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ebruary, 7pm F th 27 th February, 1
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Concert I – Saturday February 27, 7pm
____________________________________________ _ Alexandra Bell – 2120 The Future ___________________ _ Sam Welch – Is a beaver’s dam natural? ________________ _ Peter Falconer – Canch End Morning Radio _______________ _ Aidan Lochrin – Veil of Mist___________________________
Concert II – Sunday February 28, 1pm
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__________________________________ ________ Christian-Alexandru Popa – On a boat with Rails_ _________________ silo portem, with An Moku – Awakening _ ___________________ Sophie Stone – postcard-sized pieces _ ______________________________ Phil Self – Sundowning _ _________________________ Lu Allan – Counterpoint
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rday 27th Fe : Satu bru ary ,
rt I e nc o Alexandra Bell – C 2120 The Future
7p m
An immersive time machine takes the listener to a hugely different Scotland in 2120. The story imagines the change in movement of people in a world where economic power has transitioned from west to east, climate change has happened, interaction with artificial intelligence is commonplace and pandemics are routine. Concepts were informed by discussions with medical & economic futurists and MIT media lab. Alex Bell trained as a classical musician before becoming an engineer. Originally from Belfast, she has lived, worked and expeditioned around the world before settling in Scotland. Alex explores the interface of art, science, and sound; and is particularly interested in synaesthesia and the potential for sound to alter entrenched ideology, physiology, perception & emotion. She loves the sea and describes herself as a contrarian.
rday 27th Fe : Satu bru ary ,
rt I e nc o Sam Welch – C
Is a beaver’s dam natural?
7p m
'Is a beavers dam natural?' explores the pervasiveness of both the natural and unnatural in the urban environment. Specifically focusing on the Kingston bridge, a large motorway bridge built over the River Clyde, questioning its status as an unnatural object and asking the question: ‘Where does the natural end and the unnatural begin?' Sam Welch is a multi-media artist working in the mediums of sound, audiovisual and spatial sculpture. He creates work using location recorded sounds, video, found objects and synthesised sources. His work explores the relationship between perception and the self. Influenced by rapid visual collage, music concrete and electronic music production he strives to create pieces true to himself. Ever since adolescence, Sam has been fascinated by the endless oscillation in our personal world view. What started as a yearning soon became an in-depth daily contemplation which can be seen in his various creative outlets. The message within his work is simple, no reaction is desired or expected. The action of reacting to the works itself is the basis of the human condition.
rday 27th Fe : Satu bru ary ,
rt I e nc o Peter Falconer – C
Canch End Morning Radio
7p m
In the late 1940’s, Canch End Radio was broadcast from the now lost town of Seaton Snook. As far as we can tell, it was the first pirate radio station operating in the UK. Their morning radio show was broadcast at dawn on weekdays for several years. Sadly no recordings were made, but fragments of an interview with someone closely involved with starting the station (possibly Robson Booth) have been uncovered… Peter Consistently Falconer (b. 1982) is a sound artist, composer and musician based in the UK. His work uses instrumental music, electroacoustic sound design, sonic journalism and narrative text to present new perspectives on real and parafictional histories. He is currently working towards a PhD in Music Composition at the University of Southampton, building an archive of sounds and music from an abandoned seaside resort in County Durham.
rday 27th Fe : Satu bru ary ,
rt I e nc o Aidan Lochrin – C Veil of Mist
7p m
"Veil of Mist" was constructed from daily observations amid lockdown(s) in Glasgow, 2020. An exploration into hazy thoughts and a trancelike passage of time, it also seeks to try to peer through this blurry “cloud” and look forward to a more coherent mode of being. The piece is not grounded in any one place or time, but rather chooses to elicit fragments of an environment; one that the viewer can squint through the “veil of mist” surrounding it to start again somewhere fresh. Aidan is a sound artist, composer, and experimental musician based in and around Glasgow, and is recently graduated with a Master’s Degree in Sound for the Moving Image at the Glasgow School of Art. Their work is heavily steeped in improvisation and the drone, often with a focus on a more abstract concept of sound as imagery, incorporating modern sonorities and techniques with a blend of more traditional methods – ranging from the instrumental, electronic sounds, and performance art with a tinge of the absurd. Aidan also writes electronic music under Gaia Complex, and is part of the electroacoustic duo Failed System Test.
