautiful music.
Following on from the highly acclaimed Fractured (2024) and her ground-breaking Blud/Skeen/Bown trilogy (2019-2023), Rezaei will release Selected Adequate Works in early 2027. A major step forward in live turntablist composition, the double album captures the breadth of Rezaei’s vision from warped techno and mangled noise, to shimmering psychedelia and refracted chorales. Each track is recorded live in a single take, with Rezaei transforming her own samples alongside contributions from Elvin Brandhi, Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, Julien Desprez, Lukas Koenig, Eleni Poulou, Lucy Railton and Stewart Smith.
Her major commissions include Scholar’s Record for Donaueschinger Musiktage 2025, a four turntable tour-de-force which drew on the legendary festival’s audio archives, and 6 Scenes for Turntable and Orchestra, an orchestral collaboration with Matthew Shlomowitz for IMD Darmstadt/Tectonics Glasgow. This autumn, she premieres new projects with Ensemble Intercontemporain and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
In addition to her solo work, Rezaei is a member of the international free music supergroup The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, the pioneering Turntable Trio with Evicshen and Maria Chávez, 1984 with Kobe Van Cauwenberghe and Sakina Abdou, and Fire! Orchestra. Other collaborators include Pat Thomas, Bill Orcutt, Jennifer Walshe, Edward George, Farida Amadou, Mats Gustafsson, Valentina Magaletti, Robyn Rocket, Thurston Moore, Lasse Marhaug, Ensemble Contrechamps, Fritz Welch, Raymond MacDonald, Lukas König, Okkyung Lee, Dali de St Paul and Ali Robertson.
In November 2022, Rezaei received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation #AwardsForArtists in recognition of her contribution to music composition. She previously led experimental arts projects TOPH, TUSK FRINGE and TUSK NORTH. She is currently based in Newcastle, United Kingdom.
knitted installation and live interaction and hats
Driven by a relentless appetite for boundless experimentation, Ziúr has been subverting expectations since she was a teenager, corkscrewing through hardcore, metal and punk before veering towards electronic music's turbulent fringes. She produces just like she DJs, gathering a wide variety of ingredients and figuring out the most intriguing, unexpected ways to simmer them into a coherent narrative that helps listeners synchronize the conflicting messages that surround them. Genre isn't a fixed point for Ziúr, but a color in a vast palette that stretches across history and borders, helping illustrate music that's powerfully subversive - a vivid crack of light in a dim, lifeless cultural landscape. It's easy to see why Pitchfork labelled her "a master storyteller" in 2019.
Currently, Ziúr is working with Lebanese contemporary artist and composer Tarek Atoui on a series of projects that have included contributions from legendary percussionist Susie Ibarra and versatile multi-instrumentalist Nancy Mounir. And she's sharpening her engineering and production skills, having worked with Vietnamese collective Rắn Cạp Đuôi on their debut album 'Ngủ Ngày Ngay Ngày Tận Thế', and with Mexican-American producer Debit on her forthcoming album. Constantly evolving and eagerly surveying the world's shifting cultural topology, Ziúr's forward motion is her greatest strength.
