Friday
11th November at Grey Area at 4pm
Grey Area Exhibition - Opening with Crank Sturgeon, id'
M Theft able and Fritz Welch
Friday
11th November at The Old Market from 6pm - 12pm
Aki
Onda (JP/US)
Musician and visual artist Aki Onda is best known for his
Cassette Memories project – a series of releases and
performances using an extensive sound diary of field-recordings
collected over a span of two decades. A frequent traveller,
Onda liked the way he could “collect these sounds
recklessly, innocently”, initially with no intention
of making a musical statement of any kind. Layered and collaged
they form electrically charged fragments of memories and
resonances - surreal portraits of the everyday. The Walkman
would become Onda’s musical instrument of choice –
manipulating and mixing multiple sets during his performances.
Born in Japan, he currently livesin New York and has collaborated
with amongst others Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht,
Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté,
Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock and Shelley Hirsch.
Homepage
I'D
M Theft able & Crank Sturgeon (USA)
Ordained minister and usurper of plateau monoculture, Sturgeon
has been active in the wandering peripheries of noise and
performance art since 1992. Combining the foundations set
forth by the Dadaists, Joseph Beuys, and Allan Kaprow, Crank’s
simultaneously caustic and celebratory performances trample
the lines of quasi-art presentation - whether with just
solo voice and spontaneous poetry or armed with an array
of busted guitars, contact microphones and the essential
scrappy costume in tow.
‘Id m theft able (Skot Spear), is
a sound artist from Portland, Maine, who primarily uses
vocals combined with sounds culled from found objects, circuit
bent instruments, homebuilt keyboards and modified tape
machines. Theftable has an available-ist approach to audio
and its creation – making use of sound thefts from
media appropriation to the rhythms of passing cars, water,
or 2009’s reworking of Theatre Organ tracks."
Guy Montag
Theft able Homepage
Crank
Sturgeon Homepage
Darksmith
(USA)
Tom Darksmith's lo-fidelity musique concrete is an intrictate
manipulation of unrefined ‘domestic’ and field
recordings, his latest release 'Total Vacuum' (Hanson Records,
2010) topping left field record of the year polls. Darksmith
rarely performs and his appearance at COOS marks his European
debut. Darksmith lives and works in the San Francisco Bay
Area.
Ludo
Mich (BE)
Mich first came to prominence in Antwerp’s staunchly
nonconformist 70s artscene. He orchestrated mass group performances
and released a series of underground films culminating in
‘Lysistrata’ - an all nude adaptation of Aristophanes’
satire featuring a soundtrack which melded primal yelling,
tape delay machines, instant sax blasts, African poetry,
de-tuned guitar, glass and more. A prolific musician, film-maker,
poet and artist, Mich’s recent installation ‘Mesmerized
Zig Zag Experiment’ is inspired by Mesmer’s
experiments.
Homepage
Wreck
& Drool & Smack Music 7 (IL/UK)
Alex (Drool) Yonovich (b.1976) is a self-taught drummer,
improviser and pivotal figure on the Israeli avantgarde
circuit. He has collaborated live with a diverse selection
of international musicians utilizing a simple setup of modified
acoustic instruments, tape loops and analogue synths. His
duo Wreck & Drool with El Bootkeh has released recordings
on labels such as Red Bootkeh, that Canadian label and Tophet
Prophet. Wreck is in the praxis of analogue audio
destruction & re-build since the early 90', chief and
founder of the Redbootkeh label since 2004, also known as
Gedem andBbrainholes.. love is back... future is next!!!
This time wreck is bringing a self build acoustic instrument
& 6tons of echo'd reality...
Reigning in the tape terror and replacing it with a lost
in the jungle lushness Smack Music 7 is the solo
project of painter / sound artist Karen Constance. She is
one half of tape collage/free vocal/lo-fi improv duo Blood
Stereo, one third of Ceylon Mange, equal parts spaceage
and prehistoric.
chocolatemonk
Licker
(USA)
Licker is the solo world of John Schoen - best known as
the helmsman of Rochester New York’s psychedelic noise
champions ‘Pengo’ – one of the most musically
wayward groups to emerge from America’s late 90s subculture.
