Sonic Circuits Festival Preview

INSECT ARK is the new solo project from Dana Schechter, known for her work with M. Gira’s Angels of Light (Swans) and Bee and Flower. Based in Brooklyn, INSECT ARK is composed and performed as an analog-electronic hybrid: one woman, a sampler, a bass, a lapsteel and a keyboard. Creating her personal soundtrack to the human psyche’s underbelly, Schechter’s sounds weave a brooding, textural landscape, a starless night spiked with sparkling moments of light and flash. Intimate and cold at the same time, Insect Ark braids a strong sense of melody into the twists and turns with delay drenched lapsteel, distorted synthesizers and bass, and sparse drum programming. Insect Ark's 10" Vinyl EP "Long Arms" (March 2013 / Geweih Ritual Documents) follows up her debut 7", "Collapsar" (2012, Lancashire and Somerset Records). A full-length album is being mixed now. Since the project's inception in late 2011, Insect Ark has toured the USA's East Coast, Midwest, and West Coast, as well as Europe, the UK, and Israel. Also an animator / video artist by trade, Schechter is working on a full-length animated film for Insect Ark's live shows in 2015. Lazurite is the solo project of Megan Moncrief, mostly employing the ukelin (an oddball 36-stringed invention sold door to door during the Great Depression). String drones, feedback, and percussive strikes bleed together with synths, homemade effects, and drum loops, all processed through the ominous digital buzz of a stack of throwaway pedals. The first Lazurite tape, Secular Geometry, was self-released in 2011. [ówt krì] (Helsinki) It's about when a horrid thing is placed in the midst of beauty. It's about the complete effect, the bigger picture. It's a question of the whole…and does it work. Most think about visual elements when encountering the word aesthetics, but it's more than that. I do not count myself as a musician, I am an aural -painter, -sculptor, -poet. I am an artist! I find inspiration in words of poetry and in colored fields of abstract paintings. I seek for sounds in nature in order to replicate and revamp them for my own paintings and poems that I build from sounds. My sense of aesthetics does not suit everyone, but in the end I create pictures and feelings that my sanity craves I get out. My canvas is the airwaves that shiver our eardrums, my words are more often written in notes than letters. I do not give out everything of my works. I enjoy leaving something to the listener. Maybe you feel joy or sadness, love or hate…maybe disgust or, in the best of cases, pleasure. All I hope at the end of the day is that at least one of my works have woken some feelings within you.” Also appearing on Friday: Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind, Chester Hawkins (outdoor video+audio performance), Bonnie Jones, Chris Lynn Saturday October 4 @5:00pm – $20 | students $15 GILLES AUBRY is a Swiss sound artist based in Berlin since 2002. He uses location recordings, audio archives and interviews to create live performances, sound installations, music publications and movies without pictures. Informed by researches on cultural, material and historical aspects of sound production and reception, Aubry’s works generally address issues related to the politics of the audible. In his performance "Amplified Souls", Aubry improvises with recordings documenting a spiritual deliverance service recorded in 2011 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). During collective praying sessions involving speaking-in-tongues and a massive sound-system, the church members oppose evil spirits causing various existential problems. The sound, powerful and over-distorted, attests both on their supernatural powers and their capacity for soul amplification… By extension, the performance also questions the devotion of noise music fans and the cultural boundaries between faith, noise and perception. Presented in quadrophonic sound. The sound-constellation 100110 was formed in spring 2012 as a collaboration between the two artists. What started as a side-project to experimenta sound-trio Triumph-Adler evolved into becoming "..one of Swedens most interesting combinations of sound-art, electronic improv, or whatever you call it.." (review in swedish by Thomas Millroth on sound of music) and in October 2012 they released their first EP 001 as well as taking a mini-tour, with Ljudodyssé (Sound-Odyssey) perfoming in Gothenburg, Sweden & London, UK. The foundation for 100110:s sound are two electric typewriters & effects, and out of this frame they create sprawling suggestive & meditatively noisy. The slow builtup and wide outstretched compositions expand the conscious beyond the constraints of the physical space and bring the listener on a voyage through unexploited soundscapes. From Latin "extremus" meaning "extreme" and Greek "phili? (?????)" meaning "love", Extremophile (NYC) is an organism made up of Lucio Menegon (guitar), David Grollman (percussion), Emilie Lesbros (voice), Sean Ali & Pascal Niggenkemper (standup bass) that thrives in sonic and improvisational extremes that are full of love yet detrimental to most life on Earth. Bruzgynai (eng."brushwood") is the long-time project of Arma, one of the most active Lithuanian experimentalist and promoter. Bruzgynai is constantly evolving act pushing the boundaries of genres and disciplines and hardly staying still for long in one point. Arma perfectly controls his expressive on-stage alter-ego as well as organic emissions of weird noises. Spontaneous and unpredictable madness. Lo-fi aesthetics, sound adventures, drone mystique, outsider noise. Hermitic moods and a ritual action of Nature unknown. Over 100 shows done in Russia, Germany, UK, Norway, Austria, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Serbia, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech republic and Baltic states. Participated in the festivals Cocart (Poland), Sound Around (Russia), Gigiena shuma (Russia), Porin Juhlaviikot (Finland), Speigas (Lithuania), M?nuo Juodaragis (Lithuania), STRcamp (Lithuania), Dezintegracija (Lithuania), Creature (Lithuania). With surprising instrumentation, innovative songwriting, quirky melodies, and a healthy sense humor, Bee vs. Moth (Austin, TX) plays music that defies traditional categories. The band has one foot in the world of jazz and creative improvisation, and the other firmly planted on a distortion pedal. Is Bee vs. Moth serious or silly? Virtuosic or spazzy? We’ll find the answer somewhere between doom metal and a brass band.