John Edwards/Mark Sanders/John Wall + Theo Burt (Automatics Group) + Mark Durgan + Shelley Parker + Lee Gamble (DJ)
No Longer Available
A long overdue return to OTO for the grouping of longstanding collaborators John Edwards (bass), Mark Sanders (drums) and John Wall (computer). All formidable performers in their own right, the three have played together both live and on record in various permutations since the late 90's. They're joined on the bill by Bristol's Mark Durgan - who creates full-bodied, combustive and visceral.electro-acoustic compositions with a flicker of Musique Concrete intuition - artist/DJ/producer Shelley Parker, who weaves live audio feeds, low end frequencies and found sounds into her performance and installation work, plus aggressive automatic remixes of anthemic Eurotrance by Theo Burt and DJ set from innovative deconstructor Lee Gamble.
John Wall is a highly respected composer of electro-acoustic music having put out a series of heavily influential releases which also feature Edwards and Sanders. His work has moved from early plunderphonic compositions - where he brought together unlikely combinations of musical genres to create fantastical new works – to large scale works composed of thousands of tiny fragments which create the impression of virtual orchestras. Critics have remarked on “his extraordinary feeling for musical narrative” which is achieved through a working method that has been described as “phenomenally painstaking”. According to one critic, Wall’s “releases sound like the most finely crafted audio sculptures, somewhere between the contemporary composition of Lachenmann and the experiments of early laptop musicians of the mid 90s.
John Edwards is a true virtuoso whose staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others. Perpetually in demand, he has played with Evan Parker, Sunny Murray, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, Lol Coxhill, Peter Brötzmann, Mulatu Astatke and many others.
MARK SANDERS
Mark Sanders has been acclaimed as "the most exciting, original and overwhelmingly powerful drummer alive" (Steve Reynolds, Jazz Corner) and his precise and propulsive drumming has graced projects with, to name but a few, Evan Parker, Jah Wobble, Broadcast, Agusti Fernandez, Christian Marclay, Matthew Shipp, John Butcher, Roswell Rudd, Henry Grimes and Otomo Yoshihde.
"ubiquitous, diverse and constantly creative, drummer Mark Sanders always outdoes himself, whether playing with restraint or erupting like a dynamo." Bruce L Gallenter, Downtown Music Gallery. NY
THEO BURT
Theo Burt is a cross-disciplinary artist working primarily with sound and video. Following on from the album Summer Mix (Entr'acte, 2011) his new remix work for the Automatics Group uses simple, specified algorithmic processes to restructure existing Eurotrance and club anthems. These processes are oblivious to the musical languages and patterns of build and climax within the original tracks, flattening the music into massive, meandering structures and exploring the spaces created by our contradictory and reductive ideas about the world. Sound and music, material and symbol, the phenomenal and the conceptual, theory and practise, memory and present, value and taste, intellectualism and emotionality. "The way aggressive consumerist melody is condensed down into shards of what sounds like granular synthesis is headspinning.", The Wire.
Snap!, 'Rhythm is a Dancer' divided into 3694 pieces of equal duration and reordered so that each piece is followed by the piece most similar to it from those remaining.
MARK DURGAN
Bristol's unassuming concrete maestro. His homemade electronics have a surprising tactile immediacy and, unhelpfully for authors of gigblurb Mark doesn't really sound like anyone else: analogue modular synthesis as dowsing rod for the visceral throb and pop of electric current. Not without bass pressure.
Since 1986 Mark Durgan has released his recordings via a number of various legendary labels such as Broken Flag, MSBR, RRRecords, Harbinger Sound, Artware and others. Plus more recent releases on prominent newer labels such as Gods Of Tundra and Pan. Most of these have been under the Putrefier name. More recently he has been working and releasing material under his own name. Using an array of homemade devices, Modular, 'pressure' sensitive synthesisier and environmental sounds to create full-bodied, combustive and visceral.electro-acoustic compositions with a flicker of Musique Concrete intuition.
Artist/DJ/producer based in London. Live audio feeds, low end frequencies and found sounds are recurring themes within her performance and installation work. She regularly performs her bass heavy hypnotic live sets alongside artists such as Mick Harris, Mark Fell and Chris & Cosey at venues spanning the Barbican, De la Warr Pavilion and most recently The Outer Church at La Casa Encendida in Madrid. Her music production has received DJ support from Manni Dee, The Black Dog, Ontal and Ancient Methods and includes "Power Station", released on her own label Structure and "Sleeper Line" (Entr’acte) voted by Fact Magazine as one of the best EP's from Jan - June 2013 and also "Drill" released on the Wire Magazine's Below the Radar series.
The Birmingham native, now London residing came up Djing on pirate radio stations, and spent his teenage years in the midst of the the emerging Jungle scene. However his own approach to music took a more experimental approach. Since the early 2000s, Lee created an abstract and sculptural form of computer music, releasing for the Entr'acte label. Following on from his 2006 '80mm O!I!O', 2009's 'Join Extensions' album and a 2010 cassette collaboration with artist Yutaka Makino.
His music since then has undergone something of a further reinvention. His deconstruction of Jungle's heyday on 'Diversions 1994-1996' released on the PAN label received much critical acclaim. His full length LP released a month later; the techno-indebted 'Dutch Tvashar Plumes' - represented yet another new approach for Gamble; "an inspired syncretism of dance music forms and his past concerns that feels incredibly relevant to late 2012 without allowing even a wisp of faddishness to cling to it…". 'Tvashar' also received much accolade with FACT Magazine awarding it their 'Best British Album' from the 'Alternative Brit Awards 2013' 'Dutch Tvashar Plumes' caught our ear like no other British record this year.
