Jason Kahn (Switzerland) and Richard Francis – 08/11/2023

jason kahn
Audio Foundation presents experimental electronic artists Jason Kahn & Richard Francis.
Born 1960 in New York, Jason Kahn is a artist, musician and writer. He lives and works in Zürich.
Though having played in New Zealand several times since 2007, this will be Kahn’s first visit back to the country since 2018. In the past he has performed or recorded with several New Zealand artists, including Richard Francis, Bruce Russell, Jeff Henderson, Anthony Milton and Daniel Beban.
On this tour Kahn will be working with electronics, using a chaotic feedback system that places his body in the circuit flow. Grabbing the open leads of a modular synthesizer with his hands makes and breaks circuits, causing the synthesizer to overload or momentarily collapse. Various contact microphones, electromagnetic inductors and the synthesizer’s own output via a mixing board are used to modulate the parameters of the synthesizer. This results in a very dynamic system, often difficult to control, but allowing great expressivity—much like any acoustic instrument, but electronic.
Live radio captures during the concert and field recordings made beforehand in the performance space and its environs provide further working material for each concert. In the end, these performances are essentially site-specific works, improvising with the space at hand, both in the sense of its physicality and the sounds found there. Every performance is different, not only because the music is improvised but also because the source material used pertains directly to each space.
Richard Francis is a sound artist working with electronics, feedback and field recordings. He has released solo and collaborative albums on Senufo Editions, Entr’acte, Glistening Examples, The Tapeworm, Korm Plastics, Banned Production, Aufabwegen and so on. He also runs a small publishing press called Buried Sound.
Presales $15 from UTR
Door Sales $20
Members Free