The Audio Foundation’s travelling festival returns to Ōtautahi for 4 days of ‘Urgent Sound, Adventurous Music & Deep Listening’, curated by local legends Anita Clark (Motte) and Rory Dalley (I.R.D).
The festival brings a selection of innovative artists to Christchurch in the spirit of collaboration – alongside solo performances there are unique lineups featuring 30+ musicians and performing artists exploring the art of spontaneous creation.
Fronting the lineup from outside Ōtautahi are songwriter/producer i.e Crazy and electronics genius Kraus (Tāmaki Makaurau), out of this world vocalist Jonny Marks and percussionist/conductor Riki Pirihi (Te Whanganui-a-Tara), noise rocker Jackson Harry (Ōtepoti) and dreamscape electronic artist Ludus (Whanganui).
A swathe of local artists complete the lineup including Greg Malcolm, Jenny Ward, Paul Sutherland, Gemma Syme, Peter Wright, Jimmy Rainey, James Robinson, Luke Wood, Reece McNaughten, Ryan Chin, Joe McCallum, Heather Webb, Reuben Derrick, Luke Scott, Nicolas Woollaston, Erin Voice, Michael Kime, Mike Minchington, Malcolm Riddoch, Sarah Elsworth, Jake Kiano Skinner & from Sri Lanka – Sum Suraweera.
VISITING:
I.E. Crazy – Frances Libeau (fka Claire Duncan; they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist from Aotearoa New Zealand. Synthesising neo-folk, industrial sonics & power balladry through exploratory modes of aural collage & narrative songwriting, their ongoing project i.e. crazy harks to the avant-garde provocations of Laurie Anderson, Aotearoan post-punk & the melancholic sehnsucht of 1980s pop music.
Ludus – The ever-evolving sound project Ludus strives to constantly explore new realms of electronic music. Whanganui based, Ludus has toured and played throughout Aotearoa by way of DJing and live performance over recent years. Between opening for acts such as techno legend Kevin Saunderson and Pitch Black and performing at festivals and venues across the motu, Ludus can also be found collaborating with other artists to compose film soundtracks, full-length dance works and sound art commissions. Look out for her upcoming self-released dance EP Hill Top Valley is set to be released in the coming months.
Kraus – Kraus (aka Pat Kraus) (he/him) is a producer of psychedelic music from Aotearoa/New Zealand. Since the turn of the millennium he has released 20 solo albums on labels such as Ultra Eczema and Soft Abuse, and performed in a dozen bands. His recent work melds hypnotic rhythms and day-glo sci-fi sound-design into new forms of ambient and experimental electronics.
Jonny Marks – Jonny Marks is a vocalist and also plays an electronic set up that centers the Synthi-AKS. His solo material blends the timbral worlds of oscillators and voice. He is a keen improviser and collaborator. Most widely known for his work with The All Seeing Hand, but most consistently known for his work in the experimental community. He was involved in The Space in the early 2000’s and has continued to contribute to the research and dissemination of sonic exploration in Aoteroa, particularly Te Whanganui-a-tara, with his work at Pyramid Club and on the board of The Sound and Light Exploration Society.
Riki Pirihi – Riki Pirihi (Ngāti Wai/Patuharakeke/Ngāti Māhanga Hourua) is a musician based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and performs under the moniker Cave Circles and DJ Oboe. He is currently researching and developing the Conduction method with the Taonga Puoro ensemble, Te Ātea Nui and plays drums with Al Fraser, Mara TK, Orchestra Spheres and with different configurations from the Noa Records collective.
Jackson Harry – Jackson Harry is a Dunedin artist raised in traditional music practice, currently based in Melbourne. Aside from his solo guitar work he performs with Alastair Galbraith, LSD fundraiser, Christine Voice (Snapper), The Aesthetics, The Bilders among others.
