lllliikkkjjjhhhhggbbbjjjjnnbbmmkkiii

Wind Up Bird

concentrated delivery pitch bending and beating of a sine wave. - joe grimm moves sound with his mind. actually more with controlled singing of tones that throw a static sine wave off into and around the room and people. flute, singing, sampling, delays and digital degradation of samples over time. gradual, meditative.. complex shattering of sound.

Lucky Dragons

tender dancing, bobbing, concentrated movement, invented gesture, delicate, conscious, symbolic. Luke Fischbeck dancing mockingly mouths prerecorded samples. Playfully tampers with the mic possibly recording elements. puts new meaning to performance (actually singing?, lip syncing, not singing..). implied movements. tenderly engages the audience before they themselves become part of the performance. skin contact, wire diodes. fingers, touching. touch two people holding the wire diodes and the sound will flutter into magical bliss. figuring out who's touch is making what sound is the engaging mystery.


both Joe and Luke have MFAs in Music Composition and are aspiring PHds in their field.

the Toronto show.

Tikiroom @ Tranzac
not normally used for shows. fireplace, carpet, candle light, glowing. close, intimate. drawn in and magical. bonds were formed with everyone in the room.

Wyrd Visions aka Colin Bergh

repetitive notes, concentrated changes, flow and improv w/ guest guitarist Paul Mortimercy. lulled singing.

Montreal:

Esperanza.

unfortunate breaking in to Lucky Dragon's car prior to the show. glass, shatter, heart panic. assholes.

the show goes on.

Magali Babin, electro noise acoustic performance. click, scratch and abrasion. flood and wash of noise.

documentation minimal.

moments will be remembered as a feeling.

Toronto



Montreal




car rides, snacks, new friends, canadian landscapes (epic luminous rain clouds, mist, and falling rain, light dispersal), slumber parties.

posi diy creativity.

SANDfest HK

SANDfest HK website is finally up. Details announced.
www.sandfesthk.com

Soon kicking it into high gear.

June 24th, 2006
Para/site Artspace
G/F, 4 Po Yan Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

Ang Song Ming (Singapore)
Cedric Maridet (Hong Kong)
Fathmount (Hong Kong)
Li Chin Sung (Hong Kong)
Nanahara Shuya (Hong Kong)
new fairfield parks and recreation (Hong Kong)
Pei (Taiwan)
Peter Scherr (Hong Kong)
Sylvain Holtermann (Hong Kong)
Yeoh Yin Pin (Malaysia)
Zen Lu (China)

"The festival aims at presenting contemporary music such as drone, noise, sound art and free jazz by artists with different cultural backgrounds. By combining different acts on one night, we wish to present the diffusion of this art form across different geographical areas.

SAND will continue in presenting challenging music from all around the world to Hong Kong audience in the future."

LOUDSPKR... TEST GRNDS for EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC

LOUDSPKR is a temporal housing unit for sound art/experimental music, live media art and performance.

LOUDSPKR seeks to explore sound within the world - providing artists with mobility and the exploration spaces and contexts within the city and the world.

LOUDSPKR provides a testing ground for experimental arts and performance and encourages collaboration. It strives to bring together people in the world and community, while attempting to blur the lines between artist and viewer.

Like sound, like media and technology.. LDSPKR is everywhere and nowhere.



Saturday, May 20th 2006
Tikiroom @ Tranzac – 292 Brunswick Ave (@ Bloor)
Toronto, ON

LUCKY DRAGONS (Providence RI)
THE WINDUP BIRD (Providence RI)
w/ Wyrd Visions (Toronto, members of Awesome)

Dimanche le 21 Mai 2006
La Pharmacie Esperanza – 5490 boul Saint-Laurent (@ St-Viateur)
Montreal, QC

LUCKY DRAGONS (Providence RI)
THE WINDUP BIRD (Providence RI)
w/ Magali Babin (Montreal, No Type)

LOUDSPKR .... presents:

LUCKY DRAGONS – Providence RI www.hawksandsparrows.org

Glitch/folk -- sensor skin contact dancefreakout performance

...formed in 1999. The cut and paste digital derivative of musique concrete, melodic memory, splintery soft glitches, anxious dada, dirty indie, beautytronics. Lucky dragons is Luke Fischbeck, who edits it like a magazine to make sure it stays going. There are so many others to share the light, though: singing, drawing, dancing, touching, plucking and spinning or sewing with sound files or just listening really well. We are a diy sound branding and sound breaking collective. Records are densely knit collages of ecstatic language, folk melodies, and AM radio rave ups. Live shows are convulsive celebrations of sounds from hard drives and gentle skin contact. Our aesthetic is handmade. Contributing members currently live in Providence RI, Philadelphia PA, coastal Southern California and New York City.

