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
Mariam Rezaei (she/her) is a multi-award-winning composer, turntablist and performer whose work spans experimental new music, free improvisation, noise, mutant club music and hip-hop. The Anglo-Iranian virtuoso expands on classic turntablist skills by developing new techniques with vinyl, allowing her to manipulate an expansive range of samples in real time. Rezaei’s approach has been recognised by The Wire’s Peter Margasak as a “radical expansion of the artform.” Her innovations include free juggling, turntable sines, needle dripping, fractured loops and needle weaving. Across solo, duo, ensemble, orchestral and operatic works, Rezaei takes the philosophy and aesthetics of turntablism into new territory, creating wildly inventive, energetic and beautiful music.
Following on from the highly acclaimed Fractured (2024) and her ground-breaking Blud/Skeen/Bown trilogy (2019-2023), Rezaei will release Selected Adequate Works in early 2027. A major step forward in live turntablist composition, the double album captures the breadth of Rezaei’s vision from warped techno and mangled noise, to shimmering psychedelia and refracted chorales. Each track is recorded live in a single take, with Rezaei transforming her own samples alongside contributions from Elvin Brandhi, Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, Julien Desprez, Lukas Koenig, Eleni Poulou, Lucy Railton and Stewart Smith.
Her major commissions include Scholar’s Record for Donaueschinger Musiktage 2025, a four turntable tour-de-force which drew on the legendary festival’s audio archives, and 6 Scenes for Turntable and Orchestra, an orchestral collaboration with Matthew Shlomowitz for IMD Darmstadt/Tectonics Glasgow. This autumn, she premieres new projects with Ensemble Intercontemporain and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
In addition to her solo work, Rezaei is a member of the international free music supergroup The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, the pioneering Turntable Trio with Evicshen and Maria Chávez, 1984 with Kobe Van Cauwenberghe and Sakina Abdou, and Fire! Orchestra. Other collaborators include Pat Thomas, Bill Orcutt, Jennifer Walshe, Edward George, Farida Amadou, Mats Gustafsson, Valentina Magaletti, Robyn Rocket, Thurston Moore, Lasse Marhaug, Ensemble Contrechamps, Fritz Welch, Raymond MacDonald, Lukas König, Okkyung Lee, Dali de St Paul and Ali Robertson.
In November 2022, Rezaei 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. She is currently based in Newcastle, United Kingdom.
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.