$25 Door sales per show
$20 presales from UTR
$50 Festival pass from UTR
THURSDAY 12 OCT – SPACE ACADEMY 8PM
1) Greg Malcolm / Paul Sutherland / Sum Suraweera
2) Gemma Syme / Willieu / Peter Wright
3) Jonny Marks solo
4) Kraus / Nicole Reddington / Reuben Derrick / Nic Woolaston
5) Riki Pirihi / Mike Kime / Jimmy Rainey
FRIDAY 13 OCT – SPACE ACADEMY 8PM
1) Jonny Marks / Jenny Ward / James Robinson / Reece McNaughton
2) Ludus
3) Jackson Harry / Luke Wood / Ryan Fisherman / Taipua Adams / Joe McCallum
4) Kraus
5) Reuben Derrick / Mike Kime / Sum Suraweera
SATURDAY 14 OCT – SPACE ACADEMY 8PM
1) Ludus / Heather Webb / Luke Scott / Jake Kīanō Skinner
2) Riki Pirihi
3) Jackson Harry / Roy Montgomery
4) I.E Crazy
5) No Death Exit Horse – Malcolm Riddoch / Mike Minchington / Peter Wright / I.R.D / Dave Imlay
SUN 15 OCT – THE LOONS (LYTTELTON) 2-5PM
1) DISCREET OBJECT SOUND and FIELD RECORDING Group-
Jo Burzynska / Jake Kīanō Skinner / Mike Minchington / Nic Woollaston
2) TWISTED TONGUE SISTERS w/ TRANSISTORS
Gemma Syme / iRD / Jonny Marks / Jenny Ward
3) I.E Crazy / Roy Montgomery / Sarah Elsworth / Anita Clark
4) Jackson Harry / Luke Wood / Ryan Chin / Heather Webb / Peter Wright / Luke Scott / Dave Imlay / Malcolm Riddoch / Luke Shaw
5) CONDUCTION ensemble directed by Riki Pirihi
Local artist bios:
Jo Burzynska – Jo Burzynska – who also performs and records under the name Stanier Black-Five – is an Australasia-based sound artist, wine writer and curator whose work in these areas has increasingly converged in the production of multisensory art and the design of immersive environments, which include the establishment of the world’s first ‘wine and sound’ bar. As a sound/multisensory artist she has exhibited, performed and released her work around the world.
Roy Montgomery – Roy Montgomery was born in London, England but lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. He currently lectures in environmental management and urban planning at Lincoln University. He plays electric guitar and has made many home recordings since the early 1980s from which he has released several self-produced 45s, LPs and CDs on various independent labels including Drunken Fish, Kranky, vhf and Grapefruit. He was involved in bands such as the Pin Group, Dadamah, Dissolve and Hash Jar Tempo (with Bardo Pond) and he has collaborated with other artists such as Flying Saucer Attack, Liz Harris (Grouper), Julianna Barwick, Purple Pilgrims, Emma Johnston, Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux), Alicia Merz (Birds of Passage) and Martha Skye Murphy. A new LP, entitled Broken Heart Surgery is due for release in October 2023. Roy performs live relatively infrequently.
Greg Malcolm – Greg Malcolm is one of New Zealand’s premier avant garde string-benders. He plays oddly crafted guitar-like instruments of all manners and has released lots of great solo recordings, with his band Surfin’ USSR, a duo record with Eugene Chadbourne and other releases including a 2017 duo with Stefan Neville titled ’Nuance’.
Jenny Ward – Jenny Ward is a singer and performer who employs toys, objects and extended vocal techniques along with theatrics and characterisation. She has been featured on many CD releases and has performed extensively in New Zealand and Europe. Hawkes Bay Arts Festival reviewer Jess Soutar Barron stated, “Ward is bewitching and shows total focus, which is beautiful to watch. Musically there is something more here, this is surrealist folk, or free folk, jazz-less improvisation. Using domestic objects and repurposing them to bring out sounds that are deeply human, shows music lies within everything’.
Ryan Fisherman – Ryan Chin is a Tui finalist and Silver Scroll nominated musician/producer settled in the city of Ōtautahi. Performing under the moniker of Ryan Fisherman, he has been involved with various projects and artists over the years such as Doprah, NAKEY, Ben Woods, Mousey, Holly Arrowsmith, and Blair Parkes. Ryan is an eager musician who tries his hand at multiple instruments. Seen as a Jack of all trades, master of none.