...Lucky Dragons have performed in such festivals as Versionfest (Chicago), SINfest (NYC), Boston Cyberarts and RHfest (Boston, MA), Listening in the Sound Kitchen (Princeton University) etc…

The last I saw them in NYC in December they gave a wire for the audience to hold and every time someone touched another person the sound would change. Basically the wire was connected to a patch they developed on the computer that would generate a sound according to the change in energy going through the wire. They would then improvise with the sound produced. Electronic, organic, interactive…

MYSPACE: http://www.myspace.com/luckydragons


Lucky Dragons in NYC in Dec

WINDUP BIRD aka Joseph Grimm – Providence, RI www.thewindupbird.com

Drawing inspiration from 60's composers like Terry Riley and Gyorgy Ligeti, Joseph Grimm is an emerging composer and performer whose works straddle the line between electroacoustic new music composition and underground experimental noise. Working under the name The Wind-Up Bird, Grimm's music often explores polyrhythm by juxtaposing many simultaneous tempos and periodicities. Oceanic, subliminal drones vibrate below clouds of warm digital pinpricks. Using delay networks, distortions, and other modulations, Grimm performs gradual but drastic transformations of input from live sound sources, emphasizing real-time creation, metamorphosis, and improvisation. His work is often realized with the aid of custom software programmed in the max|msp environment. He has used violin, pedal steel guitar, horns, marimba, and other instruments; but recent work uses only the singing voice as a sound source for hallucinogenic, surround-sound drone improvisations.

WYRD VISIONS – (Members of Awesome, Bluefog) Toronto
www.myspace.com/wyrdvisions www.bluefogrecordings.com

Wyrd Visions takes inspiration from his Nordic black metal roots, with special attention paid to bands like Ulver, Burzum, and Thorns. The cryptic lyrics implicitly reference themes common within this genre. Fantastic settings and creatures emerge into the mind as he strums and picks at his guitar. The movements seem to take on a life of their own: breathing and surging forward, like a mass devoid of form, comprised of countless individual cells, all working in unison to push-on through a field of damp magic. There is never any hint of where the music might go. It flows from song to song effortlessly, sliding through the fog, ultimately delivering the listener to a place inside of themselves that they never thought existed – a place where magic exists and dreams are real. Wyrd Visions' surreal eye of worlds lost to the ebb of time are eerily re-awakened here to remind us that we are never far away from eternal night and a place where the marvelous is beautiful.

MAGALI BABIN – Montreal
Label: No Type – www.notype.com

audio art

apple, bee, caviar, disk, echo, friends, gum, hockey, icicle, jeans, kleenex, light, money, nature, orange, plates, quire, rice, slat, television, umbrella, vomit, walkie-talkie, xerox, young men, zoom distortion/p>

abat-jour, braise, cap de roue, dents, eau, filles, grenouilles, housse, ipéca, jambes, k7, lave-glace, marche, neige, os, peau, quincaillerie, radio, salive, tissus, utérus, viande, watt, xylophone, yeuse, zinc




…………………………………………………
\\\\\///\\\\/\////\\/\\/\/\\//\\/\\/\\/\\\\\\\\\\/////////\/\\\\///\/\\\\///\/\\/\//\/\//
senseless sweat, with celestial soot

LOUDSPKR.

loudspkr@gmail.com

+ Providing a platform for experimental music, sound art, live media and performance
+ Exploring temporality and mobility in an ethereal world of technology
+ Promoting experimentation/exploration/discovery/freedom & life

exotic fuck you

I've become more aware of being constantly reminded of my ethnicity in North America. It is kind of disturbing the ideas the West has of China and Asia as a whole.

Anecdote 1:

I spent an entire train ride next to a man that seemed a little bit too eager to sit next to me and help me with my luggage. I spent 12 hours trying to explain to him where I was from and where my family was from. Though I generally hate talking about these things at length, I had a long train ride ahead of me and needed at some means of entertainment.

He seemed to ignore the fact that I was born in North America and continually insisted that it must be hard as an immigrant and learning the language and being in a new land. It was rather frustrating talking to him. He was a middle-aged man working in Finance in NY. I struggled to relate to him on any level since he spoke a lot of business Finance jargon. He kept on somehow exoticizing me, despite what I tell him. He then continued to talk about is ex-girlfriend who was Japanese and then about Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon/Memoirs of a Geisha. I mentioned that the Geisha was played by a Chinese girl and he didn't see anything wrong with it, instead he said it was better since Chinese girls are hotter regardless of what people say about the Japanese.

Again for the sake of my own entertainment, I went along with it as he bought me drinks and snacks for the ride. He even pulled out the movies above so that I could watch and make the ride shorter.

As we parted, he gave me his card and continually glanced back at me. His last remarks were along the lines of "It is not everyday that you get to sit next to a beautiful blue-eyed Geisha" .. WTF!?

