Details of performances and workshops at www.edgeofwrong.com.
Tag Archives: improvisation
edge of wrong 12 this week!
The Edge of Wrong invites you to join us for our twelfth annual festival of experimental, uncompromising and dangerous music.
Expect a variety of sonic and visual explorations of the edges from a huge range of international and local artists: drumming ensembles, thunderous noise musicians, avant-pianists, drone ensembles, ambient artisans, post-post-punks, sonic clay sculptors, algorithmic composers, fringe poets, sound theatre, dance, live painting, the melodies of knitting patterns.
In collaboration with Contour Vinyl we will also be launching our first vinyl series: 12 highly limited lathe-cut 7″s containing exclusive works by the artists performing at the festival. These 7″s, each available in a micro-run of only 10 copies, will be available for purchase at our 2017 events.
“An edge is a special kind of being-in- place; it marks the transition between something and nothing. Edges are limits, and also shape-defining margins. To be at the edge is to exist in the “in” of the “in-between,” in the instant between one time and another. An edge cuts and changes whatever it encounters. It is where movement must stop or turn in a different direction; it is where people plummet into the abyss, or learn to fly. Things end, and begin, at this place—but nothing stays at the edge forever. Edges mark the boundaries of empty space, but they also represent the transformational places where new possibilities open up again.” – David Novak, Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation
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FULL LINEUP
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WED 26th Amuse Cafe, 34 5th St, Linden, Johannesburg, 19:00
– Healer Oran
– Datsrok [Norway]
– MONOMORT [Norway]
– Thomas Holme [Norway]
THU 27th The Bijou, 178 Lower Main Rd, Cape Town, 20:00
– Jill Richards
– Coila Enderstein / Daniel Grey
– Darkroom Contemporary (short film)
– DATSROK (Kenneth Korstad Langås, noise) [Norway]
– Dolly Turing [UK]
– Khoi Konnexion
FRI The Bijou, 178 Lower Main Rd, Cape Town, 20:00
– Daniel W J Mackenzie [UK]
– Aragorn23
– RISK (lliezelellick, nonentia, choir, four drummers)
– As Is with Didi Didloff and Vasti Knoesen
– Belinda Blignaut and Jacques van Zyl
– Cara Stacey and Hanan Benammar [Norway]
SAT 29th The Common Room, 135 Albert Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town, 19:00
– Justin Allart and Thomas Holme [Norway]
– Gareth Dawson and Rhea Dally
– Jason Stapleton, Lucy Hazard (projection to audio by Justin Allart)
– Chantelle Gray and Anastasya Eliseeva
– MORKEN [Norway]
SAT Afterparty at the Common Room
– DJ’ing by 3EYE, Violet Beausoleil and Kenneth Angerhand [UK/SA/UZ]
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EXHIBITION
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Hanan Benammar (DZ/FR) – Giraffes don’t Whistle
Giraffes don’t Whistle is a silent karaoke video installation made in collaboration with the students of Brendon Bussy’s class at the Dominican School for Deaf Children.
The videos will explore the relationship between dream, landscape, night activities and perceived sounds from the narratives of the participants.
Mattias Cantzler (SE) – Marius Stocking Blues
Marius Stocking Blues is an experimental sound installation consisting of a self made busker organ.
The organ plays automatically by using a handle and based on a traditional Norwegian knitting pattern called the Marius pattern.
The knitting pattern used in the project is translated into braille, a script for blind people. Inspiration for the project is taken from phonography, cryptography, geometry, mosaic and textiles. The work relates to older forms of communications like for example telegraphy, smoke and light signals, but also has similarities to early computer technology.
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DETAILS
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R100 suggested cover charge per event (more or less according to means).
Right of admission reserved. Cellphones to be switched off during performances.
STUFF TO BRING: A comfy cushion you don’t mind getting dirty. Your own drinks. An open mind.
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A BIT MORE ABOUT EOW:
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HUNTER THOMPSON ONCE SAID that there is no honest way to explain the edge, “because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”
It is a kind of hidden place that is revered and feared by some – the hellish underbelly of the world. Yet it is also a place searched for, written about, and found in the music of the strange. And it is this edge we want to bring to you by creating a space which allows musicians to etch out the edge of wrong, pushing the boundaries so that new sounds might be found.
The EDGE OF WRONG festival is currently in its twelfth year and serves mainly to facilitate cultural exchange. Though it has become an established production network it is forever evolving, intent on creating a sustainable environment for quality art of an exploratory nature.
