Rhys Chatham’s instrumentation ranges from the seminal composition composed in 1977 entitled Guitar Trio for 3 electric guitars, electric bass and drums, to the epoch evening-length work for 100 electric guitars, An Angel Moves Too Fast to See, composed in 1989… all the way to Chatham’s recent composition for 400 electric guitars, Crimson Grail , which was commissioned by the City of Paris for La Nuit Blanche Festival in 2005. All these compositions are currently available on the record label Table of the Elements.
MUDAS | MUSEU DE ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA
Maja S. K. Ratkje (NOR)
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje is a Norwegian vocalist and composer.Ratkje studied composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo under the tutorship of Lasse Thoresen, Olav Anton Thommessen and Asbjørn Schaathun, and got her diploma in 2000. During the summer of 1999, Ratkje studied at IRCAM and she has also studied individually with composers such as Louis Andriessen, Sofia Gubaidulina, Ivar Frounberg, Klaus Huber, Joji Yuasa and Kaija Saariaho. She performs and releases music for concerts, recordings, films, installations, theatre, dance and other performances.
“In Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje music, chaos and calm juxtapose but, even more uncannily, coexist. Clear melodies and dissonant densities find curiously engaging nexus points. Above all, Ratkje not only finds ways to bring together diametrically opposed concepts such as clean lines and gross distortion, but also oftentimes finds unexpected beauty hidden beneath.” – John Kelman, All About Jazz
Rhys Chatham (FR/US)
Rhys Chatham is a classically-trained composer, guitarist and trumpet player from Manhattan, currently living in Paris, who altered the DNA of rock and created a new type of urban music by fusing the overtone-drenched minimalism of the early 60s with the relentless, elemental fury of the Ramones — the textural intricacies of the avant-garde colliding with the visceral punch of electric guitar-slinging punk rock.
Carl Stone (US)
Carl Stone is an American composer, primarily working in the field of live electronic music. His works have been performed in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, and the Near East.
Stone studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnick and James Tenney and has composed electro-acoustic music almost exclusively since 1972. As an undergrad at CalArts, he had a work-study job in the Music Library, which had many thousands of LP records in the circulating collection (this was 1973). The collection included a lot of western classical music of course but also a really comprehensive world music collection, avant-garde, electronic music, jazz and more. Because the librarians were concerned that the LPs, many of which were rare, would soon become unlistenable at the hands of the students and faculty, his job was to take every disc and record it onto cassette, a kind of back-up operation. He soon discovered that he could monitor the output of any of the recordings he was making and even mix them together without disturbing the recordings. So, he began to experiment, making musical collages, and started to develop habits of combining disparate musical materials.
Stone utilizes a laptop computer as his primary instrument and his works often feature very slowly developing manipulations of samples of acoustic music, speech, or other sounds. Because of this, as well as his preference for tonal melodic and harmonic materials similar to those used in popular musics, Stone’s work has been associated with the movement known as minimalism.
The Necks (AU)
The Necks are an experimental, jazz trio formed in 1987 by founding mainstays Chris Abrahams on piano and Hammond organ, Tony Buck on drums, percussion and electric guitar, and Lloyd Swanton on bass guitar and double bass. They play improvisational pieces of up to an hour in length that explore the development and demise of repeating musical figures. Their studio album, Vertigo, was named in SPIN magazine as “one of the top 20 avant albums of 2015.”
“If jazz denotes songs that spark at intervals into fine displays of musicianship and tricky timing, after which one claps, drinks, and feels pretty good about the world and the talent in it. No, The Necks plunge listeners to the kinds of violent psychological depths few other bands can achieve at all, let alone all acoustically.” – Kate Hennesey, the Quietus
Greg Fox (US)
Greg Fox is a New York City born-and bred drummer, multidisciplinary artist, and teacher. He has played on and released about 50 records since 2008, including his work with Liturgy, ZS, Ben Frost, Colin Stetson, Skeletons, Hieroglyphic Being, Man Forever, and others, as well as with his own solo work and his projects GDFX and Guardian Alien.
Fox has toured worldwide with various groups and collaborations, held residencies at The Clocktower NYC and Pioneer Works, and was awarded “Best Drummer in NYC” by the Village Voice in 2011. Having spent most of 2016 at home in New York, he is currently working on new collaborations and compositions, teaching individual and group drum lessons, and exploring new territory as a solo artist, using a hybridized electroacoustic drum setup to explore new dimensions through the traditional gestures of the modern drummer and the possibilities inherent in electronic and computer music.
Laraaji (US)
Laraaji is a musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner based in New York City. He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising trance-inducing jams on a modified autoharp processed through various electronic effects. Brian Eno saw him playing one night in Washington Square Park and invited him to record an album for his seminal Ambient series (Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance, released 1980).
Laraaji went on to release a prolific series of albums for a wide variety of labels, many of which he recorded himself at home and sold as cassettes during his street performances. In September 2017 All Saints release a stunning pair of LPs of new studio recordings by the celestial music pioneer.
