Saturday 16 September 2023, 7.30pm
The great Parisian label, Latency, celebrates their 10th anniversary with a line-up featuring virtuoso Iranian percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, French singer and composer Lafawndah (DJ set), London-based artist, Damsel Elysium and a duo set from Paris-based, California-born musician, Trustfall and musician, performance artist and somatic practitioner, ãssia ghendir.
Latency is an independent record label established in 2013 in Paris by Sidney Gérard and Souleymane Said. It explores a vast musical spectrum in dialogue with contemporary art and performance. Latency has published physical and digital editions of diverse works from artists such as Laurel Halo (USA), virtuoso percussionist Mohammad Reza Mortazavi (Iran), Australian duo HTRK, and French singer and composer Lafawndah.
A key contributor to the French music scene over the last decade, Latency has organised concerts and dance parties at a variety of international events and venues including Villa Medici, Paris Panthéon, Berlin Atonal and Marian Goodman Gallery. The label’s distinctive visual aesthetic is reflected in their collaborations with contemporary artists for cover art, including Louise Lawler, Jill Mulleady and Jean-Marie Appriou.
Latency also operates as a music curator for a wide range of media and brands, including films, fashion, and art installations, continually exploring new artistic collaborations.
Mohammad Reza Mortazavi is a virtuoso percussionist from Iran, known for playing traditional Persian instruments such as the tombak and daf. After developing more than thirty new striking techniques and progressing to be one of the most prominent players in Iran, Mortazavi travelled to Germany, eventually settling in Berlin to record and perform regular concerts the world over. His acclaimed performances have taken place in venues such as Berlin Philharmonie, Paris Pantheon, Villa Medici and Sydney Opera House. In recent years, he has been embraced by the experimental electronic music community, collaborating with artists such as Burnt Friedman or Mark Fell. His latest album, Ritme Jaavdanegi, was published by Latency.
Lafawndah is a singer, songwriter, producer and director. Raised in both Paris and Tehran with Egyptian roots, she draws on a wealth of musical influences – from Nina Simone to traditional Middle Eastern singers and dancehall queens to modernist bass and grime – to craft her own distinct and ritualistic take on global pop music. After an acclaimed debut on Warp, collaborations with Midori Takada and Kelela, and further incursions into film, art and fashion, Lafawndah released her second album The Fifth Season on Latency, featuring guest appearances from Valentina Magaletti, Theon Cross, Coby Sey or Lala &ce.
Trustfall is a Paris- based, California- born musician whose music spans idiosyncratic pop songwriting, free improvisation, and instrumental composition. Recent group and solo performances have included Festival d’Avignon, Haus Zer Kunst, and Fondation Cartier. As an accompanist, he has recorded with Lafawndah, Laurel Halo, Kelsey Lu and others. He most recently contributed vocals to the debut album from Speakers Corner Quartet. Songs from his self- titled 2020 album have appeared in film, television and runway, and his forthcoming solo guitar release, Rose Cross Zero, will be released later this year. He is currently developing an opera entitled Inanna's Descent, set to debut in 2024.
ãssia ghendir is a musician, performance artist and somatic practitioner with a research-driven practice, exploring the parallel and dialogue between geological movements and somatic movements. Rooted in ancient vocalizations and rite of passage practices, ãssia’s vocal work is a precise attunement through pre-verbal incantations that tells of numinous landscapes, human emotions and its malleability.
Damsel Elysium (they/them) is the solo project of UK based multidisciplinary artist, multi-instrumentalist and composer Djenaba Davis-Eyo.
An alchemist of body, space, object and the metaphysical, Damsel is a holistic world builder using sound, video, performance and other artistic mediums whose deeply intuitive practice crosses the boundary between experimental sound art, avant-pop, performance art, contemporary classical, analog and electronics, blurring the lines of genre, discipline and expectation. Their work explores anticolonial and neurodivergent practice, paradoxes of the manmade and natural world. Working almost entirely with improvisation somatic techniques, subtle energy, ancestral knowledge and the subconscious, They are an architect of hypnagogic activation to draw attention to quantum details and initiate alternative realities. Their multi-medium approach explores site-specific non-performance spaces of history and sacredness. Inspired by contemporary and Fluxus movements, performance becomes ritual and the stage an altar. Damsel’s work has appeared in Tate Modern, Southbank centre, V&A museum and Fondation Beyeler to name a few. Their first record released on AD 93, earning them recognition across a multitude of creative spaces; music, fashion, art, design and even film scoring, they are an avant garde artist on the rise collaborating with FKA twigs, Celeste, CKTRL and working with brands and art spaces such as Gucci, IITTALA and Simone Rocha.