SITE: http://www.edgeofwrong.com/sa
FACEBOOK PAGE: http://www.facebook.com/edgeofwrong
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Perfection is death, as it leaves nothing to be desired.
edge of wrong 2017
More information about this year’s festival HERE.
nils frahm – says (2014)
Visual creation by Romain Assénat & Ana Silva with the support of Atelier Graphoui. Improvisation with inks on glass and a video-feedback device, captured live without any post-production.
Order the album on CD/2xLP/DL here.
www.erasedtapes.com · www.nilsfrahm.com
chantelle gray live at the window (2017)
Chantelle Gray live at The Window, an evening of experimental music, performance and visual art at the Theatre Arts Collective, Observatory, Cape Town, 29 January 2017.
Chantelle’s movements are captured by a 3d motion sensor and translated live into controller data for a musical piece written in Supercollider by Aragorn Eloff.
lliezel ellick, rosemary lombard & roxanne de freitas live at the window (2017)
Live non-verbal improvisation performed in absolute darkness, interacting with a cellphone recording from the day before, at The Window, an evening of experimental music, performance and visual art at the Theatre Arts Admin Collective, Observatory, Cape Town, 29 January 2017.
“It’s not easy to improvise… It’s the most difficult thing to do. Even when one improvises in front of a camera or microphone, one ventriloquizes or leaves another to speak in one’s place the schemas and languages that are already there. There are already a great number of prescriptions that are prescribed in our memory and in our culture. All the names are already pre-programmed. It’s already the names that inhibit our ability to ever really improvise. One can’t say what ever one wants, one is obliged more or less to reproduce the stereotypical discourse. And so I believe in improvisation and I fight for improvisation. But always with the belief that it’s impossible. And there where there is improvisation I am not able to see myself. I am blind to myself. And it’s what I will see, no, I won’t see it. It’s for others to see. The one who is improvised here… no, I won’t ever see him.”
— Jacques Derrida, unpublished interview, 1982, reproduced in David Toop’s Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom: Before 1970, Bloomsbury, 2016, pg 21.
Gonna get otherworldly at The Window tonight with these creatures, and many others. Darkness and light @TheatreArtsAdminCollective, Methodist Church, cnr Wesley & Milton Rds, Observatory. The portal opens at 7:30.
keening
Lliezel Ellick, Rosemary Lombard, Roxanne de Freitas
We will be at The Window on Sunday. You have been warned.
the window – 29 january 2017
Join us! More details HERE. Dedicating my performance to Mark Fisher, who took his own life the other day. His brilliant work, particularly this blog post on hauntology, has been profoundly influential on how I understand archive and aspire to use sound. I’m so sad he is gone.
zeena parkins & ikue mori – jezebel (2004)
From Phantom Orchard (Mego, 2004).
zeena parkins & ikue mori – phantom orchard – live (2004)
Zeena Parkins – arpa elettrica, pianoforte, elettronica
Ikue Mori – percussioni elettroniche, computer
Risonanze 2004-2005
Rassegna di nuove musiche contemporanee
Venezia, Teatro Fondamenta Nuove
1 dicembre 2004
Riprese video – Mauro Sambo
rest in peace, pauline oliveros
2016, haven’t you taken enough from us for one year now?
Here is a clip of this brilliant composer and experimental sound artist speaking about the difference between hearing and listening last year:
“In hearing, the ears take in all the sound waves and particles and deliver them to the audio cortex where the listening takes place. We cannot turn off our ears–the ears are always taking in sound information–but we can turn off our listening. I feel that listening is the basis of creativity and culture. How you’re listening, is how you develop a culture, and how a community of people listens, is what creates their culture.”
albert ayler – the truth is marching in (1970)
From Nuits De La Fondation Maeght. Recorded the year he died.
“so you think you can play with me” – the louis moholo-moholo legacy project (7 october 2016)
This promises to be an interesting evening in the company of a living legend…
If you’re a young musician and fancy getting involved this coming Friday, get hold of Terry-Jo Thorne ASAP.
They need (and some positions are already filled):
2 x drummers,
2 x Guitarists with own amps
2 x Pianists
2 x Bassists with own amp
2 x Trumpets
2 x Alto sax
2 x Soprano sax
1 x Flute
3 x male singers
righard kapp – vra my weer na ete (2003)
I miss this boy’s sounds. Cool interview with him HERE from 2009.
albert ayler – spirits (1964)
Please play this over the last few bars of the Bargeld below. (That’s how I would play it for you if I were playing it for you.)
