28–29 September 2024
Special two-day residency with the great Norwegian sound and visual artist Lasse Marhaug, marking 50 years on the blue and green globe and over 30 years exploring the outer reaches of sound in all its forms. Featuring collaborations with Microcorps and Mariam Rezaei, a solo set and film screenings, plus a performance of Marhaug's "Almost Everything" by Oslo-based percussion trio, Pinquins, these are two nights not to be missed.
Lasse Marhaug (b. 1974) works with different mediums like video, photography, print, recordings, live performances, installations, and publishing. Marhaug has released more than three hundred recordings and toured extensively across the world. His main practice has been solo works, but he has also collaborated with a wide range of artists. He has composed music for film, television, theatre and dance performances. In the last ten years Marhaug has produced a number of multi-channel, video and installation works, which often deal with his relationship to nature and sound of his home in Arctic northern Norway. He also works as a graphic designer, producer, writer, and curator.
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.
Pinquins is an genre-defying and experimental percussion trio based in Oslo. Their main focus is contemporary music, aiming to challenge audiences and expand existing formats. They have worked closely with composers and performers within contemporary music as well as other genres. With their strikingly visual repertoire and unique stage presence they are among the most innovative and creative ensembles in Norway.
Pinquins are Jennifer Torrence, Sigrun Rogstad Gomnæs and Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen.
