NOW HEAR THIS!
A festival of urgent sound, adventurous music and deep listening
13-18 October 2020

THURSDAY 15 OCTOBER, AUCKLAND UNITARIAN CHURCH, 7PM
Rachel Shearer / Rosy Parlane / Richard Francis, Lucy Hunter (Dun), Hermione Johnson / Peter Porteous / Chris O’Connor, Ruby Hinepunui Solly (Wlgtn) / Rasoul Abbasi (Iran/NZ) / Tom Callwood (Wlgtn) / Anita Clark (Chch) / Ro Rushton-Green (Dun) / Eamon Edmundsen-Wells (Ak) / Marija Dumitrijevic (Serbia/NZ), mHz (Iran/NZ)

Tickets from www.UnderTheRadar.co.nz

Festival info: http://www.audiofoundation.org.nz/festival/now-hear-this-festival-2020

ARTIST INFORMATION:

RICHARD FRANCIS
Richard Francis uses field recordings, modular synthesizer and computer to compose and improvise sound works. He has released solo and collaborative albums on a number of labels including Korm Plastics (NL), Monochrome Vision (RU), Aufabwegen (DE), Last Visible Dog (U.S.A.), Entr’acte (U.K.), Gilstening Examples (U.S.A.) and his own record labels 20City and CMR (NZ).

In addition to his solo work as RF and Eso Steel, Richard has performed and recorded collaboratively with the likes of Rachel Shearer, Rosy Parlane, Bruce Russell (NZ), Mattin (ES), Jason Kahn (USA) and Francisco Lopez (ES).

RACHEL SHEARER
Rachel Shearer is an audio-visual artist based in Auckland. Her work with sound traverses a range of fields including recording and performing experimental music, audio-visual installation, writing, research, and collaboration with other practitioners of moving image and performance. Rachel’s cross-disciplinary practice is united by a common theme, frequently featuring manipulated recordings of environmental sounds. She regularly performs sets of solo electronics and also has a history of collaboration, including a number of projects alongside the likes of Rosy Parlane, Ducklingmonster, and Richard Francis.

Since the late 1980s, Rachel’s musical projects have been published by leading labels throughout the world, with material released by the likes of Xpressway, Flying Nun, Ecstatic Peace!, Corpus Hermeticum and Family Vineyard, among others.

ROSY PARLANE
Rosy Parlane is a musician from Auckland who began playing music with the avant-garde rock trio Thela. He subsequently began working with abstract electronic based music, both as a solo artist and as Parmentier alongside fellow Thela collaborator, Dion Workman. Rosy’s soundscapes are comprised of field recordings, pianos, guitars, household objects and other instruments manipulated via digital means.

Rosy Parlane has released four solo albums, originally on Sigma Editions and Synaesthesia, and more recently on Touch. In addition to his acclaimed solo work, Rosy has also collaborated with artists such as Fennesz, AMM founder Eddie Prevost and avant-garde musician Mattin.

LUCY HUNTER
Lucy is a pianist and signer known for her gothic ballads, often concerning twisted desire, human anatomy and disease. Over the last decade or so she has released records and performed throughout NZ and the US with her trio, Opposite Sex, who’s last recording, Hamlet, was released through Ōtautahi imprint, Melted Ice Cream, in partnership with Brooklyn based label Dull Tools.

Lucy is in the process of releasing her first solo record, along with another album with her new band Wet Specimen.

HERMIONE JOHNSON
Hermione Johnson is a pianist from Auckland, New Zealand whose work focuses on the timbral qualities of the instrument. Through an array of extended techniques and preparations, Hermione draws a staggering range of strange and unexpected voices from the piano, working with contrasting patterns and phrases in different registers.

Hermione’s principal focus is free improvisation and in this field she is regraded as a significant and unique force in the New Zealand experimental music scene.

PETER PORTEOUS
Peter Porteous is a Dunedin-based guitarist best known for his work with psych-noise-improv-rock band Eye – described by writer David Keenan described as ‘haunted electro-séances’ – alongside Peter Stapelton and Jon Chapman (as well as Nathan Thompson and Ryan Cockburn), and for his previously playing in Empirical, Lapdog and Pointsman.

Peter is also a co-organiser of the long-running and celebrated experimental music and film festival, Lines of Flight.

CHRIS O’CONNOR
Chris O’Connor is an improvising musician and multi-instrumentalist who is a member of Vitamin S, The Spoilers of Utopia, The Phoenix Foundation and Don McGlashan’s band, Seven Sisters. Chris has performed with the Auckland Chamber Orchestra, the New Pacific Music Ensemble, WOMAD Festivals in Taranaki and Adelaide, The Wellington International Arts Festival, the Auckland Festival, and as a soloist at the Silver Scrolls.

mHz
Mo H. zareei, a.k.a. mHz, is a an Iranian electronic musician, sound artist, and researcher. Using custom-built software and hardware, his experiments with sound cover a wide range from electronic compositions to kinetic sound-sculptures and audiovisual installations. Regardless of the medium, Zareei’s work aims to highlight the beauty in the basics of sound and light production, and reductionist audiovisual elements that draw inspiration from physical and architectural principles. Mo is a lecturer in composition and sonic arts at Victoria University of Wellington, creative director at Aotearoa Audio Arts

His recent album, Form, was released via Important Records (Massachusetts, U.S.A.), and is described as “a perfect balance between the crisp granular qualities of the constituent sounds and the seductions of rhythm” – The Wire.

AN ECSTATIC COLLABORATION OF STRINGED INSTRUMENTS!
Ruby Hinepunui Solly (cello), Rasoul Abbasi (kamencheh), Tom Callwood, Eamon Edmundsen-Wells, Marija Dumitrijevic (double bass), Anita Clark (violin), Ro Rushton-Green (violin)

Press contact: admin@audiofoundation.org.nz