London’s Zoltan head out into the world following the release of their “First Stage Zoltan” album on the Austrian label Cineploit.
Drawing from their long-standing interests in vintage sci-fi paperbacks and obscure horror soundtracks, Zoltan bring you menacing chordal sweeps, cinematic synthscapes and relentless, angular rhythms, with ambient interludes, Giorgio-Moroder-from-hell sequencers and bone-shaking crescendos. Banks of vintage synths are underpinned by a driving rhythm section, infusing the intricacy of prog with a repetitive, psychedelic energy. For fans of Goblin and Heldon.
Bringing the sunny Balearic sounds of summer and the icy kosmische sounds of winter to a venue near you, Free School are maximalist and minimalist all at once. But in a good way. The Birmingham duo signed to the internationally renowned Tirk label in 2011 and have just released their critically acclaimed LP ‘Tender Administration’, following two 12” releases and a string of remixes for the likes of Roots Manuva and Phil Oakey. Their cosmic delights have won the support of DJs Jacques Renault, Justin Robertson, Red Rack’em, Pete Gooding, Disco Bloodbath, The Big Chill and Future Disco.
Together with powerhouse drummer Simon Weaver and sensuous/deviant singer Greg Bird, the band have played live supporting Andrew Weatherall, Walls, Mark E and Fujiya & Miyagi and have recently performed at Croatia’s disco Mecca ‘The Garden Festival’. Free School have been performing a live show to win the hearts and minds of….well, people like you. Yes, you. Taking retro- futurist disco as a starting point, Free School have fused together Electro, House, Balearic, and Kosmiche to arrive at “a new sound….one that’s never been heard before….”* They may or may not be wearing masks of lamb.**
*Quote not actually said in reference to Free School. But it does feature in one of their songs, so the point stands. **Not actual lamb. They’re made of some sort of rubber/latex composite. But they look like lambs, so the point stands.
Mainlining a torrent of psycho-delic, reverb drenched, doomsday motorik and improvised sounds is the master and mystery of Gnod. Audiences have come to expect bizarre humanoid toasting over cosmic synth eeriness pinned down with a combination of duelling deep-vein-thrombosis juggernaut riffs and heart-pounding beats. Gnod explore the possibilities of a big, awesome sound with an uncompromising aesthetic.
To date the band have releases with Not Not Fun (USA), Blackest Rainbow (UK). Tamed Records (France) and Rocket Recordings (UK) to name a few and are gaining a cult following on the live scene in grimy venues & dark club spaces all over Europe with their head-spinning, mind-bending, bowel-shaking live shows.
What’s been described as “a trumpet player trapped in a two dimensional universe” is in fact the unique audio work of Justice Yeldham, a maverick musician with an unhealthy obsession with sheets of broken glass. By pressing his face and lips against the glass whist employing various vocal techniques ranging from throat singing to raspberries, he turns disguarded household windows into crude musical instruments. Resulting in a wide variety of cacophonous noises that are strangely controlled and oddly musical.
Justice Yeldham is the alter-ego of Australian sound performer Lucas Abela, whose past sonic experiments were conducted under monikers like A Kombi, DJ Smallcock & Peeled Hearts Paste.
The GET A GRIP screen-printing workshop returns for another year, this time in honour of Supersonic’s tenth anniversary. The two-hour workshop, run from the GET A GRIP poolside studio and shop front, gives you an informal introduction to their manual water-based screen printing techniques.
The workshop is open to weekend ticket holders for £25 which includes guidance, materials and a 100% organic t-shirt to take home. Using elements developed by an independent illustrator, you’ll put together a multi-coloured design to print onto a t-shirt. No experience required – you’ll enjoy this workshop whether you’re a complete beginner or an experienced printer.
To book a place, email [email protected] with ‘SCREENPRINT’ in the subject line – please also include your T-shirt size (Male or Female S/M/L/XL/XXL).
GET A GRIP, the Custard Factory’s resident print studio, can print to order and regularly supply DIY bands and organisations with clothing labels, illustrations, vinyl record sleeves and posters. For more information visit www.getagripstudio.com
Scratch ‘n’ Phase is an interactive audiovisual installation that will make DJs and audiophiles wince in pain. Come and destroy some CDs and needles in the name of noise in this sound work where you control the volume.
