This weekend ... Resound presents - Music is Wires 24th -26th April

 

This weekend ...

 

 

Resound presents - Music is Wires

24th -26th April

 

Left-field, lower case, eccentric - Resound is Stroud’s own experimental music laboratory. An occasional series of performances that reveal the wilder and more marginal side to what might loosely be termed music. Resound has devised an exciting programme of events for this year’s Site Festival, that range from untamed electronica to ambient soundscapes with a few stops off along the way. ‘Music is Wires’ is a common theme across the performances presented here. They may be wires that link electronics together, generating sounds from another world or they may be virtual wires of connection that link artists in improvised synchronisation. Whichever it is… music is always wires!

 

Resound
hosts the John Street Social Club
Friday 24th April 7-11pm
SVA, 4 John St, Stroud GL5 2HA

Experimental musicians and artists will be hosting this special John Street Social Club for the Resound weekend. Hogge  from the Cube in Bristol will be sharing some sounds and visuals. Joining them will be Modularity - Gareth Brock, both sound designer and sonic abstract expressionist. The John Street Social Club is a series of weekly Friday night club socials hosted by different artists each week with internet-scavenged film clips and audio, vinyl on the decks and the occasional special perfomance.

£1 membership on the door

 

Resound Audio lounge
Saturday 25th - Sunday 26th April 11am – 3pm
SVA, 4 John Street, Stroud, GL5 2HA

A library of work, live impromptu performances and interactive sound pieces will be presented for your leisurely delectation. The bar will be open for drinks.

Free

Anne Chris Bakker
Saturday 25th April 12-12.30pm
SVA, 4 John Street, Stroud, GL5 2HA

Anne Chris Bakker, an experimental musician from the Netherlands, whose work lies somewhere between electroacoustic, ambient and minimal. Texture is essential and he creates pieces that are not purely melodic but more abstract, giving the listener more space for their own interpretation. Silence also plays an important role in his compositions and can be seen as a statement against today’s modern society where there is less time for slowness, reflection and tranquillity. Anne Chris searches for new ground to sit, to look, to wander and to be still. His guitar playing using a violin bow and electronic treatments will leave you spellbound. A perfect antidote to a hectic world.

Free

 

Beyond the Event Horizon
Modularity
Saturday 25th April 3-5pm
SVA, 4 John Street, Stroud, GL5 2HA

Beyond the Event Horizon is part installation and part performance, showcasing the sonic mayhem from modular synths at full tilt. Modularity carves pure electronic tones shaped by the endlessly interchangeable electronic modules that he works with giving rise to a sound that is firmly based in the grand traditions of electronic music. With influences ranging from the early German electronic scene and film scores such as Forbidden Planet, to more recent offerings from Node. A large scale, custom-built modular system will take you on a journey through electronic sound... Exploring alternative ways of controlling these machines has led Gareth to The Soundbeam Project. An offshoot from the legendary English Synthesiser company, EMS, they design tools allowing disabled people to interact and create music through a variety of sensors. Soundbeam have kindly lent equipment especially for this performance – audience members are invited to come along and interact with the work to influence the noise!

Free

 

Amen
Guy Gormley
The Goods Shed
Saturday 25th April 7-9pm
SVA, Goods Shed, Stroud GL5 3AP

Sound based installation, the audio for which is re-sampled from about 30 different tracks that use the famous ‘Amen Break’, originally recorded in the ‘60s.  The use of the break here highlights the breath of new sounds to come from this one recording and how it has been used as a material like any other.  The show endeavors to make its physical sound physical and continues the journey of the recording, taking it into yet another context. Guy Gormley is an artist and music producer living and working in London. His practice spans photography, sculpture and sound. He co-founded London / Stockholm club night and record label Top Nice and curatorial project BRICKHOUSE.

Free

 

The Will Gregory Moog Ensemble
Saturday 25th April 7.30pm
SVA, Goods Shed, Stroud GL5 3AP

As one half of the electronic music sensation Goldfrapp, Will Gregory is passionate about creating new sounds and reinventing old ones. Here a stellar line-up stretches the possibilities of the Moog synthesiser through newly composed music, transcriptions of classical works, and their own versions of music from popular culture and film. Marvel at 10 musicians on stage, including Portishead’s Adrian Utley and composer Graham Fitkin, performing works by Bach, John Carpenter, Burt Bacharach and Oliver Messiaen on a fascinating array of vintage instruments. To mark the 10th anniversary of Robert Moog’s death, a new piece by Will Gregory features a clocking device specially built for the ensemble that enables all 10 synths to be synced, producing music previously impossible to perform live. The result will be the audio equivalent of a Bridget Riley painting; full of colour and interlocking complexity whilst driving and immediate. Produced by sounduk. Funded by Arts Council England. 