day 28
th Feb : Sun I rua I rt ry, e c n Christian-Alexandru Popa – 1pm o C On a boat with Rails
I am a young storyteller coming from Romania and currently living in Glasgow having many interests in the art world I hold skills and experience within filming, directing, editing, and acting as well as creating soundscapes and sound design for innovative film and moving image worlds. Thinking the new and surrounding myself with inspiring individuals whilst working in diverse projects, from poetic filmmaking to fiction and documentaries. Standing for social equality, and integrity, I managed to establish what my art and storytelling mean to a creative authentic expression of self. I am an artist approaching life with full consciousness, vitality and intensity heading towards generating ambitious audio-visual flow who goes beyond limitations, always aspiring for poetic connection where feeling is heightened, and the spectator is made more active. The role of sound design is crucial in my practice and is represented by the interplay against the image that adds value to the screen. This imitates the natural function of the expressed world presented in cinema. Using collaborative techniques with Glasgow based musicians, I direct, sample, and manipulate the soundscapes created. My cinema thought revolves around an audio-visual flow that processes a self, created in the film through symbolic representations that rest upon the phenomenology of vision. It is a poetic cinema of self-expression that seeks allegorical status in its attempt to articulate the past while using montage and sound as a sense of tropology. My films are an experience as well as a system of communication which utilises multiple perspectives to situate the viewer in a familiar position of relating to the world. The image is neither objective nor subjective but a process of transformation creating cinematic meaning while the sound is empathetic driving the story forward. Art will exist in the audience's imagination and interpretation so that one will recover the external phenomena, providing gatherings of cognition over time building composite understandings. Through the experience of uncertainty, the subject will relate to the reality of its perception, memories thoughts, and desires. The main motive that shall be recognized in my filmmaking is the reclamation of a re-enchanted whilst opening new possibilities of thought through art.
day 28
th Feb : Sun I rua I rt ry, e c n silo portem, with An Moku 1pm o C – Awakening
“Awakening” is a collaboration between silo portem and An Moku, who kindly provided us with samples of treated piano recordings etc., for us to manipulate in our improvisations. The piece was edited from an improvisation recorded on the 6th of January 2021, very much with the theme of dawn in our minds. Much of our music has hitherto leant towards dark ambient styles, but for this piece we wanted to create a piece that was light and airy, celebrating the promise of better times in 2021. Besides An Moku’s treated piano sounds and soundscapes, we added field recordings, including heavily treated recordings of Edinburgh’s 2019 New Year’s Eve firework display, as well as processed recordings of boiling fat that sound like rustling leaves and birds. The piece also presented the perfect opportunity to showcase Gillian’s latest experimental photography, which we subsequently animated with photo and film editing software to create the film accompanying “Awakening”. silo portem are an Edinburgh-based multi-media and experimental music duo, who are also a married couple, Simon & Gillian Young. They create improvised music that combines elements of contemporary classical music, dark ambient, film soundtrack, Foley and their own field recordings, to create a unique multi-layered sound that defies categorisation. They complement their performances with their own experimental films, using a similar cut, paste and manipulate process, that combines their own photography, films and artwork with assorted “found” footage. They have been a prominent feature of the Edinburgh experimental music scene since they moved there in 2015, playing regularly at events such as Soundscapism, Laptop Lounge, the Paradigm Electronic Arts Festival, Hidden Door and The Edinburgh Festival of Sound. They regularly self-release material on Bandcamp, recently releasing their album “Samsaminia”, a collaboration with Iranian contemporary classical music composer Arshia Samsaminia. They will soon be releasing an album of collaborations recorded during the first lockdown of 2020 with the co-directors of the Tehran Contemporary Music Festival, Idin Samimi Mofakham and Martyna Kosecka, amongst others. Most recently, they have had material released on two albums of experimental music released by Tehran-based label, Noise A Noise, in August 2020 and January 2021. They are currently collaborating with the Swiss sound-artist Dominik Grenzler aka An Moku, and hope to release the results on his highly regarded experimental Zurich-based music label, “EndTitles”. https://siloportem.bandcamp.com/ https://anmoku.net/ https://soundcloud.com/silo-portem https://www.instagram.com/silo_portem_films/ https://www.instagram.com/prints_etherea
day 28
th Feb : Sun I rua I rt ry, e c 1p n Sophie Stone – m o C postcard-sized pieces