NaN Collider + All Flesh is Grass (PRT)
NaN Collider is a project by João Martinho Moura (visuals) and António Rafael (music). The artists explore the mathematical concept of NaN as something impossible to calculate, and Collider for the programming language based in algorithms.
They will be presenting the work with Miguel Pedro, aka All Flesh is Grass, with sounds which result from a research process in experimental electronic music. During the performance, the artists will travel into space, starting on earth, flying to the moon, black holes and finishing on a nano scale.
AFTER-SESSIONS | ESTALAGEM DA PONTA DO SOL
Frank D’Arpino (DE)
Frank D’Arpino, born in Düsseldorf, started playing records as a selector since the early ’90s (as DJ Fanta later DJ Phanta). Musically socialised by the exploding diversity of youth cultures of the mid-late eighties, he never felt bound or commited to a certain (alternativ) scene: Postpunk, Hip-Hop, Acid-Techno, Chicago-House, Electro, EBM, Indie-Rock, Post-Rock, Shoegaze, Breakbeat, Jungle, Hardcore.
After the millenium “future-music” like Drum&Bass or IDM lost more and more influence in his sets, making space for a more straight house & Techno approach. Around 2010 he finally found his musical home as a resident in Salon des Amateurs, an open club-(not-club) situation, as a social space and a dancey sweatbox at the same time. A place, where music matters and the rules of contemperary dj-sets are bent.
Encouraged by Detlef Weinrich aka Tolouse Low Trax, again he learned a new eclectic and cosmic approach to his musical spectrum, breaking up with the pure linear way of Djing and bringing back a way of freestylin’ and the belief in unconvential music on the dancefloor in his sets as a selector. Challenged in countless nights by his friends and colleagues, he learned to step out of his comfort-zones in many ways and to play a wide range of styles and speeds, without losing the touch.
Shins-K (JP)
Japanese DJ and producer Shins-K is a self-described “dubstractic junglist” who plays left-of-centre techno with a b-boy attitude. Now based in Berlin, Shins-K plays sets that roam freely across the borders of bass music, hip hop, techno and dub, defying genre with occasional forays into noise or traditional sounds from across Africa and the Middle East.
His offbeat productions brush up against dread-weight steppers like Kahn and DMZ, marked also by ghost trails of glitchy, Autechre-style IDM drums and the murky sound design of Shifted and Vatican Shadow. Following a handful of tracks released on Moniker Eggplant and Pinecone Moonshine, he teamed up with fellow dark techno and dubstep specialist Ena on a joint track for Goth-Trad’s Back to Chill label compilation MUGEN. He also curated AIWA!, a 2016 event sponsored by MusicBoard Berlin that brought locally based artists together with musicians from the Arab world and ran the gamut from alternative hip hop, beats, rap and poetry to electronic, experimental and traditional music.
MADEiRADiG‘s Friends and Family (INT)
A infamous (and crazy) friends and family night featuring Jens Balzer, Frederic Jage-Bowler, Nuno Barcelos and more.
Daniel Meteo & Michael Rosen (DE)
Jack of all Trades, Daniel Meteo (born 1973 in marburg , grown up in essen, moved to cologne and escaped finally to berlin in new year 1997) splits his time up between many artistic activities. Along with Tom Thiel, he’s one-half of the dub / hip-hop electronica duo Bus (released 2 albums and 3 x12″ on Pole´s ~scape label). He also runs alongside Marcop Haas (aka T.Raumschmiere) and Florian Schmieg Random Noize Musick GmbH incl. labels as Shitkatapult, Musick and his own dub experimental imprint Meteosound aswell as the Random Noize publisher company.
Michael Rosen was born in Transylvania, grew up in south Germany and is living in Berlin since 2004. In 2008 he founded the independent cultural agency, Digital in Berlin, which curates, promotes and develops events concepts and concerts in Berlin and around the world. He co-directs the MADEIRADiG Festival since 2008, and in 2012 he founded the MMiFF Film Festival – both taking place on the Atlantic island of Madeira. Besides that, he is a music enthusiast, DJ and has his own radio show in Berlin.
PROGRAM
Friday, 01.12.2017 | 21:30
• Carl Stone (US)
• The Necks (AU)
+ Aftershow with Frank D’Arpino (DE) | 00:00
Saturday, 02.12.2017 | 21:30
• Ectoplasm Girls (Sweden)
• NaN Collider + Miguel Pedro (Portugal)
+ Aftershow with Shins-K (JP) | 00:00
Sunday, 03.12.2017 | 21:30
• Greg Fox (US)
• Rhy Chatham (France/US)
+ MADEiRADiG‘s Friends and Family Stage with Jens Balzer, Frederic Jage-Bowler, Elizaveta Romanova, Daniel Mackenzie and Nuno Barcelos | 00:00
Monday, 04.12.2017 | 21:30
• Maja S. K. Ratkje (Norway)
• Laraaji (US)
+ Aftershow with Daniel Meteo & Michael Rosen (DE) | 00:00