The third track from Ayler’s Spiritual Unity (1964).
The critic Ekkehard Jost wrote that “Ayler’s negation of fixed pitches finds a counterpart in Peacock’s and Murray’s negation of the beat. In no group of this time is so little heard of a steady beat […] The absolute rhythmic freedom frequently leads to action on three independent rhythmic planes.” Maintaining these qualities required deep group interaction, Ayler himself said of the record, “We weren’t playing, we were listening to each other”*.
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*from: Wilmer, Valerie (1977). As Serious As Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz. London: Quartet. p. 105.
edge of wrong presents “variations on the body” – 27 august 2016
Please join us for an evening of experimental live music hosted by the Edge of Wrong and featuring performances from pianist Coila-Leah Enderstein, electronic musician Daniel Gray, noise maestro Justin Allart and movement-based composition artists Aragorn23, Chantelle Gray and Amantha.
Entrance is pay-what-you-can (recommended donation R50) and you can bring your own refreshments. Please make sure you arrive by 7:30 to minimise disruptions during performances.
___ ABOUT THE ARTISTS ___
Coila-Leah Enderstein is a classically trained pianist based in Cape Town. She’s into in experimental new music and interdisciplinary performance.
daniel gray is an artist from johannesburg and now lives in cape town. he is currently working as a high school maths teacher. he is interested in sound as image, dreams, collective improvisation and chance processes. in 2014-2016 he released an audiovisual album called “fantasmagoria”, a noise/peace album called “mssapessm”, took part in GIPCA live arts festival, performed around cape town, formed the now defunct subdwellers dj collective, started primitive ancestor records – a net label, to name a few of the many noisy endeavours. this will be the third edge of wrong event that he has participated in.
Justin Allart is a highly prolific experimental/noise musician who performs using a motley array of non-musical instruments. Expect sandpaper on turntables and effects pedals talking to themselves.
Aragorn23 is an experimental musician based in South Africa. His current work focuses on algorithmic and gestural composition and the use of the body as an instrument. He will be performing alongside collaborators Chantelle Gray and Amantha on the evening.
unyazi 2016 happening this weekend
From 14-17 July, NewMusicSA presents the 2016 Unyazi Electronic Music Festival at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town. This year’s festival is themed around the idea of ‘infrastructures’ as the various mechanisms of access and mobility we find in the cities around us, and the various ways we use, subvert, and transform these. These mechanisms range from roads and highways to water works and the electricity grid. The theme also speaks to the growing infrastructures of electronic music in South Africa like studios, albums, networks, and archives. In the end, electronic music is realised through movement and mobility of signals across wires, consoles, mixers, pick-ups, mics, and speakers, each a form of infrastructure.
The festival will present four evening concerts, two lunch time concerts, and three workshops. The programme brings together a diverse cast of composers and performers presenting everything from acousmatic music to mixed-media works to live ensembles mic’d-up and manipulated in weird and wonderful ways. Check out the full programme HERE.
Tickets are priced at R30 for students and pensioners, R50 for anyone else (per concert). Tickets available at the door.
fleurmach at edge of wrong ct11
don’t miss edge of wrong in the cape this weekend!
edge of wrong workshop at sacm – lunch today
All welcome!
the pataphysical brilliance of pascal comelade live
Pascal Comelade live in concert at Teatre Bartrina de Reus, circa 2007. I hope I one day get to experience one of this man’s performances.
edge of wrong tonight in jo’burg
If you’re in Johannesburg tonight, take yourself to the Edge!
Read more about the festival and artists performing tonight HERE.
edge of wrong festival – 10th anniversary this month
As part of the Edge of Wrong organising team, I’d like to invite you to join us for our tenth annual music festival, happening in Cape Town on the 22nd and 23rd of April (with a mini edition in Johannesburg on 15th April) and featuring an array of international and local artists presenting a wide range of experimental, uncompromising and dangerous music.
In celebration of our first ten years of existence, during which time we have hosted more than 30 cutting-edge events, we’ve compiled an extra-eclectic line-up of South African and Norwegian musicians, including Daniel MacKenzie, Gunfire Orchestra (Reza Khota, Beat Keller and Morten Minothi Kristiansen), Arnfinn Killingtveit, Kenneth Angerhand and Amantha, Ad undas, Mark Fransman, Darren English, Brendon Bussy, Justin Allart and Hezron Chetty.
