An evening of live music performances that don’t add up on paper.
Gagarin is the solo project of Graham dids Dowdall, who has been active in the outer reaches of the musical universe for many years working with, amongst others, Nico, John Cale, Pere Ubu etc. As Gagarin, he makes instrumental electronica – at times urban and beaty, at others, atmospheric and melodic – always with a very personal experimental twist. His last album Biophilia (title stolen by Bjork) was described as “electronica in its rawest sense” by Mojo , “beautiful music” by Musicweek and “essential” in Mixmag. Live, he uses only hardware – drumpads, samplers , fx and his compositions are the basis for expansive improvisation which can whisper or rage.
http://soundcloud.com/gagarin-1
Gagarin’s track ‘Galanthus’ from the album ‘Biophilia’
Gagarin’s track ‘Dunnock’ from the album ‘Biophilia’
I AM A KAMURA
Tokyo karaoke bar hostess, agit-fem punk pioneer with the legendary Polkadot Fire Brigade, co-presenter of Channel 4’s Karaoke Night, one half of surrealist pranksters Frank Chickens, avant-garde collaborator with luminaries of the international improvisation scene – Fred Frith, Charles Hayward, Lol Coxhill et al in London – and John Zorn in New York; Tokyo-based Japanese singer Atsuko Kamura has worked with them all.
For her debut solo album, Kamura-San teamed up with short-listed nominee for the Arts Foundation Songwriter of the Year Award 2010 – Robert Storey. Firmly rooted in Japanese folk, and chanson of the twenties and thirties, and drawing on her inherent instinct for improvisational risk-taking, Kamura and Storey, along with her excellent band (members of Homelife, The Windsors, Duke Garwood), produced an Anglo-Japanese oriental phantasmagoria, made in London and inhabiting a strange realm that floats metaphorically somewhere between the night-clubs of ‘thirties Tokyo, the incense-heavy Shinto temples of Kamura’s post-war childhood in Fukuoka and the experience-weary present of contemporary London. They are recording a new album in Tokyo and London at the moment with Japanese and UK musicians.
“What a haunting piece of work this is – in a way it sounds as though it’s been around for years. Beware; melodies like “Tenshi” and “Whisper” can lodge in the brain and refuse to budge.” Clive Bell, Kamura album review, Wire magazine, November 2009.
Tonight, Kamura and Storey will be joined by Valerie Pearson on violin.
INCLEMENTINE
Inclementine is the coming together of favourite times and places. Originally formed in 2011 by Galina Juritz, Cara Stacey, Natalie Mason and Heinrich Goosen in Cape Town, South Africa, they have been segmented and rearranged into a line-up ripe and ready for the north. Now in London, Cara and Natalie are joined by Ebrahim Nazier, playing music original and old on keyboard, viola, voices, umrhubhe, budongo and bass. In short, Inclementine is freshly squeezed, with bits.
CARA Stacey is a classically-trained pianist and musical bow player from Johannesburg. Her musical and compositional interests schizophrenically jump between southern African songs, classical music, to salsa, kizomba and beyond.
NATALIE Mason’s musical life began in the womb with a kick at the climax of Shostakovich’s 5th. Weaned on strange Sixties music in Birmingham she now plays viola, piano, this and that, writes music for Inclementine and spent the last few years working in Cape Town.
EBIE
Originally from Mitchells Plain in Cape Town, Ebrahim Nazier made his bass guitar debut in 2009 with the Jeremiah Brimstone Band in South Africa. He now lives in London where he is an architectural technologist, looking for work.
CHARLOTTE PUGH (Southbank Gamelan Players and recorder player) and JON HUGHES (jonhughesmusic.tumblr.com) perform two pieces:
Steve Reich’s ‘Vermont Counterpoint’ in a new realisation for recorders and tape, along with ‘Another Place’, a new piece created collaboratively by Jon and Charlotte for recorder and electronics.
Vermont Counterpoint (1982) is scored for three alto flutes, three flutes, three piccolos and one solo part all pre-record on tape, plus a live solo part. Charlotte and Jon have realised the work for recorders, using sopranino, descant, treble and tenor recorders.
CHARLOTTE Pugh plays recorder (all sizes), flute, piano and gamelan and is influenced by many types of music from all over the world. She is presently focusing on traditional and contemporary music from Indonesia, from where she has just returned from her studies of gamelan and contemporary music in Java.
Her recorder and flute repertoire includes Baroque, Classical and contemporary pieces and her public performances include a solo recital at the HUddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2010.
JON is a sound artist, composer and singer, currently based in York. Jon is presently working with dance choreographer Simon Birch on a project that takes dance performances to unusual and inspiring, outdoor, rural locations. The dancers perform inside a transparent globe, which the audience observes from the outside (hence the title ‘Terrarium’. Jon’s soundscape, ambisonically distributed through eleven speakers, in turn, encircles the audience.
You can find out more about Terrarium project here and about Jon here: jonhughesmusic.tumblr.com
Club Integral Northern Branch 