Friday 5 August 2022, 8pm
Omens and portents...an ill wind...barbarians from the North. For one night only the citadel is besieged by a cavalcade of Northumbrian and -affiliated eccentrics. Marshalled by the combined forces of YEAH YOU and the TOPH crew, a chaotic band of dissidents will slouch amorphously toward the capital. Features the pop-shred glossolalia-mania of YEAH YOU, the whip-lightning turntable plasticination of MARIAM REZAEI, the Coal Mining Heritage Trail redisorientation of WREST, the fractal circuit-jazz thuds of KENOSIST, the critical electrick practice of SW1N-HUNTER, and polite young men YES INDEED (LAURIE TOMPKINS AND OTTO WILBERG). Plus the sensual selections of the TOPH DJs.
To you YEAH YOU are to you a father daughter duo who let music invade the family context. Who let music dismantle the family car, using construct absurdity to redeem resented weekly Tesco shops and traffic jams. YEAH YOU are not who you said we are, but we are that inverted, and battery op. The content shifts depending on how many supermarket discounts we found. Known for their sneak-up picnic public invasions, perform mostly when uninvited but will always jump on chance to berate a strobe-cut stage, brawling electronic dirt pop, words and feet exert integral (instagram) distrust: you won’t hear what you see.
Why who? They only ever wanted to take back their solidarity with inertia. Creeping up behind a ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you’ cultural climate, striving to unbuckle the gift economy. You let the lesson be yearn inappropriately. Warped into identity politics this could be an anti-formulaic deconstruction of the nuclear family and of psychic uniform, which normative roles serve to sustain. But in itself is just an improv life stream of the bottom 40: from 0 to -40. Diving in with an admittedly involuntary entropic approach, they provide something for all the family to enjoy/not enjoy.
Kenosist is the solo project of Mark Wardlaw, focused on live, modular electronics with an emphasis on aleatoric processes and the avoidance and subversion of claviocentric models. His work is improvised, with the configuring and reconfiguring of the "instrument" itself being part of the performance. Recent work has drawn influence from free jazz, finding commonalities with the extremes of post-techno and breakcore, as well as integrating folk and early music instruments.
www.kenosist.com
Described by The Wire as “one of the most technically adept and creatively daring artists to use the turntable as a musical instrument,” Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award-winning composer, turntablist and performer. Working at the nexus of experimental new music, free improvisation, mutant club musics and hip-hop, Rezaei uses a digital vinyl system, allowing her to manipulate an expansive range of samples in real time. Her work has been described as “genuinely ground-breaking” (London Jazz News 2022) and “high-velocity sonic surrealism” (The Guardian 2022). Praised by The Wire, Uncut and Bandcamp Daily, her latest release FRACTURED (Heat Crimes) is one of The Quietus’s cassette releases of 2024.In November 2022, she 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, and is writing a book on turntablism for Repeater.
In addition to her solo work, Rezaei’s projects include a Turntable Trio with Evicshen and Maria Chávez (making their US premiere at Big Ears 2025), supergroup The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (with saxophonist Mette Rasmussen, trumpeter/electronics Gabriele Mitelli and drummer Lukas Koenig), and orchestral compositions with Matthew Shlomowitz (6 Scenes for Turntable and Orchestra). She recently performed Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music with guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe. Other collaborations include duos with Jennifer Walshe, Edward George, Farida Amadou, Valentina Magaletti, Lasse Marhaug, Evicshen, Lukas Koenig, Mette Rasmussen, Gabriele Mitelli, Okkyung Lee and Ali Robertson, Black Top with Pat Thomas, Orphy Robinson, Cleveland Watkiss and Leon Foster Thomas, and a quartet with DJ Sniff, Rex Chen and DJ SlowPitchSound at Taipei Biennial 2023.
SW1n-HUNTER is the solo sonic project of artist/musician Adam Denton. His recorded output, released on labels such as Opal Tapes, Hard Return and Fort Evil Fruit, is a dérive through the workings of the network, where frazzled samples, redirected electricity and disarmingly joyful noise emerge from the media machine’s interior to create something “beautiful and unnerving” all at once. Live, Denton combines aspects of frequency sculpture, instrumental mutation, environmental recording, machine/human utterance, feedback systems, movement and decayed samples in his performances. Most recently live shows have manifested as unwieldy, improvised audio essays, often interwoven with textual video works, performed in places such as Sound of the End of the World in Rio de Janeiro (2023) and light beams under a bridge in London (2023).
When not performing and recording as SW1n-HUNTER, recent collaborative projects have included The Old Police House (2013-2021) with Mariam Rezaei, the Abandonments sonic research project in Slemani, Kurdistan region of Iraq with Hardi Kurda and Space21 Festival (2022), the Property Unknown tour with en creau, Dhangsha and Pokk! (2023), and No Hevdem at Sonorities Festival (2024).
WREST is the nom-de-klang of Blyth-based Jamie Stuart. He brings forth ritualistic emanations of dead-coast psychic detritus and material culture. Post-industrial in the most grimly literal sense.
Yes Indeed are Laurie Tompkins & Otto Willberg. Live, they play keys, bouncy bass and sing over tactile, emotive samples. The music is fuggy and soaring, deliciously out of place.
On 2021’s ‘Exorcise’ EP, they let ratty violin, syrupy bass and foolish voices congeal over a backbone of co(s)mic spinnet and pit percussion. Boomkat rightly dubbed it “proper mad scones”. ‘Rotten Luck’ - a sodden, diaristic epic and YI’s first album proper – is out in September 2022.
Laurie is a composer, helps run the Slip label and has put out CDs on Entr’acte, 33-33 and Hyperdelia this year. Otto is a bassist, plays in groups with Ashley Paul & Charles Hayward and his great band Historically Fucked has an LP coming on Upset The Rhythm.