Expect everything from feedback guitar and malfunctioning drum machines to improv violin, dance-controlled piano and walls of screeching noise from hand-built instruments.
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__VENUES, LINE-UPS, COST, ETC.:
*** FRIDAY 22nd ***
Atlantic House
1 Perth Rd, Maitland, CT
http://www.atlantichouse.co/
Doors open at 7pm, music starts at 8pm
Pay what you can – recommended contribution R50-R100
PERFORMING:
∞ Brendon Bussy (SA)
∞ Daniel W J Mackenzie (UK)
∞ Ad undas (NO)
∞ Kenneth Angerhand with Amantha23 (KI)
∞ Arnfinn Killingtveit (NO)
*** SATURDAY 23rd ***
Moholo Live House
42 Ncumo Rd, Harare Square, Harare, Khayelitsha, CT
Doors open at 7pm, music starts at 8pm
Pay what you can – recommended contribution R50-R100
https://www.facebook.com/MoholoLiveHouse
PERFORMING:
∞ Gunfire Orchestra (NO/SA)
∞ HORNS NOISE (NO/SA)
∞ Swamps up Nostrils (NO/SA)
∞ Hezron Chetty (SA)
*** SUNDAY 24th ***
Music Hacker Lab – details to be confirmed!
GENERAL INFO: Right of admission reserved. Drinks will be available for purchase at the venues. Cellphones to be switched off during performances.
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Performing in Johannesburg on the 15th are:
* Gunfire Orchestra (Reza Khota, Beat Keller and Morten Minothi Kristiansen) (https://gunfireorchestra.bandcamp.com/) (NO/SA)
* Kenneth Angerhand (www.further.co.za/asqus) (KI)
* Jill Richards (www.jillrichards.com) (SA)
* Carlo Mombelli (www.carlomombelli.com) (SA)
* Daniel MacKenzie (www.danielwjmackenzie.com) (UK)
edge of wrong 10 festival next week!
I’m on the organising team for the Edge of Wrong. Join us in Cape Town next week – it’s going to be an exhilarating ride!
Edge of Wrong Cape Town 10: A five day festival of experimental, improvised and provocative music.
It’s been a busy six months for EOW. Last October’s event saw noise artists, opera singers, free jazz, chiptunes and the sound of the Ebola genome perform at a metalworks. In January, we hosted a performance of Terry Riley’s In C for two laptops, improvised analogue synth, a postrock/drone quintet, and a memorable moment under a highway bridge with cello and saxophone accompanying traffic noise.
Now, we invite you to join us for our flagship event, the annual Edge of Wrong festival: five days from 25 to 29 March 2015, featuring a diverse range of international and local artists, each of whom epitomises our ethos of encouraging experimental, uncompromising, dangerous music.
This year, the line-up includes cutting-edge Norwegian performers Vilde Sandve Alnæs, Inga Margrete Aas, Harald Fetveit and Morten Minothi Kristiansen (founder and chief provocateur of Edge of Wrong), along with improv jazz outfit As Is, Juliana Venter and her motorbike ensemble, EOW stalwart Dizu Plaatjies and his Souls of Ancient Fish project (with Ruben Mowszowski and Maxim Starke), the Darkroom Contemporary dance troupe, Gugulethu’s jazzy G-Clef, US field recording artist Erik Deluca and EOW co-organiser Aragorn23 on custom electronics and live data manipulation.
The festival will unfold over several days at a number of venues (including a spontaneous flashmob orchestra in the central city which you can join) so be sure to check out the details on our Facebook event page. You can choose between buying tickets for individual events or an all-access pass for the week.
come with us to the edge of wrong tomorrow
I’m part of the South African curatorial/organising team for this series of collaborative multi-medium performances. If you’re in Cape Town, check EOW 9.1 out tomorrow night.
It will involve an insane mash-up of guitarists, violinists, opera singers, noise musicians, circuitbenders, chiptunists, avant-percussionists, pianists, body modification, visuals generated from cellular automata, experimental improv dance, provocative video art and the livecoded sound of the Ebola genome…
More information HERE.
the tragic account of lambert’s demise
My 8-year-old niece, Naomh, recorded these very strange voice notes last year.
being present: patric thormann, mandla mlangeni & niklas zimmer live
Happening this Wednesday, 7 May 2014, at 20h00 at Bolo’bolo, 76 Lower Main Rd, Observatory, Cape Town, South Africa:
Dear friends,
We’re incredibly excited to invite you to a special edition of our new Eclecticity sessions – a monthly experimental music evening at bolo’bolo.
