KLAVIKON reimagines ‘electronic’ music without the use of conventional processes - no loops, no laptops, no sequencers. Instead, pianist Leon Michener employs a unique system of amplified prepared piano. Augmenting the 88 keys with his own inventions and found objects - a custom made pick up, a robot dog- he delivers cascading batteries of percussion, sub-basses and abstract soundscapes. This amalgam of virtuosic technique and real-time analogue processing is at once connected with the dancefloor idiom of Detroit Techno pioneers and the Classical traditions of Stockhausen and Cage. The result is a fertile sonic territory, sincere in it’s eccentricity, restlessly inventive, that resists easy categorisation.



“a gifted and imaginative British pianist with an exquisite touch… Leon Michener has created something truly original” - Observer Newspaper

“A young pianist with extraordinary control of the instrument” - Wire Magazine

"***** Discs such as this, which creatively and systematically create true identities for themselves and stand as self-contained musical experiences, are all too rare" - BBC Music Magazine

“An innovative and absorbing concept, carried through by Michener with no mean insight and technical finish” - Gramophone Magazine

∆ ∆ ∆

GUM TAKES TOOTH

Gum Takes Tooth channel wildly varied influences of primeval rhythms, spacious psyche, primal punk, pan-ethnic oddities, out-there noise, metal, acid house and vintage electronics through paired drum kits and live electronics, igniting a dense and focused motorik rhythm engine to propel thunderous evolving acid synth through haunted subterranean soundscapes and refracted vocal manipulations.



"Gum Takes Tooth forge an impressive tumult through linking up their hyper-kinetic drums to home-made technology, resulting in the entirely unhinged and brilliant sounds" - The Quietus

“It feels as though we’re being offered a glimpse into the almost unobtainable nexus that all music must stem from - the primordial ooze from which faintly familiar yet exhilaratingly unknown sounds bubble out of, and evaporate before they are able to take on a form we can easily categorize. What’s surprising is how danceable these frighteningly inventive sounds are. Stellar.” - GRIND TO DEATH

∆ ∆ ∆

JAXSON PAYNE

Jaxson Payne was a founding member of koept (a Cornish based organisation for electronic art and sound). Over the years Jaxson has been involved in many varied projects: from experimental electronic recordings as Personality Son to forward thinking techno releases and live midi-drum solo performances under his Derehctub pseudonym. More recently, as second percussionist for Gum Takes Tooth, a one off collaboration with Korean pop-stars EE at Coachella music festival and electronic compositions and sound manipulations under his own name.

For this event at Cafe Oto, Jaxson will be performing a new set using the midi-drum set-up that he first established in 2003. The midi-kit will be used to trigger samples as the bases of a part improvised, live electronic dance performance with intricacy usually only found in heavily programmed computer music and without the use of any backing tracks.

Jaxson Payne - Fibre Kit Demo from Jaxson Payne on Vimeo.