This piece is created by Sarah Farmer, a Birmingham based artist exploring various sound techniques and home made instrumentation.
A lo fi experimental film exploring visions of the darkness, The Mystic, The Occult, The Religious and The Apocalypse. The film is made by Belgian artist Shazzula Nebula who has performed in psychedelic band White Hills and is an ex member of Aqua Nebula Oscillator.
The soundtrack features:
Master Musicians of Bukkake
Kawabata Makoto
Bobby Beausoleil
Horror Illogium
Yoga
Sylvester Anfang II
Burial Hex
Sayona
Kinit Her
Rose Croix
Mourning Ring
Ga’an
Shazzula
The Entrance Band
In Zaire
Cultus Sabbati
Mater Suspiria Vision
L’Acéphale
SUM OF R
Aluk Todolo
Menace Ruine
Demonologists http://blackmassrisingsociety.blogspot.co.uk
Walking his dog late at night in the back alleys of his hometown of Nashville, Harmony Korine encountered trash bins strewn across the ground in what he imagined as a war zone. Overhead lights beamed down upon the trash in a Broadway-style that Korine found very dramatic. They began to resemble human form, beaten, abused and “very humpable”. Korine remembered, as a teenager growing up in Nashville, a group of elderly peeping toms who would come out at night. He has described them as “the neighborhood boogeymen who worked at Krispy Kreme and would wrap themselves in shrubbery, cover themselves with dirt, and peep through the windows of other neighbors.” Putting these two ideas together, Korine found conception for this film.
Trash Humpers is a 2009 American drama film directed by Harmony Korine. Shot on worn VHS home video, the film features a “loser-gang cult-freak collective”and their whereabouts in Nashville, Tennessee.
“Four years ago the Outcrowd stumbled upon some curious and bizarre old traditions based around the area of Birmingham’s birth place, the crossing of the River Rea, now known as Digbeth. Intrigued we delved further, eventually leading us to discover the lost Festival of the Rea, with roots in Pagan and traditional religions, echoed in similar festivals still celebrated throughout Europe.
For Supersonic we will re-create elements from the Festival of the Rea and build a shrine known as the “house of Beorn”, the first to be built in the area for over a century. A selection of artists with mythical potential will be invited to create offerings to this shrine and members of the public will also be invited to contribute their own offering to this ramshackle, weathered and sacred cabin during the festivities.
As the sun goes down on the last night of the festival, past and present will come together in a climax of channeled energy and sound where the magic of the event and the natural powers of the river will awaken and release the long lost spirits of the city we call home.”
This workshop takes place on Sunday in the Market Place 3.00 – 4.00pm and then again at 4.30 – 5.30pm No need to book, just drop in. Materials will be provided.
Huge and hairy and mute. . .he may be so large that his legs alone have the sizes of tress. His temper when aroused is terrible and his first impulse that of tearing trespasses to pieces. When moved to revenge, he nay make lakes disappear and towns sink to the ground. He devours human beings, preferring unbaptised children, and – according to a belief held in Italian Tyrol and in the Grisons in Switzerland- makes a practice of exchanging his own worthless progeny for human offspring’
Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages.
A life drawing class using a semi tame Wild Man as your model. Workshop conducted by Stephen Fowler, an illustrator and printmaker based in London. He runs printmaking and bookbinding workshops and teaches drawing at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, Wallace Collection, Kingston University, University of the Creative Arts and Oxford and Cherwell Valley College.
A strand of film programming curated by Jason Forrest at Network Awesome.
“A look at the wild stuff that happens way out on the back roads. Wildmen, talking animals, folk tails, and some of the culture that surrounds them all. Our hour long presentation of animations, short films, and video clips is sure to provoke and inspire.”