Notoriously difficult to pin down, Licker finds Schoen stubbornly
refusing to adhere to any particular generic forms each
live event channelling different strains of music/noise/performance.
Infinite
Gaaah (UK)
More spellably, Gaaah is Tom Roberts, mainstay of Brighton’s
deconstructionist art-jazz (un)ensemble Bolide, performing
tonight with chewed tape, knacked bass and tabletop roughage.
Since leaving landlocked Northampton ten years ago he has
lurked under the foam of Brighton’s stranger musical
tides, surfacing in a variety of head scratching propositions
including Daguerreotype at the inaugural Colour out of Space
in 2006. Gaaah sounds like ill-plumbed radiators gone feral
and things falling off shelves, with occasional yodelling.
Clive
Graham & Anthony Donovan (UK)
A new duo, formed in spring 2011. Clive Graham is
probably best known as a member of long standing electro-bio
collective Morphogenesis and occasional collaborator with
Nurse with Wound. He runs the CD label Paradigm Discs, which
specialises in releases of archival experimental music .
Anthony Donovan is a member of the London-based Vultures
Quartet; as well as working solo as Murmurists, and in collaboration
with Lux P0g0, the.clinamen and HAK, and on projects with
Bryan Lewis Saunders, Colin Johnco and Rebecca Bogue. Donovan
co-runs the Classwar Karaoke label.
Tobias
Kirstein & John Lunds (DK)
Tobias R Kirstein and Johannes Lund are from Copenhagen
and renown for their solo projects and their numerous collaborations
with people like Mats Gustafsson, Keith Rowe, Tony Conrad,
Torturing Nurse, CM Von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren. A multi
instrumentalist Lunds plays bass, violin, glokenspie and
a variety of wind instruments. Kirstein works with a diverse
range of material - from computer created sinus tones to
the sound of the raw power of electricity in open tape recorders.
His drumming has been described as a pure expression of
brute force. The duo run Mayhem - a venue for experimental
music, free jazz and noise.
Saturday
12th November at the Jubilee Library - 12pm / Midday (Free)
Bohman
Brothers (UK)
Adam and Jonathan Bohman have been exploring the microtonal
sound realm of the everyday for over two decades. Live their
performances resemble electrified flea-markets overwhich
the Bohman’s recite poetry in the form of found text
and advertising spiel. The Wire’s Ben Watson explains
the Brothers approach as follows: 'It's hard to describe
the raw, explosive audio art they perpetrate. Everyday objects
and sounds are worked on until they attain a convulsive
beauty… their art oscillates between states of the
absurd to highly articulate explorations of extra-musical
sound...more
Saturday
at the Sallis Benney Theatre from 1pm - 5pm: Film
/ Live Soundtracks / Panel
Saturday
at The Old Market from 6pm - 12am
Bren't
Lewiis Ensemble (featuring Gnarlos & Lucian Tielens)
(USA)
‘One of the most exciting cultural excavations
of the past few years has been the unearthing of the convoluted
history of the Buttecounty Free Music Society aka BUFMS,
a wild collective of artists, non-musicians, rockers and
goofballs who came together in comparative obscurity in
the early/mid-80s and who, as their world-defining box set
‘Induced Musical Spasticity’ makes clear, were
as attuned to garage rock, psychedelia and free jazz as
much as noise, avant garde and surrealist traditions. The
BUFMS aesthetic paralleled the earlier experiments in spontaneous
musical theatre of LA Free Music Society associates like
Le Forte-Four, Airway et al, but with a post-punk/pre-Bananafish
style that was less west coast freak and more industrial
strength in its urge-to-usurp. Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble
remain one of the society’s central groups and the
main carrier of their particular brand of liberated excess.’
Volcanic Tongue. Hidden behind a maze of pseudonyms
the trail left by the Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble would
lead to Vomit Launch, Glands of External Secretion, The
Idiot, Needles, Serious Prblmz, and Bananafish magazine.
Gnarlos and Tielens's appearance at Colour Out of Space
is the first live show by Bren't Lewiis in 27 years.