postcard-sized pieces are a set of small experimental scores for open instrumentation and duration, which can be played or enacted in any way by musicians and non-musicians. They comprise verbal, graphic and hybrid notations and can be categorised into ‘text’, ‘staff’, ‘blank’ and ‘recording task’ scores. postcard-sized pieces were completed at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a necessity to continue, Sophie Stone experimented with new ways of collaborating during isolation. This included networked collaboration through the medium of Zoom with the Montrose Composers’ Club with a specially curated version of postcard-sized pieces. The resulting audiovisual work shows the possibilities of meaningful music-making and listening through online mediums such as Zoom. Sophie Stone is a composer of experimental music based in Kent, England. Her interests include: graphic notation, drone and ambient music, improvisation, multiplicity, modes of listening, experiences of silence, and longform music. Sophie’s music has been performed at festivals across the UK, such as Ideas of Noise (Birmingham), Electric Spring Festival (Huddersfield), WinterSound (Canterbury), Margate NOW (Margate) and Sound Thought (Glasgow). In 2019, She participated in Wandelweiser’s ‘ Composers meet Composers ’ mentoring programme (Neufelden, Austria) with Antoine Beuger, Emmanuelle Waeckerle, Marianne Schuppe, Jürg Frey and Joachim Eckl. Sophie is currently studying for a PhD in composition with Dr Lauren Redhead (Goldsmiths, University of London) at Canterbury Christ Church University, where she is also a sessional lecturer. Sophie has presented her research at conferences, such as Music and/as Process Annual Conference, Performing Indeterminacy: An international conference and Royal Musical Association Annual Conference. As a performer, Sophie plays the clarinet with the Free Range Orchestra (Canterbury), a collective of musicians, dancers, poets and artists with a shared interest in improvisation and experimental music. www.sophiestonecomposer.com Montrose Composers’ Club is a group of like-minded composers based in East Kent, England. They meet regularly to try out new ideas, perform their music and promote it to the wider world. The MCC, founded in September 2015, comprises local composers Aidan Shepherd, Matthew Brown, Anna Braithwaite, Phil Self and Sophie Stone. Their eclectic careers have lent their writing flavours of folk, jazz, cabaret and electronics, allowing them to create genre-defying sounds for savvy ears. montrosecomposersclub.com
day 28th Feb rua ry,
: Sun I I ert c n o Phil Self – C
1p m
Sundowning
Towards the end of last year my grandmother died peacefully in her home. She was able to be visited by her family and share her end of life journey with us all. 'Sundowning' was written during this period and the name refers specifically to her death and the gentle and beautiful parts of it. The term Sundowning is one used to describe a specific state associated with people living with dementia – the sun disappearing in early evening can lead to confusion and anxiety. Whilst my grandmother did not suffer from dementia, the word felt apt in it's description of movement from one state to another, day to night, life to after-life. My grandmother, whilst not religious, believed in life after death and this piece seeks to illustrate that. The piece is one of a set that will be released this year by Phantom Limb (https://www.phantom-limb.co.uk) under my solo project ‘DAU’. Phil Self is a musician/composer living in Deal, Kent. He runs workshops and singing groups for many respected charities and organisations such as The Sidney de Haan Research Centre, The Canterbury Cantata Trust, Living Lively and Music 4 Wellbeing. Phil plays regularly with several bands and artists, including Yndi Halda, Will Varley, Molly’s Lips, Cocos Lovers and The Hellfire Orchestra. He is a member of The Montrose Composers Club; a group set up to share, create, improvise and perform new musical works. The MCC have performed regularly at the Folkestone Profound Sound Festival and continue to develop exciting collaborations with local creatives such as visual artist Matt Rowe and the Sacconi Quartet who have performed some of their works. His solo project ‘DAU’ allows him the opportunity to explore soundscapes and drone-based music.
day 28th Feb rua ry,
: Sun I I ert c n o Lu Allan – C
1p m
Counterpoint
While the title of this piece refers to the interweaving of my vocal lines, a 'counterpoint' can also be an alternative view or a juxtaposition. I view myself, my life and the world around me quite differently now, at the beginning of 2021, than I did even a few months ago - so I wanted to create something that invoked new beginnings, starting afresh, shedding old skin. The audio consists mostly of improvised stems and also samples some candid conversation recordings which give the piece a particularly autobiographical feel. The visual contrasts videos I took on new year’s eve 2020 and new year’s day 2021. Lu Allan is a Scottish pianist, composer and producer specialising in improvisation, ambient music and drum and bass (which she makes under the name imo-Lu). A dance accompanist by day, she is interested in the relationship between music, movement and image. Lu’s sound production often combines rich, musical, atmospheric textures with upfront and fast-paced percussion.
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