This Wednesday we’re hosting an improv set by three musicians who need no introduction: Patric Thormann (Sweden) on double bass, Mandla Mlangeni (SA) on trumpet and Niklas Zimmer (Germany / SA) on drums.
Those of you who were lucky enough to attend the recent Edge of Wrong festival know what to expect from Patric and Niklas, and Mandla should be familiar to everyone who has followed the Cape Town music scene over the last few years. We’re lucky to be hosting three such talented performers and we hope to see lots of you there!
NB: The event is totally, 100% free. We have vegan food and drinks on sale and you may bring your own snacks and drinks as long as you respect the alcohol-free and vegan ethos of our space :-)
toast coetzer – weather balloon
when you release a weather balloon
off the back of the ship
with the small box of the radiosonde
dangling precariously below its
oversized white grape of a shape
on a simple string
which unfurls as you let it go
to become ten metres, or longer
so the radiosonde can feel
the atmosphere around it
in its full, naked glory
it is eleven o’clock, or midnight
somewhere in the world
it might as well be here
where we are in our pajamas
and the balloon is about this size
and filled with helium
and seconds after you’ve let it go
it is sucked up into the wild
black sky, and the noisy, battling sea
seems to urge it on with an out of
control applause from below
and it is gone, so suddenly, so for surely,
and you’re left standing there, disappointed
blinking into the inky cold, with your head hanging
back onto your neck and your mouth open
in your sticky gumboots
and the salty diesel smell in your beard
and it only gets exciting again when
you hunch over a computer screen inside
with the meteorologists to look – like
alchemists – at the boiling pot of
leaping numbers as the weather balloon
and its transmitting radiosonde races through
the layers of emptiness, a thousand metres, two thousand metres
and sends lurches and spurts of data back to
where we’re bobbing in the Atlantic
as it shoots upwards
with squiggles and digits and facts
through what seems like nothing
but is in actual fact the invisible sinews that
keep the clouds tied to the mountains, moss to the trunk
the raindrops to the snakes, fish to pebbles
goats’ hooves to cliff faces, tomato green to finger tips
the sea to the murmuring, cracking movement of the continents
and the spongy, lung-like coral fans to the conversation
filtering plankton and pain and matter of fact
in the queue at the ATM about the weather and tax
and death and babies and the future
and five thousand metres, seven thousand, nine thousand
to where commercial airliners fly in straight lines
through clouds and stars and shavings of moon
which cannot be seen because the shutters are down
and the movies are being shown
and by now the weather balloon has grown in size
due to the air pressure to the size of this room
and the radiosonde is reaching the edge of
its usefulness to our understanding and prediction
of weather systems and unfurling cold fronts
winds and even the sprinkling of godsmall protons
and atomic nuclei which have been travelling towards us
from very far away – from the herb gardens of supernovas –
to confirm what we’ve been suspecting
for a while already: we are born fragile, and dogs are
our eternal friends.
—
For more of Toast’s wonder-filled words, check out the gig happening this Thursday night in Cape Town at Joule City, entitled “Albatross: a journey through spoken and unspoken word”. You can buy tickets on QUICKET or at the door.
According to the blurb for the event on Facebook:
This collaboration combines movement with poetry to create a unique audio – visual performance. For this show, the band will consist of Toast Coetzer, Righard Kapp, Jon Savage and Jane Breetzke (the latter two also collaborators in Toast’s other band, Simply Dead). Darkroom Contemporary will accompany the band with an exploration of the music through movement.
Cape Town artist Katherine Bull will create/ draw during the performance and her artwork will be projected for the audience to see.
The material performed in the Albatross show will take the shape of a 45-minute journey. Toast went on a sea voyage to Tristan da Cunha in 2013 and the show will trace themes he wrote about while on the journey and on the island, which is the most isolated permanently populated island in the world (it’s almost 3 000 km from Cape Town).
Hence the ocean, sea voyages, sea birds (and principally the albatross and its marathon gliding exploits to feeding grounds, and then back to a speck in the ocean where a mate awaits on a nest), oceanography, metereology and geography will become the background for love, long-distance relationships, people’s adversity against the odds and other human frailties to be explored against.
busi mhlongo with madala kunene, rosebank, johannesburg, 1995
This fragment was filmed by Dick Jewell during the rehearsals for the recordings of Madala Kunene’s album Kon’ko Man in Johannesburg, 1995.
fleurmach 