£10 advance and £12 on the door for tickets.
Advanced tickets can be bought online here or from Trading Post, 26 Kendrick Street GL5 1AQ

 

Kaumwald
Saturday 25th April 10pm - late
SVA, 4 John St, Stroud GL5 2HA

From Lyon in France, Kaumwald’s music is right on the edge between challenging artistic excursions and curatorial common grounds. Built on penetrating continuums, spitting drum patterns, harsh spasms and drifting echoes, sounds evolve as if driven by some autonomous mutant mechanism, comparable to Jean Tinguely’s “machinery for machineries-sake”. Live, constant changes inside a repeating structure starting with few pre-recorded or locked elements, the duo plays in a krautrock-like improvised/conducted way. This is electronic music rooted in immediate sensations and always re-defined by the dynamic and randomness of the gesture. Using modular synths, looped cassette tapes, voices, field recordings, mechanic driven hurdy gurdy and heavy treatments, Kaumwald recycles techno, noise, musique concrète and dub technics into a spontaneous dubbing act.

£6 advance and £7 on the door for tickets. Special advance ticket price for both events: £15
Advanced tickets can be bought online here or from Trading Post, 26 Kendrick Street GL5 1AQ

 

Tears of Niobe
Kirsty Limburn
Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th April 11am – 5pm
SVA, 4 John St, Stroud GL5 2HA

Tears of Niobe is a ten minute looped audio-visual installation with treated images by Kirsty Limburn and specially commissioned music composed by Andrew Heath. It explores the tidal movement of water around rock, investigating its contrasting power to erode and rebuild the organic structures that it makes contact with. The viewer is invited to participate in the film by using it as a moving meditation to focus on the transformational power of water and how our planet forms and reforms itself on a constant cyclical basis.
Duration 10 mins looped

Free

 

Resound Brunch
Dominick Allen
Sunday 26th April 11am
SVA, 4 John St, Stroud GL5 2HA
A sound based brunch to delight all your senses. Gratify your appetite by all manner of visual, sound and oral materials. Special performance from experimental Penryn based sound artists Dominick Allen, an artist and engineer working with obsolete and hand-made technologies

Tickets: £5 breakfast included. Booking essential here or email: office@sva.org.uk or tel 01453 751440

 

Falling Tides and Chora Perpetua
Toby Marks
Sunday 26th April 2–5pm
St. Laurence Church, Shambles, Stroud

Aka Banco de Gaia, Toby is a Mercury Award-nominated recording artist, performer, producer and label owner, specialising in eclectic global dance and chill-out music. Emerging from1980’s acid house, he has gone on to record and perform worldwide, fusing house, dub, prog rock, jazz and world music elements. He has developed a growing interest in electroacoustic composition and other areas of experimental electronic music. He is particularly interested in immersive sonic environments and the meeting point of deliberate and random composition.

Falling Tides (one hour duration) is a self-generating, immersive music composition designed and performed by Toby Marks. He will be joined by Anne Chris Bakker and Andrew Heath.Chora Perpetua is an immersive choral work based on recordings of 12 phrases, each sung by 12 individual voices. Created in 2013 by Toby Marks as an adjunct to his long-form 12-channel piece, The Circle of Perpetual Choirs, it was originally designed for playback on a circle of 12 loudspeakers, with one voice assigned to each speaker. Phrases (sometimes delayed, sometime silent) are randomly selected for each voice and each iteration is a random combination of voices and phrases, resulting in an endlessly mutating chorale.

Both Falling Tides and Chora Perpetua are quadraphonic pieces. Members of the audience are invited to move within the sound-space, increasing the immersive qualities of both the performance and the installation. The pieces will cycle between each other for the duration of the event.

Free

 

 

 Download Site Festival Programme here

 

Site Festival 1-30 April

The Site Festival has moved to April this year with a wide spectrum of exhibitions and events spread throughout the month. The Open Studios will still be taking place in the two middle weekends of May.

The festival has its roots in contemporary visual arts but over the years there has been a blurring of boundaries with many cross overs with music, film, poetry, and theatre. This is reflected within the five week programme which kicks off with The Voyeurs, Brickhouse, Top Nice/Pathfinder and Andy Holden’s collaborative installation with the Bohman Brothers and Richard Thomas in John Street and the Goods Shed. Will Gregory Moog Ensemble will be headlining in Week 4 for the Resound weekend of experimental music.

Keep an eye on the website and emails for updates. You can access all events online through facebook and sitefestival.org.uk.

 

 

 

 

Download Open Studios Directory here

 

 

 

Open Studios

Saturday and Sunday 9th-10th May 11am-6pm
Saturday and Sunday 16th-17th May 11am-6pm

Over 50 studio venues across the Stroud District

Open Studios 2015 promises to be exciting with lots of artistic collaborations and a big focus on Open Studio hubs in the area. 82 artists will be opening their studios in 43 locations. Pick up an Open Studios Directory and plan ahead. It’s a great way to meet artists, find out more about the ideas behind their work and the techniques they use. Don’t forget, you can also buy art works directly from Open Studios artists too!