Alternate Realities / Alternate Spaces (Opening & Friday evening)
The works of the electronic and experimental vocalist Stine Janvin are charged by the duality of virtuality and reality. Using digital tools, she transforms her voice into abstract sound matter. The extraterrestrial frequencies that she navigates are both shrill and graceful, enigmatic and irritating. For her psychoacoustic A/V performance "Fake Synthetic Music" Janvin utilises light impulses and diffuses her cyborg chorales in space. Much like the Norwegian artist, Robin Fox also deals with synthetic sounds and virtual spaces. In his AV show "Single Origin", he generates an immersive 3D space with the help of laser projections, which he synchronises with noisy soundscapes and sparse electronic impulses. Fox hotwires the acoustic and visual sense, triggering an intense, synaesthetic experience. Lee Gamble also works with acute realities. For the Elevate Festival, he transforms the hypermodern club sound of his new album "In A Paraventral Scale" (Hyperdub) via Ambisonics into a surround sound spectacle in the Dom im Berg. The Graz-based musician, composer, and operator of GOD Records, Slobodan Kajkyt questions the relationship between space and sound in a strictly minimalist arrangement: on opening night he presents his release "III" for the first time and composes light and sound with each other in an extended installation and live performance.
Frederikke Hoffmeier is one of the protagonists of the post-industrial scene. As Puce Mary, she confronts us with loaded noise of gritty teeth and infiltrates Power Electronics' subversive strategies. Socialised in the environment of the Danish label Posh Isolation, she continues to formulate her language with her recent release "Red Desert" (PAN). The abysmal soundscapes of her effect-laden synth and the stubbornly rattling beats of her drum computer rub against the musician's intimate spoken word passages. In the process, uncanny scenarios unfold, echoing through the depths of our subconscious.
Sonic Fictions, Trance
This year the stage in the Dungeon is dedicated to minimalist modulations and adventurous sound experiments. It will begin with the French sound researcher, author, and director of the renowned institution INA GRM François Bonnet. The abstract sound spheres that he creates as Kassel Jaeger are introspective, subtle and spherical and interspersed with melodies in decay. The results are sound poems that activate our imagination. With collaborators such as Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi, Bonnet also appears more frequently in the context of improvisation. The Trio Mopcut is likewise made up of musicians from the improvisation scene. However, instead of subtle electronics, they rely on the sonic power and ecstatic energy of free jazz. The three exceptional musicians Lukas König, Julien Desprez and Audrey Chen play their game of extreme contraction and unbridled outbursts with improbable vehemence - a hell of a ride that would delight John Zorn. Between guitar, synths, and drums, vocal artist Chen reveals the extraordinary richness of the human voice - reaching molecular levels. Keith Fullerton Whitman enjoys a cult status amongst die-hards. The US-American musician builds modular loops, which he melts down into spherical drones or fans out into sparkling textures. He applies the trance-inducing compositional principles of early minimalism and focuses on timbres, textures and the materiality of the sound itself. The musician and composer Astrid Sonne is also oriented around early minimalism. She weaves bright, pointillistic sounds into fluorescent sci-fi landscapes. The source of sound is her effectuated viola, whose sounds flicker and glitter and yet seem to lead a life of their own. The musician and hardware hacker Ewa Justka wants to get to the bottom of this same premise in her own way. She filters raw signals from her modular synth, which she stubbornly declinates and combines with equally uncompromising beats and skeletal acid lines. The result is techno, perceptual experimentation, and sonic research, while not lastly telling of the fascination with the machine. The line-up is framed by a DJ set by Elevate co-curator Shilla Strelka, who as Inou Ki Endo spans the arc from experimental electronics to hard techno.