Anla
Courtis & John Godbert (AR/UK)
Courtis formed Reynols in Buenos Aires in the early 90s,
galvanising the Argentinian experimental scene with a mixture
of raw, primordial improvised performances and high/low
concept art provocations such as their debut release - a
‘dematerialised’ CD. With Reynols defunct, Courtis
has emerged as a musician with a fervent drive for experimentation
- a classically trained guitarist he has collaborated with
the likes Pauline Oliveros, Nihilist Spasm Band, Lee Ranaldo,
Jim O’Rourke, Eddie Prevost, C.Spencer Yeh. John
Godbert likes to hit things, pluck things and blow things.
In the past he's done all these things mainly in the company
of Matthew Bower (Skullflower), Vibracathedral Orchestra
& Sunburned Hand Of The Man. For COOS he's hoping to
do all three things and more. His appearance will put to
an end the rumours that he has an alter ego named Herb Diamante
- who as most people may know, is attending a wine tasting
event elsewhere.
Harappian
Night Recordings with Pascal Nichols (UK)
Harappian Night Recordings is the solo project of Hunter
Gracchus member Syed Kamran Ali. His critically acclaimed
debut album 'The Glorious Gongs Of Hainuwele' conflates
ethnic field recordings, Asian vocal transmissions with
Singing Knives’ folk-primitivism. Ali has since produced
a slew of recordings on various microlabels across Europe.
This will be the debut performance of Harappian Night Recordings
in the UK.‘Somewhere between the ethnic reportage
style of Sublime Frequencies, the whole Sheffield elemental
freak/drone scene and a peaking, proto-punk volume of the
Nonesuch Explorer series - this is fantastic….’
Volcanic Tongue. Pascal Nichols is one half of
‘Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides’ –
recently awarded unexpected mainstream coverage as ‘the
best live band active in the UK’. He’s one of
the country’s premiere improvising drummers.
Martin
Klapper & Martin Jezek (CZ)
Born in Prague, Martin Klapper is a musician, filmmaker
and visual artist. He began by experimenting in collage
with unconventional materials such as wax, foam and minerals,
later applying these techniques to film footage he’d
bought in flea markets. Since 1981 he has been active in
the field of experimental music, working with sound devices
such as mechanical toys, consumer electronics and home built
instruments. Martin Jezek was born in 1976 in Prostejov
and studied film at the renown Famu Institute in Prague.
Though regarded as one of the most prominent Czech authors
of formal and conceptual film his practice also includes
experimental documentaries and improvised multi-media events.
For COOS the duo present a multi projection performance
using modified Super 8mm projectors manipulated according
to Klapper’s live soundtrack.
Jozef
Van Wissem (NL)
Devoted to what he terms ‘The Liberation of the Lute,’
van Wissem's compositions for the instrument have involved
a dynamic mix of conceptual, minimalist, classical and improvisational
strategies. Over the last two decades, he has used cut-and-paste
tactics, created palindromic compositions and used field
recordings and free improvisation to create a sound world
that is at once meditative and surprising, new and arcane.
His work is uncluttered and direct, with a viscerally hypnotic
and emotional impact, delivered with an ascetic intensity
reflected both in his Biblical titles and his No Wave influences.Van
Wissem is able to bridge the language of 17th century music
with that of the 21st century without compromising the timbre
and resonance of traditional lute playing techniques.
Homepage
Peter
Fengler (NL)
Born in 1964 in the Netherlands, Fengler’s unique
performances can include absurdist stand-up, magicianship,
intellectual pursuits, critical theory and the creation
of his own lathe-cut vinyl. For COOS Fengler will present
‘Barogue, Non Barogue’ (a story about proportionism)
– the latest instalment of a constantly emerging archive
of sounds, texts and gestures in which he aims to redefine
nuance from a musical and linguistic perspective. Fengler
is a member of Coolhaven, Poolmongool and Ultra Hobby Complex
and co founder of Rotterdam’s incredible arts space
De Player.