Anecdote 2:

I needed time to sit and write so I went down to a local coffee shop and bought a drink. It was one of the first nice days out so I sat on the terrace admidst groups of people. I happened to sit next to a group of french-speaking middle-aged men who play chess at the spot every weekend. They are known to harass everyone around them, or at least try to talk to them. Again the topic of my ethinicity was the first on their list and again the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was pulled out on the spot and debated. This time, however, they understood that I was Canadian. They said I was not shy in the same way newly-landed Chinese are.

Despite my usual dislike of discussing topics of my ethnicity, I will be understanding of their curiosity and perhaps learn something about myself and people in the process.

It seems ideas of China fed to the public are horribly disjointed. Chinese people are exoticized, and eroticized. We are seen as docile, delicate, quiet, innocent creatures. Ha.

Anecdote 3:

A drunk half Cambodian on the streets at night with friends asks me if I'm Japanese. I get these questions a lot and I say I'm Canadian. He tries to rephrase his questions, and I continue to give him a hard time to get to the answer he's looking for. He takes offence and admits he's half-Asian and some of his friends are Asian as well, but are Canadian as well.

I guess I've learned to accept these questions as a part of being a visible minority. To strangers it is an obvious topic for discussion at the same time I don't want my ethnicity to be completely ignored, since (I hope) it is still a part of me.

Terrastock 6

Terrastock 6, Providence RI
People of the Forest
April 21/22/23, 2006


Ashley Wong
photos: Wilson Lee

Terrastock is a festival that explores the horizons of the weird, nomadic, and obscure - climbing through bizarre landscapes to bring an array of improv, experimental, noise, psychedelic, and folk.

Started as a means to bring together music and sounds from territories explored in the well-respected Ptolemaic Terrascope Magazine, the festival has returned to Providence after traveling from San Francisco, London England, Seattle, and Washington over the span of 9 years.

Something that sets Terrastock apart from major music festivals is that it is not industry-oriented. At Terrastock 6, there is no media frenzy, hype, or celebrity gossip - just people getting together to listen to psychfolk in small town Providence. There is a definite hippie vibe to everything, but the festival is now taking on new light as a new generation of folk admirers and artists begin to emerge - a wave of artists unofficially coined as "New Weird America". The festival is like a silent call to the people of the forest, creatures and folklore (old and the new) to congregate and come together to listen closely to mystical sounds, stories, and experiences.

This year’s festival invites artists from the dark forests of Finland, to the frosted mountains of Japan, to the rocky plains of Scotland to the murky seas of Australian to artists from all across the tundra of New Weird America.

Avoiding some of the major spotlight artists of the movement like CocoRosie, Devendra Banhart, Sufjan Stevens etc.. Terrastock's line up included: Avarus (Finland), Black Forest / Black Sea, Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood (Australia), Fursaxa, Kemialliset Ystävät (Finland), Kinski, Marissa Nadler, P.G. Six, Thought Forms (England), Ghost (Japan), local favorite Lightning Bolt and many others.

The events of the three-day festival took place in downtown Providence at AS220 community art centre and gallery. The main stage a few doors down was in Pelle Chafee Performance Centre, a large auditorium majestic high arching ceilings. Artists were alternated between the two stages, so it was possible to catch all the performers. Tequeria Pacifica cafe located inside AS220 provided amazing tacos and burritos for festival watchers. The mellow atmosphere and folk music made for a perfect indoor rainy day event for the weather during the festival. Providence's small-town vibe, and vibrant diy art and music community provided an appropriate atmosphere and context for the events.

The music took people to far away worlds with long improvisations, winding acoustics, screeching stringed instruments, fuzzy guitar pedals, psychedelic guitar noise, cymbals and bells, frightening vocals, long hair, wavering dresses and beards. Video projections illuminated suggestive forms and figures blurring into each other. Over all the vibe was relaxed and people were nice. For the most part, audience members sat in close listening intently as performers seemed to offer something special for them.

Highlights were the Finnish folk act Avarus and Kemialliset Ystävät with a unique sound that runs through the country. They serenaded the audience with bells, grunting Finnish vocals, delicate mysterious melodies, and careful pacing and rhythm. Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood and Cul De Sac appeased the noise, psych rock and drone audience. Fursaxa performed brilliantly with intricate sampling, looping and layering of vocals, bells and whistles. Two others joined her on stage adding howling vocals and strings. Japanese psych band Ghost played a rare and possibly the last North American show.


MV/EE & bummer road




Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood


Fursaxa + guests


Larkin Grimm w/ Lara Polangco

Terrastock brings together the strangest of the strange from hidden crevices around the world, creating a unique atmosphere for music lovers of psychedelic, rock, folk, experimental, avant-garde, kraut-rock and free jazz.

Check out Terrascope Online – online community and resource for weird music.

Terrastock 6

Pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/as220/sets/72057594115998897/