Saturday 14 September 2019, 7.30pm
We are sorry to announce that Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach is unable to perform this evening. Instead we will have a solo performance from composer and sound artist Kirk Barley.
Two years on from a pair of sold-out performances, US group Object Collection return to Oto, premiering excerpts from new opera ‘You Are Under Our Space Control’. In support, vocalists from 2 exquisite British groups - Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach (of Still House Plants) and Odie Ji Ghast (of Historically Fucked) - perform solo.
‘You Are Under Our Space Control’ is firebrand US group Object Collection's inimitable Slip return: a utopian space-opera, a homing signal cast into an empty universe, a beacon for an aesthetically radical future.
Drawing on space travel, transhumanism, astronautics and the resurrection of the dead, Kara Feely's texts rehearse a progressive politics through a total re-envisioning of everyday life. Travis Just's limber speech-song vocal parts are eerily and spasmodically FX'd, and navigate surprisingly glistening instrumentals - a headlong tangle and squelch of flexing 808s and metal objects, roboticised guitar, and unreal synthesis.
YAUOSC's bubbling force belies its diverse, unruly underpinnings. The opera’s musical backbone is a drum-machine transcription of John Cage's 1951 piano solo ‘Music Of Change’, a landmark of indeterminacy; its title grabbed from Cy Roth's sci-fi romp ‘Fire Maidens From Outer Space’ (1951); its texts inspired by Sun Ra and the Russian Cosmists’ poetics and philosophies, and interviews from real (and imagined) space travellers and astronomers.
Object Collection charge these impulses with a burning, engrossing physicality. This is, above all, a piece of heaving, life-giving music, deep in the mess of futuristic fervour.
The group will perform for around 70 mins.
“One of the most confronting and exhilarating things I've seen” – BBC
“Innovative” – New York Times
“ferocious in scope” – The Guardian
“A disorienting, multi-sensory attack” – Frieze Magazine
It started as my solo work that is more linked with production. I tend to stick to my way of recording voice on dictophone device (or, these days, more often on my phone). Then I mash that lo-fi recording with samples, put my voice like a cherry on top.
In recent years Odie Ji Ghast became my performer name also, and I don’t hesitate to use it for whatever. Essentially though, this artist lives digitally more than stays gropeable, real and clean in the present. It is a voice that goes through microphones, dictophones, sound machines and wires. That is when Odie Ji Ghast happened anyway - when she got fascinated and heavily consumed by sound that is crackling. And can I take one step away from the sound of acoustic? Visible, front-line - for a second can I sneakily escape?
I play around with instruments from time to time but I take nothing but voice onto the stage. Because only that (and me fiddling with software at home) is what truly represents what this artist is solo. Plus some things I write, and some songs I sing when alone. So this is me trying to present a singular musical body in its most natural format.
Kirk Barley (aka Church Andrews) is a Yorkshire-born music artist who creates organic works built from field recordings, instrumental fragments, and found sounds.
His music draws from jazz, minimalism and post-rock, weaving irregular rhythms, evolving temporalities, and alternate tunings into dynamic sonic landscapes.
For this performance, Kirk will be debuting some new material and performance approaches developed over the summer.
- Billow (EP 2025) - https://kirkbarley.bandcamp.com/album/billow-2
- Lux (LP 2025) - https://kirkbarley.bandcamp.com/album/lux
- Lake of Gold Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A8hqrl8ZlA&list=RD2A8hqrl8ZlA&start_radio=1
- Bathe pt 3 Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu6u_M1SR1Y&list=RDhu6u_M1SR1Y&start_radio=1
- Verre Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLbzIzVQsf8&list=RDYLbzIzVQsf8&start_radio=1
Website: https://kirkbarley.com/
