Tuesday, October 21, 2008

CHOPPA OCT 08


CHOPPA is back on Sunday 26th October bringing you more great improvised music from the Singaporean underground.

This month features we have the great pleasure of presenting the hardest working man in the Manilian underground, composer and multi-disciplinarian Tengal. He will be performing his Gangan Series with two other musicians Lindsay Vickery and Brian O'Reilly and Jerneja Rebernak as orchestrator. Gangan series is an open-ended system/composition that combines the interplay of sound and image (video, etc), and emphasizes the situational potential of live improvisatory performance of video and sound.

Local legend George Chua will be performing live electronics in his first Choppa appearance this year after the Choppa Festival in January. We debut a new group Hotel which is an off shoot of I\D, who are keeping the noise rock flame alive. Lindsay Vickery returns with a live electro/acoustic improvisation set with saxophone and electronics and Brian O'Reilly will debut Shroud Lines, a piece for solo bass, electronics, and moving images.

Tengal (Manila)

TENGAL is a Manila-based interdisciplinary media artist, composer-musician, and filmmaker. He curates and organizes media art projects, has collaborated with various artists, and has performed in various shows in the Philippines and abroad. He attended the Berlinale Talent Campus 2006, in Berlin, Germany; the 5th Asia-Europe Foundation Art Camp: Re-Vision Bangkok | New Media Art and Interactivity, in Thailand; and most recently at Cellsbutton II: Yogyakarta International Media Art Festival, in Indonesia. He founded SABAW Media Art Kitchen – a not-for-profit, artist-run initiative and network platform for all kinds of information and communication carried via modern electronic media focused specially in the region of South East Asia.
www.tengalgorhythm.blogspot.com

George Chua (Singapore)

George Chua is an artist whose sonic art may adopt the form of a performance, installation, or sound recording. He regularly performs solo work and group improvisations in art spaces, alternative spaces and theatres. His work involves a keen interest in the interdisciplinary nature of sound art and its extensive relationships with memory, invisibility, the body, theatre and cinema.

Lindsay Vickery (Australia)

Lindsay Vickery is active as a composer and performer across Europe, the USA and Asia. His music includes works for acoustic and electronic instruments in interactive-electronic, improvised or fully notated settings, ranging from solo pieces to opera and has been commissioned by numerous groups for concert, dance and theatre. He is also a highly regarded performer on reed instruments and electronics, touring as a soloist and with ensembles in many parts of the world.

Brian O'Reilly (USA)


shroud lines

for solo bass, electronics, and moving images.


for Eliane Radigue who taught me the different ways to listen...


The strategic fiction used to produce the structural relations in the work, is the erosion of form. Worn organic connections, self withering mechanisms, leaking detritual pools of acoustic ecosystems, weathered maps, the delicate stuttered buzz and click of insects left vibrating within glass slides, dendirfomic sub-terrain tendrils, and infected water tables.

Brian O'Reilly is the creator of various works for moving images, electronic/noise music, mixed media assemblage, multimedia installation, and is a contrabassist, focusing on the integration of extended playing techniques with electronics treatments.


Hotel

Comprising of members from I\D, the mammoth noise rock collective, Hotel is its minimal offspring where elements of avant noise, drone and free improvisation are militantly reflected, signaling a return to primal beats and the search of origin. Hotel is Harold Seah, Wei Nan and Ian Woo. Scatter
Rock!

Please join us on our sonic adventures!

@ Night and Day
139 Selegie Rd from 8pm
Entry is $16 and includes a complimentary drink

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Fête de la wasaque



SABAW Media Art Kitchen presents FETE DELA WASAQUE: a 2-night festival for adventurous music and related visual art.

SCHEDULE:
OCT 14, (TUES) 9PM: Mag:net Cafe Katipunan, AGCOR Bldg. 335 Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City (150 php)
OCT 15, (WED) 8PM: Green Papaya art projects, 41 T.Gener St. cor. Kamuning Rd., Quezon City (Free)


Presenting two nights of handmade music that blur the lines between electro-acoustic, free improvisation, industrial, free jazz, performance art and freeform-noise, and will be paired with the intensity of live video performances (vjing), exquisite homemade machines, real guitars, absurd costumes, and even more live action on stage. FETE DE LA WASAQUE will be hosted by SABAW Media Art Kitchen in cooperation with Greenpapaya art projects and Mag:net Galleries.