Paul Sutherland
Gemma Syme – Gemma Syme is a multidisciplinary artist based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Her works spans video, performance, digital technology, printmaking and painting.She is part of art collective FANTASING with Bek Coogan, Sarah Jane Parton and Claire Harris who create work using installation, music and live performance. Gemma has been making music and performing in bands since 2006, and utilises rock music tropes in her work. She uses an intersectional feminist “She-Punk” ethos as a vehicle to explore ideas of identity and gender politics.
Peter Wright – Peter Wright is a prolific recording artist, performer and sound artist based in Ōhinehou/Lyttelton,
known predominantly for crafting improvised, organically evolving drone textures with open-tuned
electric guitars, augmented by layers of effects and environmental sounds. He also produces
idiosyncratic heavily processed digital noise-scapes under the moniker NoNoNo. Wright has been a
regular collaborator with local and international experimental sonic explorers over 30+ years; current
projects include Teen Haters with Helen Greenfield, The Escalation with Bruce Russell & sporadic
appearances with noise-rock outfit Death Horse.
Jimmy Rainey – Saxophonist, composer, and educator Jimmy Rainey is an award-winning graduate of the Ara MusicArts programme in Christchurch, and in 2019 completed further study at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam in The Netherlands. He has worked and performed with artists including Snarky Puppy, Bob Mintzer, Reinier Baas, John Clayton, Terell Stafford, Dick Oatts, Jesse van Ruller, Miho Hazama, Scribe, Jong Metropole and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra.
James Robinson
Luke Wood – Luke Wood is a Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at the Ilam School of Fine Arts (University of Canterbury, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha). Luke’s creative work moves between design, writing, and music, and his various research interests emerge from the intersection of visual communication, politics, and education. He set up Ilam Press with colleague Aaron Beehre in 2010, and then the offshoot record label, Ilam Press Records, in 2017. Luke was co-editor of The National Grid from 2006–2012, and Head Full of Snakes from 2011–2017. Luke plays pedal steel guitar in The Opawa 45s.
Heather Webb – Heather is a professional guitarist and composer based in Ōtautahi. An active member of the music scenes with extensive experience as a recording artist, composer, band leader and theatre guitarist, she also leads numerous ensembles, most notably Resolve –astrophysics-inspired jazz compositions. Heather performs regularly with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Free Theatre, The Court Theatre and Showbiz Christchurch, and at various jazz and arts festivals. She has collaborated with many musicians – performing, composing and recording with artists including Merk, Julia Deans, Mousey, Bic Runga, and Delaney Davidson, as well as with leading local musicians, Tom Rainey, Darren Pickering, Reuben Derrick and Michael Story. In 2021, Heather was listed by RNZ as a top woman in jazz.
Reece McNaughten – Reece McNaughten is known for his solo project Big Flip the Massive – a chaotic mash of organic live drums deeply intertwined with electronic experimentation with interactive 3D visuals. This project has strong roots in glitch/avant guard, merging live footwork with ever-evolving pop culture. Highly energetic and frantic, Big Flips motion to lead you down a dark path of uncharted territory will have your brain and atoms pushed to the limit.
Nicole Reddington – Nicole is a librarian by day and when possible freelance cellist performing in a range of projects, bands and theatre. She brings new perspective to traditional cello roles through her performances and enjoys reintroducing the beautiful yet melancholic sound of the cello to people though collaborations and through theatre by creating dynamic and emotive soundtracks.
Joe McCallum – Having previously kept time for alt-rock band Atlas, Joe McCallum is these days “living the dream”, playing live and in-session with local country artists like Tami Neilson, Delaney Davidson and Marlon Williams, tutoring and letting loose with jazz group The Harmolodic Bird.
Reuben Derrick – Saxophonist, clarinettist and composer whose work encompasses a vast range of collaborative performance with dancers, sound sculptors, actors, and songwriters.
Nicolas Woollaston – Nicolas Woollaston is a creative technologist who has a passion for closing the gap between production and consumption, for electronic gadgetry, for wonderful and strange noises, for making it all personal.
Mike Minchington – Michael Minchington is an Otautahi based improviser, who has performed in a number of contexts. He is a full time member of long running cassette-core group Memory Burn (with IRD Rory Dalley), as well as the (now somewhat defunct) improv psych unit DeathHorse ( with Malcolm Riddoch, David Khan and Peter Wright), and also lends a hand to the Aotearoa Snuff Jazz Ensemble when required. He loves what he does and does what he can.
