Various venues, Montreal, CanadaPhoto: Open Reel Ensemble at MUTEK Forum by Maryse Boyce This year is the 24th edition of Montreal based festival Mutek, which investigates how new technologies are applied in the creative industries while also exploring tech’s symbiotic relationship with electronic music. It… Read More
Nkisi, Iklectik, London, UKPhoto: Jonathan Crabb In the concluding chapter of Kick It: A Social History Of The Drum Kit, author Matt Brennan notes that drums have infiltrated music production to the extent that “we are all drummers now”. This is especially true of electronic… Read More
Suzanne Ciani + Li YileiKings Place, London, UK Taking refuge in Kings Place from the sweltering summer heat, I’m met by Li Yilei’s solitary song. The London based artist begins with an avian melody performed on a whistle. The phrase fills the hall, looping and… Read More
Museum Of Portable SoundPortsmouth, UK/Online “Are you familiar with the story of the first MP3?” asks John Kannenberg, director and chief curator of the Museum of Portable Sound (MOPS). He plays me the 1987 a cappella version of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner”. Karlheinz Brandenburg, the… Read More
If you tune your digital dial to Radio Amnion each month during the full moon, you’ll hear a new composition specifically commissioned for the occasion. In June, Blanc Sceol, the London based duo of Stephen Shiell and Hannah White, presented Orbit, a half-hour piece recorded… Read More
O YAMA O The quartet formed from the eclectic cultural milieu around London’s Cafe Oto take folk, sound art and call and response to create a liberated vision of modern song. By Ilia Rogatchevski Photography by Wendy Huynh. Sitting outside East London’s Cafe Oto, O… Read More
The underground music veteran Mihály Víg looks back on Hungary’s Soviet-era scene.Image: Balaton’s Károly Hunyadi (left) and Mihály Víg in Budapest, 1980s. Photograph by János Vetö Outside of his native Hungary, Mihály Víg is best known as a soundtrack composer. His work is closely associated… Read More
Mihály Víg — The Hungarian composer, actor and musician recalls his 40 year relationship with director Béla Tarr in advance of an epic screening. Photography by Balázs Fromm. Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó (1994) is glacial cinema. The seven-hour epic is shot in the Hungarian director’s signature… Read More
Cafe Oto, London, UK The venue is plunged into darkness. A sonic assault ensues. The processed drums strike the ear with an industrial regularity. The sound is heavy and repetitive like endless rows of pumpjacks nodding in an oil field. Coloured spotlights frame Vymethoxy Redspiders… Read More
Kings Place, London, UK Themes of metamorphosis abound in NikNak’s immersive performance. The concert begins with a meditation that resets the mood of the room. Many in the audience feel inclined to sit or lie on the floor. Piano loops and birdsong are embellished by… Read More
Ilia Rogatchevski 