2024 marks 20 years of the Audio Foundation and to kick off a bumper year of extraordinary sound celebrations we are excited to announce…

The Inauragural Aotearoa International Festival of Secret Sounds!

7 nights and days of amazing unusual music and sound art featuring artists from Japan, France, Australia, Northland, Ōtautahi & Tāmaki Makaurau.

Free improvisation, noise, minimal drone, jazz skronk, invented instruments, outdoor installations, electronic microscoppery and unbelievable ululations combine and clash in a spirit of unbridled & fearless sonic skillduggery.

Festival and nightly passes available from Undertheradar.

LINEUP

SCHEDULE

BIOS

THURS 8 FEB – AUDIO FOUNDATION – 8PM

RICHARD FRANCIS & JESS ROBINSON – sublime deep listening electronic music by NZ sound art legend Richard Francis (Buried Sound, Esosteel) in collaboration with prolific emerging composer & electronic artist Jessica Robinson.

ROGER MANINS & ROSIE LANGABEER – First time duo meeting between two leading lights of NZ jazz and improvised music

MOTTE / HEATHER WEBB (CHCH) / CHRIS O’CONNOR – Exciting guitar talent Heather Webb in collaboration with extraordinary exemplars of adventurous music Motte (violin/electronics) & Chris O’Connor (drums/percussion)

FRI 9 FEB – AUDIO FOUNDATION – 8PM

JOHN BELL/PHIL DADSON/IVAN MRSIC – We are excited to welcome maverick improvisor, composer and bandleader John Bell back to the stage after a long time away researching the atmospheric conditions of Northland.. John is joined by two geniuses of instrument invention – Phil Dadson (From Scratch) and Ivan Mrsic (Projection Band).

GUILLAUME GARGAUD (FRANCE) – Guillaume Gargaud (France) is a composer and improvisational guitarist. He has participated in dozens of albums and composed music for contemporary dance and film. He collaborates with musicians and plays solo in Europe, the United States, Australia and for the first time – in Aotearoa, New Zealand

HEATHER WEBB/BRENDAN MORAN/STEFAN NEVILLE – New guitar star Heather Webb performs for the first time with legendary drummer Brendan Moran (vor-Stellen, the Subliminals) and AF Amigo Stefan Neville (Pumice, O-Pus) on electric bass

ROD COOPER(AUS)/KAORI KOMURA(JAPAN) – Rod Cooper is an Australian instrument inventor and noise musician who has spent 40 years of instrument building, noise machine construction and noise making using tape, gadgets, mortal coils, drain spaces, bridge spaces, microphones, computers, wood, metal, paint, paper, plastic and glass.
Rod is touring with the incredible Japanese percussionist Kaori Komura who has been performing in Japan from the age of 14 as a performer of traditional Korean drums. She performed with legendary Japanese punk band G.I.S.M and is a constant collaborator within the Japanese improvsiation, noise, rock and jazz scenes.

SAT 10 FEB – AUDIO FOUNDATION – 2-5PM

HEATHER WEBB  – solo guitar set from Ōtautahi based guitar explorer

SAM LONGMORE – Master of minimal sound experiments presents a new participatory work for multiple cell phones

WHIPPING STAR – ANITA CLARK & MATTHEW GUNN – Cracking new duo project from Anita Clark (Motte, Don McGlashan) and Matthew Gunn (Doprah,Pickle Darling)

JOHNNY CHANG PLAYS PHILL NIBLOCK’S “Two Blooms”
A tribute to the recently departed master of transformative drones.“The music of Phill Niblock aims to achieve a massive volume of sound, made up of the individual voices of the performers. This mass is alive with frictions, microtonal artefacts, distortions and spatial resonances.”

SAT 10 FEB – AUDIO FOUNDATION  – 8PM

JOHN BELL/NEIL FEATHER/STEVE COURNANE/DARREN HANNAH – John Bell (Spoilers of Utopia, Dominion Centenary Concert Band) and Steve Cournane (Bill Direen, Alpaca Brothers) have been collaborators for 3 decades, they are joined by legendary Sound Mechanic Neil Feather (invented instruments) and Vitamin S doyen Darren Hannah (double bass).

KAIROS (FRANCE) – Jean-Sébastien Mariage (guitar) & Gwennaëlle Roulleau (electronics).
From acoustics to electronics via effects, the manipulation of acoustic objects or the reworking of the sound of the guitar and its processing by Gwennaëlle, the erratic manipulation of effects by Jean-Sébastien generates a meeting zone where each affirmation of one position can only reveal another.
Between fugue and flight, the musicians echo each other, conceal, transform, bounce back. The duo brings into play the metamorphosis of the subject by playing on the memory of the listener. Sound objects are proposed, they are identifiable. Subsequently they reappear in a transformed way, they are still recognizable but they have changed form, they have possibly passed from the guitar to the electronics and vice versa. This gives rise to a global object which is still made up of the same sub-objects but whose form has evolved. The duo develops in their work the composition of sound objects that are made, undone, transformed.

