Egress nights

The second installation began at the Founder’s Room on a Saturday evening with producer Soda Lite. Emissions from their Aqua Solar Cura record transported listeners into a realm where nature and human imagination collide. Steering the jog wheels of their synthesized production, Soda Lite captained images of a utopia in ecological harmony. Bird song coalesced into floral electrical impulses, liquid flowed into every cornerstone of earthly and fleshy foundations. Guided was the sense of self, into an ethereal unification with the rhythmic frequencies of the biosphere and its keyboard fantasies. Modo ensued, with vocals snatches chattering atop looped voices that coaxed even the most conservative limbs across the floorboards and into Modo’s kinesphere. They moved with sheer intelligence and the grace of a gothic tree, branching out with a fistful of microphones and synth lines that splinter hurriedly across fault lines on the exposed beams above. Modo exhales a coarse note and bleeds out a hyper pop ballad or two, equally exposed and unafraid under the tremors of blue light. Up next were ECB. Two artists seated face to face, trawling the anemones of YouTube and synthesising it into algorithms of fragmented, dystopian staccato paired against a backdrop of cityscapes claustrophobic with urban sprawl. Clip grabs from grime, air horns, soprano saxes, drill and wigged whistles quickly turn polyrhythms into abrasive punctuations as dancers try and parry the club abstractions with feeble legs. Face down bums up, these two shatter tracks and reframe them, jacking the low end and staining each phrase with their phosphorescent fingers. Slumber provides the antidote, bathing us in a pool of asthmatic reverb as their voice rises, falls and falters, sombre and chlorinated in the shallows. Obscured by a dark laptop and a fluorescent apple, Slumber sedates the crowd, many opting to wash their bodies atop of Slumbers droning evocations and the coarse wood below. Low fi Ableton’s kicks and crashes accentuate Slumber’s inhibitions and the ease with which the music can be accessed. It’s a reduced approach that gives you the sense that they are making music from and for the bedroom. Music to remind you of your sanctuary and the melancholy creased between your sheets. Egress is an insight into the kinetic imaginations of some of nipaluna’s soundscape and experimental artists. It’s queer world making right under Salamanca’s nose. Laying down a gauntlet for unlikely tonal relationships and the improvised social dancing that follows.