Sunday, Sep 25 - Back Room
Joke Lanz & Shelley Hirsch

w/ Aki Onda & MV Carbon, Ezramo & Rinus Van Alebeek, Bob Bellerue & Mister Matthews

Sunday, Sep 25
8:30 pm in the Back Room

$8 / 21+

Born 1965 in Switzerland and currently operating out of Berlin, Joke Lanz (aka Sudden Infant) is one of the most prolific and profound artists working in the border zones where performance and body art meet Improvisation and Noise. In his Sudden Infant guise, Lanz creates a unique blend of physical sound poetry and epileptic noise bursts, using contact microphones, loops, tapes etc. The result is an extreme form of musique concrète that juxtaposes spasmodic gibbering with a battery of disorienting electronics. His activities in various solo and collective guises (for music groups, radio projects, theater and dance endeavors) have included Sudden Infant, Schimpfluch-Gruppe, WAL, Catholic Boys In Heavy Leather, Jaywalker, Opposite Opponents, MK Selection, Psychic Rally, The Eye of Arghhh, Tell and countless others. He has also toured the world over with various acolytes and has released his works on some of the most prominent record labels in the noise underground (Schimpfluch, Tochnit Aleph, Blossoming Noise, Entr'acte, Artware, SSSM, Klanggalerie, Some Bizarre, iDeal Rec and many more). Sudden Infant is Lanz' longest-running and most enduring project. Its inception in 1989 was borne out of Lanz' urgent drive to combine sound art and performance into one visceral whole -- by doing so, his performances frequently bring forth elements and influences from Dada, actionism, Fluxus, noise, and punk, as well as some of industrial music's most trenchant performers. A Sudden Infant performance will typically be anchored by two main characteristics: the use of minimal electronic equipment on one side, on the other a strong focus on the human body, its reduced essence, and the sound-worlds it contains and spews forth. Sudden Infant is a vehicle for Lanz to run acoustic and psychic elements to their end by focusing on their bare essentials. Thus doing, he establishes an extremely tense aesthetic of performance, and tears down any preconceived barriers between noise, performance, improvisation, and electronic music. As a turntablist Joke Lanz creates autonomous sound-cells that melt into a language free of any function. He combines ritual reductionism with anarchistic playfulness, atmospheric soundscapes with cut-up noise and physicalness with unpredictability. Massive scratches, walls of sound, grooves, loops, noises and voice modulations lead you on a journey into a world of unknown sound holes and deep abstract rhythm constructions. More info: http://www.suddeninfant.com

MV Carbon is a Brooklyn based artist and musician who uses tape machines, voice, electric cello, field recordings, and hand built electronics in her work. She has performed nationally and internationally with her solo work as well as in collaborations with a fine array of musicians. Her work has been exhibited at galleries including the Butcher Shop (Chicago), D'Amelio Terras (NYC), Louis V.E.S.P.(NYC), MCCaigwelles Gallery (NYC), Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (PGH), Salon Invisible (Chicago), Three Rivers Arts Festival (PGH), and West Nile (NYC). She has performed sonically in spaces including Arnolfi (UK), Issue Project Room (NYC), Metropolitian Museum of Art (NY), Museum of Contempory Art (Chicago), Musuem of Contemporary Art (Detroit), Nefertiti Jazz Club (Sweden), PS1 Contemporary Art (NYC), Roulette (NYC), The Sage, (UK), The Stone (NYC), the Tate Modern (UK), and Tesla (Berlin). http://www.akionda.net

Alessandra Ezramo aka EZRAMO (b. 1982, Italy) is a sound artist, composer, and performer who now lives and works in Berlin. Her research is focused upon the hidden archaic memory in music. Working with musique concrète sounds, her own history and identity are intended as part of a collective memory. Her works include compositions, videos, music for theatre and Butoh-dance, live performances and installation in interactive and site-specific forms. Her main instrument is the voice, which she radically extends its technical possibilities and combines with acoustic instruments like prepared zither, piano, percussion, Theremin and with field recordings. Ezramo presented her works internationally at art galleries, radio, theatres and multidisciplinary spaces around the globe. She has trained in classical singing and piano since an early age, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Brera in Milan (B.A. cum laude) and in Stuttgart. She holds a Master Degree in Performance Art at the Faculty of Philosophy of the State University Ca’ Foscari Venice. Ezramo has also acted as curator for festivals and series of experimental music (Atelier Serious Entertainment, Max.Experimentell, S’Block Festival Stuttgart). Since 2010 she’s co-founder of the vinyl & sound art production Corvo Records, taking part to the new artistic generation of the Berlin music scene. In 2011 she has been invited from the Italian Culture Institute to exhibit at Biennale di Venezia, Padiglione Italia nel Mondo. Besides her project-oriented works, since 2005 she is involved in an intense concert activity as soloist and in collaboration with renowned musicians, sound artists and dancers. More info: www.ezramo.com

Rinus van Alebeek (1956, Heerlen, The Netherlands) is a writer who uses his (environmental) recordings on tape to narrate a story. During the nineties he published two books (pseud. Philip Markus) in his native country. The first novel (De Weg naar Oude God) won the prestigious Geert Jan Lubberhuizen Prijs, a yearly award for the best first novel. An accidental encounter with electronic, and avant garde music in the year 2000 at the Lem festival in Barcelona, and an introduction to the cassette culture gave way to his further artistic development. In the first decade of this century van Alebeek made a thorough research on how to make or manipulate recordings. Thanks to a great number of concerts, sometimes an average of ten in a month, he developed an approach of which people say it is ‘ between noise and pure poetry.’

Mister Matthews is form Cleveland OH, designs and builds handmade synths from dawn till dawn, plays in Telecult Powers and Hex Breaker Quartet, and lives in Brooklyn NY. Bob Bellerue is a sound and visual artist, music curator, and creative technician based in Brooklyn NY. Over the last 20 years he has been involved in a wide range of live creative weirdness - homemade percussion ensembles, dance/performance art sound scores, live electronic noise, and sound installation. Bob's work utilizes custom electronics and programming, incorporating feedback, prepared field recordings, de-musicalized instruments, and found oscillators. He curates and produces noise and experimental music events on a regular basis, including the Ende Tymes Festival in June 2011. He was formerly based in Los Angeles, where he ran the sub-garde experimental music/performance space the Il Corral, and curated the Beyond Music series and festival. Since 2002 Bob has run the gourmet noise label Anarchymoon Recordings. More info: halfnormal.com