Homepage
Micro_Penis
(Fr)
'Micro_Penis is a band from Mulhouse, France with
Sébastien Borgo (Sun Plexus 2, l’Autopsie a
révélé que la mort était due
à l’autopsie, Ogrob, French doctor), Alexandre
Kittel (Rosetta Stone), François Heyer (Patz) and
Claude Spenlehauer (Myself, Hell's Gate, Hit the Dog). Shouted
guttural mouth sounds are abundant, augmented by electronics,
tape manipulation and a saxophone. Insanity, art brut and
horror is a running theme...not that there's anything wrong
in that. The artwork is fantastic too. They need to be slung
back in that asylum and given some medication’
Bryon Hayes
PC
Fencott (UK)
Clive Fencott is a writer, sound poet, vocal improviser
and digital media researcher. He's been experimenting with
the sound and printing of words/language for over 40 years.
In addition to solo work, he has collaborated extensively
with other poets and musicians - in particular Bob Cobbing,
Chris Cheek and Bill Griffiths, co-founding the free sound/poetry
groups JGJGJGJGJG, Oral Complex and Bird Yak.
Homepage
Raionbashi
& Dylan Nyoukis (DE/UK)
Born in 1974 Daniel Löwenbrück is a performer,
composer and curator living in Berlin. Since the mid 1990's
he's performed with Schimpfluch-Gruppe (Rudolf Eb.er, Dave
Phillips, Joke Lanz), Sudden Infant, Column One, Mattin,
Doreen Kutzke, and solo as Raionbashi. Löwenbrück
founded Tochnit Aleph in 1994 a label with around 100 releases
devoted to noise subculture, actionism, academic sound-
art, vocal / sound-poetry and musique concrete. Dylan
Nyoukis 'Nyoukis' music exists outside of as many
genre boxes as anyone might care to stick it into. mangled-throat
vocalization, wobbly tape murk, and feral punk/noise, the
sound is urgently alive and human with a volatile undercurrent
of absurd/sinister humor. As the head of DIY label Chocolate
Monk, Dylan has been issuing a steady stream of sub-underground
homemade strangeness since the early 1990s, including a
slew of tapes and CDRs by his former band Prick Decay/Decaer
Pinga, Ceylon Mange (with guitarist Bill Nace) and now Blood
Stereo (a duo with his wife, the artist Karen Constance)’.
Howard Stelzer
Nyoukis/ubuweb
Brittle
Hammer Trio (UK/USA)
Featuring Ali Robertson & Fritz Welch & Euan Currie
‘Bh3 was a six eared international communication
sanctuary institution from the years 1967 to 1978 and 1983,
based around vibrating surfaces and interrupted resonance.
Said often anti-megalophonous honk can get a hamster doing
laps in a brown paper bag and them could transgress musical
expression when simulating the conversation style of the
heavily sedated rodent rescue centre beneficiary. With leakings
unedited. Volunteers from your local services: Muscletusk,
Peeesseye, Usurper.’ Chanterelle Latrice
Sunday
13th November at the Sallis Benney from 1pm - 5pm: Film
/ Live Soundtracks / Talk
Sunday
13th at The Old Market from 6pm - 11.30pm
Vinyl
Terror & Horror (DK)
Camilla Sørensen and Greta Christensen met at The
Royal Art Academy in Copenhagen in 2001. They’ve
been working together ever since using sound as a starting
point for a complex, site specific sculptural practice
which can involve cars, tent constructions, camper vans
and a huge variety of record players and sound equipment.
In performances they work ‘with a high tolerance
level of possible hi- fi disasters’ utilising a
partly improvised narrative of sounds created exclusively
on modified turntables and vinyl records. LPs run backwards,
pick-ups are pushed over grooves, repetitive arrangements,
dark sounds, neck breaking mixes, film-amateur sound effects,
scratches, squeaks, vinyls, terror and horror…
Homepage
Valeri
Scherstjanoi (RU)
Born 1950, Scherstjanoi grew up in Krasnodar in the south
of the present-day Russian Federation. Since 1981 he has
lived and worked in Berlin as a sound-poet, author of radio
plays, graphic artist and writer. Much of his work is rooted
in Russian Futurism and he has published volumes of phonetic
and visual poetry, developing a complex system of invented
symbols (Scribentisms) for use in his own sound poems. Scherstjanoi
has been the guest at numerous international sound poetry
festivals and in 2003 was awarded the Hans Erich Nossack
Promotion Prize.