Expect two nights of insanity going on and on till the break of dawn at Green Papaya art space and Mag:net cafe Katipunan - including one of the very extreme and rare performances from Australia's Justice Yeldham. Cavite's E.X.I.S.T. sound art collective will electrify our nerves thru their homemade electronics and circuit-bend gadgets, while Manila's New Media Arts Manila (N.M.A.M) will surely melt your brain with rapidfire audiovideo-shrapnel. Alongside the live video performances of N.M.A.M., performance and media artist Mannete Villariba and editor Edsel Abesamis will provide video assualt as well.
On the first night, Tengal's Gangan Series Project will manifest itself this time as the Gangan Trio featuring Tengal on no-input mixer, drums and objects, Blums Borres on guitar, Caliph8 on turntables, while Tad Ermitano takes off his vj hat and conducts the trio. Circuit-bender wiz Erick Calilan (Ugong) will challenge his old band mate from the now defunct Sound Existence, PJ Soliven (Nyangbinghi), alongside the live script video programming of Mannette Villariba. Not to mention the avant-jazz/punk outfit, Radioactive Sago Project will perform improvised electro-acoustic "WASAK" music written and conducted by Francis de Veyra; while walls of industrial soundscapes of doom will break room walls with the heavy-hitters, Trojan Whores.

On the following night, Blums Borres will invite you to his all live, all improvised ambient solo guitar lounge. Tengal and Tad collaborate on an audio-visual "cooking show": Tengal stirs the complex and unstable nature of the sonic textures from the mixer, both live and processed - letting it boil and simmer; while Tad Ermitano who literaly "cooks up" non-newtonian fluid (i.e. ketchup, starch, suspensions, paint, blood and shampoo) into a "visual soup" using a loudspeaker, face-up, as a pot with cameras positioned on top of it. Elemento will drive some nerve-shattering noise with their intricately-crafted sonic machines, while analogue noise maker Inconnuictu will team up with ambient electronica ace Blend:er, and Ugong.
And finally Australia's leading audio artist and founder of the pioneering Australian record label Dual Plover, Lucas Abela (Justice Yeldham), will kill off whatever brain cells you have left on both nights!

SABAW ends the year with a wall shaking acoustic-meets-digital assault stirring acts on two nights of positive madness.

PERFORMERS:

Lucas Abela aka JUSTICE YELDHAM has been performing for well over 15 years and is one of the leaders of Australian “noise music”.
His early performances were crazed extensions of turntablism. Instead of turntables he’d use motors turning metal discs at 2000 rpm, and instead of record needles he’d use skewers or knives. He once used a glove that he had imbedded with record needles - Freddy Krueger style.
Incorporating everything from electro-acoustic trampolines, amplified samurai swords to high powered turntables constructed from sewing machine motors into his performances, in recent years he’s been using sheets of glass that he blows through, screams through, bites and breaks.
Lucas has toured over 30 countries with this new act, appeared on numerous television shows, and even crashed a John Peel session at the BBC.

BLEND:ER is an electronic music creator and a noise enthusiast who lives in Cavite, Philippines. He started experimenting with audio acrobatics and technoid sonic landscapes in 1999. Being included in various album anthologies like Mood Swing Theater Volume 1 (2004) released by Kittenwhip Compilation and S.A.B.A.W. Anthology of Noise, Electronic, and Experimental Music (2004), Blend:er aka (Cris Garcimo) has often collaborated with E.X.I.S.T., SABAW and Electronica Manila artists.

BLUMS BORRES guitarist and media artist who experiments with sound, video, and animation. Formerly a technical director at Toei Animation Philippines, he has a BA in Multimedia Design from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. His work has been featured at the Australian Center Moving Images (ACMI), and in cinemas and television in Japan. His career in post production spans over 14 years and has involved himself in both professional productions and education. He currently teaches 3d animation at DLSU-CSB.

CALIPH8 is a beat smith, graffiti bomber and soothsayer. A lynch-pin of various groups and ensembles, he’s probably the most sought after sound manipulator in the Philippines. A graduate of the U.P. College of Fine Arts, his output extends to more than just sniffing aerosol paint and flexing wrists with fat markers–he also creates visuals and projects them while manipulating audio and creates sound collage.
He is a member of A.M.P.O.N. hiphop collective, electronica group Drip, and was part of Downearf, a trueschool hiphop trio back in 1997.

EDSEL ABESAMES is a video editor / motion graphics person / director / racketeer / guitarist / poser / anime fan / overweight 32 year old / discontent drunkard. That about sums it up.

