focus: default #10 – 19.10.2023 with Christian Mirande, lilic & wish, and absence administration
Our upcoming event takes place on Thursday the 19th of October with performances by Christian Mirande, lilic & wish and absence administration.
On Thursday the 19th of October, we are returning to the Grey Space in the Middle to present performances by experimental musician Christian Mirande, laptop duo lilic & wish, and computer musician absence administration.
In this focus newsletter, we would like to share with you a selection of works made by the artists set to perform.
Christian Mirande
Christian Mirande (b. 1986) is an experimental musician from Philadelphia. He has utilized magnetic tape, various audio synthesis and resynthesis methods, and instruments from the fretless bass to the iphone voice memo. His work is often characterized as textural or atmospheric. He has been a member of the groups Open Corner and The Flea Circus.
After years of releasing on labels such as Hanson, Recital, Glistening Examples, Vitrine and Ascetic House, his latest album "Beautiful One Day, Perfect The Next" was released on the Regional Bears label earlier this year. Honoring the album format by delivering an ambitiously rounded, concise conceptual record, "Beautiful One Day, Perfect The Next" represents a crystallization of his varying interests (domestic concrète, mystic synth explorations, spoken word, field recording) in a strikingly refreshing ambiguous result,- in between the abstract and the weird and the significantly personal and evocative.
a selection of recommended works include:
Beautiful One Day, Perfect The Next
(Regional Bears, 2023)
Open Corner (Christian Mirande & Asha Sheshadri) - Empty Pool To No One
(Recital, 2018)
"Museum Piece" (NRR49)
(No Rent, 2017)
Other releases include Night Moves (2020), Trying To Remember A House (2016), My Friend Went to Heaven on the Frankford El (2020), -0500 UTC (2021), Thracian Summer (2016), Exercise (2020), Fear Of Flying (2015), Foxbat (2016) and Arbuckle 7/28 (with Network Glass, 2018)
lilic & wish
lilic and wish, both affiliated with New York-based label Deleted bring with their textural and vocal-centered joint efforts, a unique, collaborative take on sample-heavy evocations. Over the course of the last year, wish and Lilic have performed collaboratively in a suite of concerts in New York city, Montreal, and Kansas City. Their work together merges their idiosyncratic approaches to pop: Lilic’s harmonic and melodic sensibilities and wish’s intuitive sampling and processing of popular music and culture.
lilic & wish at Saint-Édouard Church (1/28/23) [excerpt]
(c-, 2023)
wish is the project of New York-based composer and artist Nick Fopeano. At times, his music is a lattice of samples of popular music, field recordings, and found sound (Raining in My Room; I Threw in All my Coins; wish live @ 123 c - ); at others, it’s a presentation of isolated autotuned accapellas, which are played from a sample library, processed improvisationally through a set of CDJs, and given time to decay in a deeply emotive and occasionally humorous development (wish @ NINA (Live) Deleted ; wish (Late July) Lynn). At the core of the two distinct forms is a lifelong interest in what emerges as the contexts of popular music and culture drift and become transfigured.
wish @ NINA (live)
(D e l e t e d, 2022)
Lilic is the solo music project of New York-based artist Ezra Kahn. Their music—where electronic, pop, and ambient meet in song form — is bound by an acute sense for computer synthesis, a meticulous processing of samples, and a rich harmonic subtlety (Lilic @ NINA (Live) Deleted ; Do You Want to Enter the Talking Stage Deleted ; Lilic live in Kansas City 2 c -). Throughout Lilic’s music and performances, vocals– by way of the weight they hold expressively in popular music– assume a primary importance. Intertwined with their devotion to originality in timbre and song structure, Lilic’s use of vocals, whether sampled (Companion w/ wish ; Lilic & wish @ St Édouard-Church 1/28/23 (excerpt) c - ; Last Night w / wish) or sung (Two of Me ; Untitled 2021 ; Sonata ii) distills the emotional resonance of their music.
lilic @ NINA (live)
(D e l e t e d, 2022)
absence administration
absence administration is a computer music project by The Hague-based, Latvian descent sound artist and researcher Andrejs Poikāns. His musical practice is often inspired by writings on language, subjectivity and psychoanalytical dimensions of listening. By working with carefully chosen algorithmic techniques and diary-like sampling of daily life, the project becomes an attempt at computing the mundane. A musical space where both high complexity sound structures and reductionist approaches can have their place.
His works have taken the form of multichannel acousmatic composition, sound installation and performative lectures. He has collaborated in developing music for theatre and gallery based performances. The later often involves arithmetic processes and the writing of simple computer programs for scheduling events in long time durations and making calendar entries.
More information can be found on his website.