Hard to think of a more exciting prospect as two of electronic music's great pioneers come together as part of a new project. Mark Fell's work - ranging from minimal electronic music, to sound installations and audio-visual works - has placed him at the forefront of a rapidly expanding area of extreme and independent computer music, whilst few musicians are able to so fully occupy electronic music's collective conscious as much as Keith Fullerton Whitman. Long-time admirers of each other's work, they have only recently started collaborating and this will be their first tour together - you can guarantee it will be one not to miss. We'll have an extra PA system in for the night to ensure full quadrophonic immersion.

Also on the bill is a welcome return to OTO for Dutch-born, Berlin based electronic musician and installation artist Thomas Ankersmit, who will be giving the debut performance of a new piece commissioned by Cafe OTO specially for this event.




MARK FELL

Mark Fell's work - ranging from minimal electronic music, to sound installations and audio-visual works - has placed him at the forefront of a rapidly expanding area of extreme and independent computer music.

He was half of the duo SND with Mat Steel releasing the minimal electronic classics Makesnd Cassette (1998), Stdio (2000) and Tenderlove (Mille Plateaux, 2002), an LP that simultaneously erased and celebrated minimal techno, hip hop, glitch and dub.

SND returned in 2008 with 4,5 6 - a triple LP collection of the work they'd made in the last 6 years - and followed it with Atavism in 2009. Since then Fell has returned with a number of stunning records issued via Raster-Noton (Multistability) and Editions Mego (UL8, manitutshu*).

"Mark Fell likened his music’s logical gameplan in The Wire 293 to playing chess without a chessboard. Without strategic moves there could, of course, be no game, but Fell’s pattern-generating algorithms keep the rules forever openended, meaning a pawn can usurp a kingly gesture without anyone flinching. ... Fell’s techniques set up forms and harmonic overlays from outside the realm of subjective compositional control, putting intriguing distance between the composer and his visceral beats. Throughout the first track, arithmetically rudimentary patterns accrue deep complexities; later, “Manitutshu… First Algorithm Test” counterpoints simple pawn beats with elaborate harmonic spectra that have something of the knight about them." - Philip Clark, THE WIRE

www.markfell.com/




KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN

Few musicians are able to so fully occupy electronic music's collective conscious as much as Keith Fullerton Whitman. His extensive knowledge of historical and contemporary avant-praxis is only topped by his uncanny knack of making what has gone before him truly his own by executing both simple and complex ideas with ambition, precision and fearless adventure from the early breakcore under the Hrvatski moniker to the guitar/computer constructs of his 'playthroughs' system to his unrivalled command of the various hybrid analog/digital modular synth topologies that make up his 'live electronic music' setup. It's a pleasure to have him perform at Cafe OTO through a full-range quadraphonic speaker array.

keithfullertonwhitman.com






THOMAS ANKERSMIT

Thomas Ankersmit (1979, Leiden, Netherlands) is a musician and installation artist based in Berlin and Amsterdam. His main instruments are the Serge analogue modular synthesizer, computer and alto saxophone. He frequently works together with New York minimalist Phill Niblock and electroacoustic artists Valerio Tricoli and Kevin Drumm.

"Ankersmit constructs a musical world that feels alive and capable of going anywhere, and yet also manages to give the music a strong sense of structured purpose, a degree of compositional control unusual in this area of live performance. It is the fine balance between the sense of chaos that threatens to pull everything apart and the controlled formation of the music into clearly defined sections of differing intensities that raises the work above that of so many of Ankersmit’s contemporaries." Richard Pinnell, The Wire

"A dynamic performance that comes at the listener from all sides, as unpredictable as it is self-assured … Ankersmit is adept as ever at making transitions and staying one step ahead of himself with a keen ear for evolution and the patience to make it effective. There can be excitement in watching a musician grapple with sounds that threaten to escape his or her control, but precision can be equally arresting, and Ankersmit wrangles his material beautifully from beginning to end with a deft touch and a canny sense of timing." Adam Strohm, Dusted