ELEMENTO is the brainchild of experimental multi-media artist Lirio Salvador, and has created a number of experimental electronic instruments based on his own concept of ethno-industrial art/music. Probably the most influential and astonishing homemade circuit-benders and instrument builders in the country, he established the E.X.I.S.T. sound art collective back in 2002. He creates his assemblage of musical instruments using day to day materials that are found in his present environment, including bicycle gears, drain cleaning springs and stainless steel tubes.

INCONNU ICTU a.k.a Roger Llagas Lopez is a post-musician, experimental composer-improviser, multi-instrumentalist, visual art enthusiast who resides in the shoe capital of the Philippines. “Inconnu Ictu(s)” means an “unknown man’s blow or a stroke”, as a sound constructor he explores his interest by using obsolete electronic gadgets, pedal fx boxes, defective rhythm consoles, found objects, d.i.y microphones and circuit-bent electronics.

MANNET VILLARIBA is a performance artist, painter, sound artist, visual programmer and designer. He has been active in diverse fields of art and design - including research and development. Yielding the outputs of sounds, images, and light through analyzing and transforming the numerical values gained from various sensors and input devices, he is a visual artist pursuing sensual peculiarity and interaction.

NYANGBINGHI (PJ Soliven) and UGONG (Erick Calilan) used to perform together as a duo called Sound Existence back in 2005. They are active leaders and members of E.X.I.S.T., taking part in producing shows, worshops, exhibitions both in Cavite and Manila. While Nyangbinghi utilizes mainly a laptop as an instrument, UGONG performs using home-made “cracked” electronics that are circuit-bent and rewired to make electronic squeels, blips, hisses, and clicks.

RADIOACTIVE SAGO PROJECT is probably the country’s most successful avant bands that crossed over to mainstream music, having released 3 successful albums and have been radio darlings ‘til this day. Instead of playing their usual popular hits, they will perform an experimental electro-acoustic piece by Francis de Veyra, the group’s main composer. Francis studied atonal and modern composition in the conservatory of music in the University of the Philippines where he was almost sued and banned from the university for his infamous recital piece called “Wasakan”.
“TACSIYAPO”, is a new piece which will premiere on the 14th. The composer explains: “TACSIYAPO is an expression in kapampangan [a local dialect] meant and used to vent out anger and frustration. The piece was inspired by an interesting phenomena in a restaurant in Tarlac where they have people throw anything in a wall be it cups, plates, cats, or even TVs. Upon throwing them on the wall (that is painted with vandals of the words that are ‘cancers’ of our society), they shout ‘Tacsiyapo!’. This piece tries to ‘throw’ an array of sounds and textures, wherein the performers will try to vent out their angst, not physically, but thru sound. The group will use electronic music, spoken word, bass and electric guitars, kaoss pads, percussions and the audience.”

TAD ERMITANO is a media artist, writer and filmmaker. As far as the media art goes, he is interested in algorithmic/procedural editing and composition, new uses for the moving image and have been lately drifting into elementary robotics. His work “Quartet” was exhibited in the recently concluded International Symposium for Electronic Arts (ISEA) in Singapore.

TENGAL is a Manila-based interdisciplinary media artist, composer-musician, media art impresario, and filmmaker. He curates and organizes media art projects, has collaborated with various artists, and has performed in various shows in the Philippines and abroad. He attended the Berlinale Talent Campus 2006, in Berlin, Germany; the 5th Asia-Europe Foundation Art Camp: Re-Vision Bangkok | New Media Art and Interactivity, in Thailand; and most recently at Cellsbutton II: Yogyakarta International Media Art Festival, in Indonesia. He founded SABAW in 2005.

TROJAN WHORES is composed of Pow Martinez, Sam Kiyoumarsi, and Thomas Mcwalter, and they create harsh industrial soundscapes with doom metal elements.

More info at: http://wasakfete.tk/ or email tengald@gmail.com

Brief Updates. Squatting. The future.

New site up.
http://wasakfete.tk/ - Official site for Fête de la Wasaque, a 2-night festival for adventurous music and related visual art... shows are next week! ["Wasak" is Filipino for "motherfuckingwasted"]
SABAW Media art kitchen is squatting at a friend's webhost (for an indefinite time!)
SABAW site will come up soon! SOON! Target launch is January 2009 for it to be fully functional.
At the moment, we're still cooking things... gathering all the info locally and in south east asia. There's so much data here at the moment, we have to categories, organize, taxonomize, archive, chop up data and upload them until the end of the year! (Looking for volunteers. And time/funding. Clones.)