Network Awesome is a new online TV site that curates the media film, documentaries, and video collections from all eras of broadcast history. It’s free, not full of junk, and it broadcasts 6 new shows each day. The archives are stand-alone repositories of media, available anytime and are, like, totally social so you can share it with your friends. Root around in there! You’ll be amazed at what you find. http://networkawesome.com/
Reverse Karaoke is a collaborative installation by Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether. It consists of a painted Yurt style tent housing a lo-fi rehearsal set-up with guitar, microphone, bass, and drums and a basic PA system. The visitor is invited to play the instruments and record their own music along with a pre-recorded vocal track of Kim Gordon’s voice. The track is recorded live by a sound engineer who burns two CD copies of the track, while the visitor(s) decorate two CD sleeves using materials in the gallery. One copy of the CD becomes part of the piece itself on display in a record box, and the other the visitor takes home.
Reverse Karaoke was commissioned by Electra for ‘Her Noise’, South London Gallery, 2005, and was complemented by a series of evening performances in which artists were invited to use the piece’s set. These events featured Jenny Hoyston (Erase Errata), Heather Leigh Murray, Christina Carter, Ana Da Silva (The Raincoats), Partyline and Spider and the Webs. Since 2005 the work has toured Europe extensively and been exhibited at Magasin-CNAC, Grenoble, France; MAK, Vienna, Austria and Wysing Arts Centre, Camrbidge, as well as being included in the major touring exhibition ‘Sonic Youth Etc.: Sensational Fix’
Electra is a London based contemporary art organisation which curates, commissions and produces projects by artists working across sound, moving image, performance and the visual arts. http://www.electra-productions.com/
Reverse Karaoke will be open over the Supersonic Festival weekend at Eastside Projects.
Modified Toy Orchestra explore the hidden potential and surplus value latent inside redundant technology; a process creating sophisticated new electronic instruments from abandoned children’s toys. They have been at the forefront of a worldwide underground movement called circuit bending, which involves rescuing children’s electronic toys and converting them into new strange and wonderfully sophisticated musical instruments. Taking them apart, they find new connections hidden within each toys circuit that reveal new sounds, thus exposing the surplus value of redundant technology. Toys are reassembled, including switches and dials with which to control this surplus value. The results of this process can be shockingly beautiful, funny and also extreme.
That which is below is like that which is above that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing. And as all things have been arose from one by the awareness of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nurse.
A performance inspired by the Heavens Above, created by Mark Wagner and Sanna Charles of S&M and Conny Prantera, with the collaboration of Emiliano Maggi of Estasy, photographer Marko Righo and costume designers Kamellia McKayed and Gloria Carlos.
To honour the occasion of Supersonic’s 10th anniversary and the recent discovery of the lost Festival of The Rea, the SOUNDkitchen collective will give a special performance of Earth Ears: A Sonic Ritual by Pauline Oliveros. Known for her ritualistic and meditative approach to sound and listening, Oliveros’ work invites performers and audience to engage in a Deep Listening experience.
For this performance each member of the collective will invoke one of the four classical elements Earth, Air, Fire and Water, central to ancient pagan practices and magic rituals. Each performer will reveal their sonic manifestation through musical actions, recorded representations and improvisation. Through collective expression and meditation we invite you to celebrate the spirit and history of the River Rea in Digbeth as an historic site of community, creativity and mystical energy.
SONICritual will be performed by: Iain Armstrong, Julien Guillamat, Shelly Knotts, Annie Mahtani. Sound engineer: James Carpenter
SOUNDkitchen are a collective of composers and sound artists dedicated to promoting artists working in the medium of sound. Their ongoing series of live events present emerging and established performers from Birmingham and beyond with a focus on current and emerging approaches to experimental electronic music. They also curate and create sound art installations and exhibits, initiate collaborative projects and give live performances.
What started as a fictional band to act as an excuse for the members to go to the pub on a weeknight has become something a bit more proper of late after some shows with Flipper and records in the pipeline. Even though they were probably aiming for something between Pere Ubu, Pissed Jeans and Scratch Acid it’s no surprise, with the members being kids of the early 90s, it ended up sounding like Nirvana. Just don’t call it a mid-life crisis.
Friday 19 October
Birmingham City University, Margaret Street Fine Art Building, Birmingham, B3 3BX
1.30pm – 6.00pm
Supersonic Festival withSound and Musicpresent a half-day extended panel discussion exploring contexts for the presentation of sound works and performances and approaches to listening. Bringing together artists, academics and industry professionals this event is an opportunity for discussion of how artists and producers can best stage work, how audiences can be best encouraged to enjoy it and how we can all become better listeners. Counting In also acts as an informal networking opportunity for artists and producers.