Homepage
Vom
Grill (BE)
Vom Grill is Dennis Tyfus - visual artist, purveyor of free
noises, throat singer, heir of the Nordic/Belgian outsider
tradition and driving force behind Ultra Eczema’s
vast catalogue of avant-garde sound, books, screenprints
and archival off-the-radar gems. His own performances can
include a variety of animal noises, vocal grind, analogue
synth shrieks, electrified rales and more.
Ultra
Eczema
Maja
Jantar (BE)
Maja Jantar is a multilingual, polysonic voice artist whose
work spans the fields of performance, opera, poetry and
visual arts. Alongside her solo work she is a co-founder
of the group Krikri and a close collaborator with ‘Crew’
- a project that operates on the border between art and
science. Jantar regularly performs with the Belgian poet
Vincent Tholomé and her own poetry has featured in
numerous anthologies. A joint CD and book of her work will
shortly be published by arts imprint Hybriden Verlag in
Berlin. Jantar lives in Ghent, Belgium.
Laundry
Room Squelchers feat Leslie Keffer and Sharkieface (USA)
Rat Bastard returns this time with the full force, all star
Laundry Room Squelchers – ‘one of the most unpredictable
outfits in noise’s entire underbelly’. A founding
member of 'To Live and Shave in LA', Bastard has been cracking
heads, bursting eardrums, and causing structural damage
to low rent basement dives for decades, most recently with
his sprawling International Noise Conference, which touts:
‘No droning, no mixing boards, no laptops.’
Athens OH native Leslie Keffer has collaborated with
the likes of Thurston Moore, Roger Stella and Val Martino
and toured relentlessly throughout the US and Europe. Live
she bombards the senses with an arsenal of sonics and avant-pop
hooks.
squelch
Ninni
Morgia & Silvia Kastel (IT)
Silvia Kastel runs Italy's Ultramarine record label. Her
first solo release ‘Love Tape’ is out now –
a love infused, merger of synth, voice, bass, beats, whispering,
howling and moaning. Kastel has studied singing with Joan
La Barbara and Lee Torchiaand and toured Europe and the
US with the likes of Hjuler und Mama Baer. Ninni Morgia
is a guitarist from Catania, Italy, now living in New York
and active within Brooklyn’s thriving free jazz/improv/noise
community. He’s played with countless musicians such
as Peter Evans, Daniel Carter and William Parker and his
current release ‘Sound Gates’ – a duo
with veteran Italian percussionist Marcello Magliocchi is
‘most definitely one of the best improvised records
you’ll hear this year’ (Digitalis).
ultramarine
Glyphs
(UK)
Steve Goodall (of Southampton’s Dogeeseseegod) and
Dan Palmer (of Threshold Tapes micro-label) have been working
together as Glyphs since meeting at Colour Out of Space
in 2007. Although free vocal improvisation remains at the
heart of their music, in live performances the duo have
incorporated low-grade electronics, tape manipulation, primitive
noisemakers, contact mics and amplified objects.
Dog
Lady (USA)
‘Dog Lady is Michigan violinist Michael Collino.
His first recorded output appeared on the song "Cellar"
(from the Wolf Eyes album Always Wrong [Hospital Productions]).
What followed was a maze of self-released cassettes and
releases on noise labels ranging from AA Records to RRR,
Nurse Etiquette, American Tapes, Fag Tapes and Chocolate
Monk, among others. Michael Collino was born on a dead-end
road.’ CM
Johannes
Bergmark & Tippi Tillvind (SE)
A game of free associations with amplified objects, electronics,
samples - each performance a flux of sound that is found,
acoustic, electronic, prerecorded, the trashy, the trivial
- sound poetry gleaned from vintage movies hand in hand
with the screech of zippers or rubber bands… Johannes
Bergmark is a surrealist, improviser, piano technician,
composer and writer. He is the inventor of The Finger Violin,
The Brillolin (a miniature violin with two strings connected
to a spectacle frame tied round the head), The Veloncell
Marcel (after Duchamp) and The Whalefish - a one-man-band
instrument with homemade sound objects, toys and kitchen
utensils. Tippi Tillvind is an artist and sculptor
currently experimenting with collage in improvised text
and sound. She creates and performs using self-made electronics,
micro modulars and circuit bent consumer items.
Bergmark
Homepage
Tillvind
Homepage