KAORI KOMURA (Japan) – masterful solo set of Korean percussion

ROD COOPER  (Australia) & TRUE BLISS EXPERIENCE – Extreme noise inventor Cooper meets Auckland’s favourite free noise power trio of Andrew McMillan (electric plank), Sean Martin-Buss (electric bass) and Alan D. Jones (drums)

SUN 11 FEB – AUDIO FOUNDATION – 5PM-8PM

STEPHEN BAIN HEADPHONE EXPERIENCE – Brilliant performance curator Stephen Bain brings a new work for multiple headphones

JEAN SÉBASTIEN MARIAGE / HEATHER WEBB  – two guitarists, one from France, the other from Ōtautahi..never met nor played together before, an exciting and enticing proposition!

TASH VAN SCHAARDENBURG – Civil Twilight – Prolific local Sound Artist Tash Van Schaardenburg (Citacsy) presents their outdoor sound installation ‘Civil Twilight’ for the first time in Tāmaki Makaurau.

GWENAËLLE ROULLEAU (France) & KAORI KOMURA (Japan) – Gwennaëlle Roulleau is an electroacoustic composer, musician and sound artist.Listening to the environment or the sound body, she collects and sculpts sound material in their physicality, transforms it to propose an expressive and sensitive sound experience. Here she collaborates with the stunning percussionist Kaori Komura of Japan.

GOING GOING GONG – a closing ritual performed on multiple gongs by local drum/percussion hero Chris O’Connor

MON 12 FEB – WINE CELLAR – 8PM

VITAMIN S HOSTS EVERYBODY PLAYS – Improvisation Collective Vitamin S has been fostering freely improvised music in Auckland for over 20 years. ‘Everybody Plays’ places participating artists in randomly selected trios to perform short sets of unique collaborative music. Expect sounds and music you have never heard before, and never will again!

TUES 13 FEB – AUDIO FOUNDATION – 7.30PM

IGGY EPSTEIN/TASHI STEWART/EAMON EDMUNDSEN-WELLS/JEFFREY GARUS – First time quartet featuring emerging fire breathers Iggy Epstein (saxophone), Tashi Stewart (guitar) and Jeffrey Garus (drums) with stringy stalwart Eamon Edmundsen-Wells (double bass)

ROD COOPER (Australia) – legendary exponent of phenomenal invented noise makers performs a solo set.

IGGY EPSTEIN/TASHI STEWART/EAMON EDMUNDSEN-WELLS/JEFFREY GARUS + ROD COOPER – Combining the two sets for a third, a climactic collision of colon crushing intensity!

WED 14 FEB – AUDIO FOUNDATION – 8PM

RAHANA LARSEN TAYLOR/PARKS/ALLANAH GOLDSMITH – combining Taonga Puoro, voice and modular synthesis, this trio  draws into the deep wells of conscious, subconscious and superconscious mindflows to create stunningly unique music of Aotearoa.

SONSON (HERMIONE JOHNSON/JEFF HENDERSON) & KAORI KOMURA – the duo of Hermione Johnson (prepared piano) and Jeff Henderson (saxophones) perform a rare set,  with the added excitement of visiting percussionist Kaori Komura.

ANIMAL DUO (FRANCE) – GUYLAINE COSSERON/DIEMO SCHWARTZ

The plastic edge and the internal body. How can the voice make visible what escapes sight? Guylaine, an international vocal explorer joins Diemo Schwarz of the famous center of musical  research in Paris IRCAM in a creation dealing with the confusion of timbres. Through improvisation, they deal with the duality and complementarity between vocal performance and digital tools. A poetic work that questions the relationship between humans and machines.
GuylaineCosseron’s instrument is the breath, the lips, the tongue, the palate, the saliva, the glottis, the throat, the chest, the nose… total singing – a variety of dizzying timbres, opening up an inexhaustible field of exploration.
Diemo Schwartz is a researcher in real-time musical interactions at IRCAM and a developer in digital arts. He plays with electronic materials rich in timbres and textures, exploring different bodies of sounds using gesture controllers, thus allowing expressiveness and the body to dialogue with the digital instrument. His use of concatenative synthesis recomposes the space of sounds and questions their intrinsic qualities. By freeing them from their usual contexts, they reveal unsuspected riches.