Michael Kime – Michael Kime is a graduate of the Christchurch Jazz School. Michael has been a professional musician for fifteen years and has played with many of New Zealand¹s finest musicians performing in Jazz, Classical and Free Improvisation settings. Michael is a founding member of Christchurch¹s celebrated Silencio Ensemble and was a performer in the Christchurch premiere of Free Theatre’s Hereafter (2012), The Mauricio Kagel Project (2015) as well as The Black Rider (2017) and Alice (2018). Michael has performed in Concert halls and venues in America, Japan and Dubai.
Malcolm Riddoch – Malcolm Riddoch’s sonic arts practice melds experimental electroacoustic technique with phenomenological method: An investigation of acousmatic listening and electronic transformation of soundscapes; notions of indeterminacy in composition for installation and performance; the use of whole acoustic spaces in installation and music performance; and electroacoustic feedback as an embodied, intentional, temporalizing process. His medium is non-tonal, timbrally focused and technologically organised sound with themes of dissolution
Sarah Elsworth – Sarah Elsworth is a contemporary dance artist, choreographer and movement teacher from Ōtautahi, New Zealand. She graduated from UNITEC, Auckland with a Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts, Major Contemporary Dance in 2012. She has since performed in many independent dance works, presented at multiple arts festivals throughout New Zealand and created her own choreographic works. Sarah is driven to empower fearless dancing bodies and loves facilitating both nurturing & critical spaces, where unique creative expression can develop and thrive.
Jake Kīanō Skinner
Sum Suraweera – Sum Suraweera obtained his PhD in ethnomusicology in 2010 from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. His research focused on Sri Lankan Low-Country traditional drumming. Prior to this, he completed a Bachelor of music in jazz, majoring in drums. Sum started off his career as a musician in New Zealand where he performed regularly for nearly 10 years in the local jazz and improvised music scene.
Sum returned to Sri Lanka (his country of birth) in 2010 to set up Musicmatters. Ten years on, it has grown from 20 to 200 students and has built a strong reputation for offering a holistic musical education for children in Sri Lanka. Besides the school, for the past decade, Sum has been actively involved in organizing festivals and concerts with the Musicmatters Collective, whose primary objective is to build an experimental and improvised music scene in Colombo. Some of the events that are worth noting are the Musicmatters Festival which occurred annually from 2012-2017 and the Big Ears Music series which has been presenting monthly concerts for improvised music since 2010. In 2018, Sum set up the Sound Room as a makeshift performance venue within Musicmatters with an aim of later setting up a dedicated venue for non-commercial music in Colombo. Sum has been an active musician in Colombo for the past decade. Some of the projects he leads are Baliphonics, Serendib Sorcerers and Musicmatters Transcoastal Collective which draw upon Sri Lankan traditional music, placing it in a contemporary setting. Baliphonics in particular, has recently gained some international exposure with performances in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In 2021, Sum released his debut solo EP “Low Country Drum Set Solos” as a result of several years of performance practice research into adapting Sri Lankan drumming onto the drum set.
Taipua Adams – Based in Ōtautahi and originally from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Taipua Adams is a dynamic musician with a knack for versatility. A multi-instrumentalist, Taipua has played roles in bands like “Terror of the Deep,” “The Party Pois,” and “The Perms.” Taipua recently teamed up with Delaney Davidson for a captivating Matakiki performance at the prestigious Great Hall in July. Demonstrating his willingness to explore new horizons. Beyond performing, Taipua is an avid record collector with an eclectic taste in music.
Luke Scott – Self Taught creative originally from the decaying northern town of Keighley, West Yorkshire (U.K). Luke has been residing in Aotearoa New Zealand since 2016. One of the founding members of The Tortoise People, a Mill dwelling music collective operating in the former textile mills of his native Yorkshire was an early introduction to free form music making and collaboration. Since arriving in Aotearoa Luke has a self released L.P ”The Gutter boy Spectates” under his song writing veneer Admiral Drowsy. He also performs under the title Subatomic Therapy pursuing more long form drone soundscapes using an array of different instruments.