Artist Lucas Abela (aka Justice Yeldman) is notorious for his bloody sonic actions using amplified shards of glass. Lucas will be discussing the balance of sonic and visual elements in his work and his concerns with allowing sound to shine through his visceral performances.
Frances Morgan is deputy editor at The Wire magazine and a writer on music and film. Frances will discuss the different ways in which we experience ‘live’ music and sound, the challenges for journalists writing about it now, and how audience expectations are shaped by context.
Irene Revell is the Director of Electra, an organisation that curates, commissions and produces projects by artists working across sound, moving image, performance and the visual arts. Irene’s contribution to the panel will focus on Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether’s ‘Reverse Karaoke’, an installation that has toured European galleries during the last seven years and is on show at Eastside Projects as part of Supersonic 2012.
Simon Hall is a composer, sound engineer trombonist and Assistant Head of Music Technology at Birmingham Conservatoire, UK. Simon will be discussing modes of listening and the cultural deafness resulting from the sonic overload of our contemporary lives.
Our annual programme of big sounds for little people returns! These performances act as an introduction to experimental music for children and their families.
Sunday 21st October 1.30pm
Old Library, Custard Factory Islaja
Her unique vocal style and daring DIY approach to music composition is coupled with a beautiful sense of playfulness. Soulful and icy in one breath, she is one of the key players of the Finnish free folk scene. http://islaja.com/
Saturday 20th October, 1.30pm
Old Library, Custard Factory Flower/Corsano Duo
Corsano is a multi faceted drummer and one of the most exciting improv percussionists in the world. Lightning quick yet with an unconventional approach to rhythm, we’re looking forward to some top notch dancing from the kids for this show. He teams up with multi instrumentalist, free psych player Mick Flower on strings. http://www.cor-sano.com/
*NOW FULLY BOOKED – SORRY NO PLACES LEFT*
A 90 MINUTE WALKING TOUR IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BLACK SABBATH 1948 – 1970
PERRY BARR, WITTON, ASTON & NEWTOWN
Join us for a special Black Sabbath themed walking tour, in the birthplace of Heavy Metal. Along the way you will be walking in the footsteps of Tony, Bill, Ozzy and Geezer and learning about the environment they grew up in and how they formed to be one of the most important bands in music history.
Sign up for a free, guided tour of Black Sabbath’s early environment by music historian Rob Horrocks.
About Rob:
“I was never a metal-er at school. Around the age of 14 (1986) when musical identity lines were drawn I was into punk and new wave. I would argue endlessly with my metal head friends over the merits of 1000 note a minute guitar solos, poodle hair and spandex versus the emotional rawness, honesty and relative poppy simplicity of the stuff that John Peel played. I was increasingly out numbered – Iron Maiden went straight in at number one and Echo & The Bunnymen split up. The outcome of those endless discussions is that I got to know how the whole metal scene fits together. I know my Venom from my Poison.
20 years later I came to an appreciation of Black Sabbath through a band I was working with. Einstellung love Sabbath and many of their colossal riffs are dropped tuned. Soon I too came to appreciate Ozzy era Black Sabbath. That’s an understatement. I have grown to love those first albums.
I read Record Collector magazine, The Quietus blog and occasionally The Sunday Times.”
This special event will take place on Saturday 20th October and is free to all Supersonic weekend ticket holders, but booking is essential. To do so, email [email protected] with ‘Crossroads of Sabbath’ as the subject title.
You can learn more about the birthplace of Heavy Metal via our Home of Metal project
For his new documentary the Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller and his sometime accomplice Nick Abrahams turn their attention to fellow film pioneer and iconic performance artist Bruce Lacey.
Three years in the making the film examines Lacey’s remarkable legacy as a painter and sculptor (creating extraordinary mechanical devices in the 1960s), an avant-garde filmmaker (alongside Dick Lester and Bob Godfrey) and as an all-round cultural chameleon, working with The Goons, The Beatles and even folk-rock super-group Fairport Convention. An intimate portrait of a self confessed ‘silly bugger’ and true visionary artist who, at the age of 85, still lives the bohemian dream; creating art and magic in a farmhouse near Norwich.
Offering an insight into some of the hows and whys of maintaining an independent spirit whilst on the very edge of the avant-garde, this panel will feature a number of maverick artists. How is the drive to make art sustained under sometimes-difficult circumstances? After many years of writing and touring music, will the desire to create ever be satiated?
Supersonic Festival is now in its 10th year, beginning as a one-day event it has become an internationally renowned weekend of music, art and more. The panellists have hugely influenced the festival producers, as well as many other artists performing at Supersonic. ‘You Can Be You’ (the title of the Honey Bane / Crass EP) will offer a fascinating insight into the drive and motivation behind some of the most prolific experimental artists around.
Panellists include:
Penny Rimbaud is a musician, poet and co founder of anarchist punk band Crass in 1977. A prolific writer, he has published over 14 books, set up Dial House and Exitstencil Press plus continues to release music three decades after Crass disbanded.
“If there was one message we had in Crass, it was that ‘there is no authority but yourself’. You don’t need to accept that you’re nobody, you can trust in yourself.”
Jarboe is a musician and artist who came to prominence in the mid-1980s with the highly influential Swans. With founder Michael Gira, the duo was the core of Swans until the group broke up in 1998. Since the band’s split she has made 17 solo albums, many self released and is a prolific collaborator, often working with new and emerging artists.
Eugene Robinson is the vocalist and co founder of the legendary avant rock band Oxbow. They formed in 1989 and have since been a prolific force in the experimental music world, touchng noise rock, musique concrete, free jazz and blues over the years. Oxbow are tireless touring band and the subject of a series of films looking at the whys of art creation, touring life and 20 years in, the motivations for continuing to do what you do.
Chair – John Doran is the editor of The Quietus and a music journalist/cultural commentator for many a publication. He is a regular columnist for Vice.
A strand of film programming curated by Jason Forrest at Network Awesome.
“Everyone likes to make things, sometime they end up being famous for it but often they just end up looking like freaks. Here’s a salute to those people who either did it themselves, made something up, or just did it like no one else.”
Network Awesome is a new online TV site that curates the media film, documentaries, and video collections from all eras of broadcast history. It’s free, not full of junk, and it broadcasts 6 new shows each day. The archives are stand-alone repositories of media, available anytime and are, like, totally social so you can share it with your friends. Root around in there! You’ll be amazed at what you find.
http://networkawesome.com/
The Vinyl Rally is an large-scale installation combining sound art, video art and kinetic sculpture into every kid and kidult’s dream-hybrid; an immersive participatory play-set playing off vinyl fetishism, video arcade mystique and the machismo of motor sports in a video game played within a real world setting!
Classic first person video racing is simulated as remote control cars with styli attached, race across a track constructed from a mass of disused vinyl records. Transmitting sound (produced as the styli skim along the vinyl surface) and vision (from wireless spy cameras mounted to the front of each car) to reengineered old school racing consoles with immersive 50” flat screens. Here players navigate the course from the vehicles point of view, not only controlling the cars movements, but also the parameters of the resulting sounds they create via a series of unique audio effects mounted onto the dashboard giving each car its own distinct aural flavour. These sounds are emitted from speakers built into the seats causing them to vibrate in correspondence with the movements on screen, producing a personally immersive experience aurally, visually and physically that can only be truly appreciated seated at the controls.
Vinyl Rally is the project of Australian artist Lucas Abela, AKA Justice Yeldham
ORE and KK NULL are delighted to announce a distinctive collaboration as part of Supersonic 2012.
In many ways, KK NULL’s collaboration with Lash Frenzy (with Sam on tuba) at Supersonic 2010 acted as a proof of concept for the amplified tuba sound of ORE, so it’s entirely fitting for Capsule to bring the two entities together this year. Better still, KK NULL and ORE have gelled so well in the early stages of working on this collaboration that they have also decided to release a limited CDr single together, which will be available at the festival.
They will be performing a specially-written piece together, culminating in a vast cacophony of sound. Be scared.