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IT’S ONLY 5 DAYS AWAY UNTIL SUPERSONIC FESTIVAL 2018!!

You’ve got your ticket, now what? Have a read over our FAQs to help you plan for this weekend…

 

Box office opening times to pick up your wristbands – located on Floodgate St, Birmingham B5 5SR
Friday 21:00 – 23:30
Saturday 16:00 – 22:00
Sunday 15:00 – 20:30

Timings and full schedule HERE

Children

Whist Supersonic Festival doesn’t have a specific children and young people offer, children aged 10 years and under are welcome to accompany adults attending the festival for free. If you are planning on bringing children with you please contact us in advance via [email protected] and we will reserve sufficient numbers of wristbands at our festival Box Office. We request that all children in attendance at the festival must be accompanied by an adult at all times, have their own ear defender equipment and be off site by 9pm.

Supersonic Kids Gigs are perfect events for children and their families. More information about events taking place later this year will be available soon.

Accommodation: “Where can I live for the weekend?”
We have negotiated a number of special rates for Supersonic visitors, you can read all about that here https://supersonicfestival.com/info/hotels/

Alcohol: “Can I bring my own alcohol?”
Unfortunately not, you may be searched on arrival and if you are found to be carrying drinks, these will be confiscated. There will be licensed bars which have a selection of vegan friendly ales + spirts + soft drinks on the festival site. If you look under 21, please bring some photo ID along.

Food
We have a food court plus a tea room on site, which will cater for vegetarians and vegans alike as well as meat eaters.

This year we’ll be filling bellies with SriLicious, Beet The System and Original Patty Men (OPM). You’ll find their stalls in the courtyard to the festival Market Place.

Cash Points
There are only a few ATM machines in Digbeth, so you might want to take out money prior to arriving at the festival site. There are two free cash machines located near-by at:

Nisa | Digbeth High Street | B5 5NR (about a 3 minute walk from the festival site) which is open until midnight daily

Birmingham Coach Station which is open 24hrs

Directions: “How do I get to Supersonic Festival?”
The central hub of Supersonic Festival is held at the The Crossing Floodgate St, Birmingham B5 5SR.

Smoking
Normal smoking rules apply: you can smoke in any outdoor area on site, you cannot smoke inside any enclosed public buildings.

Parking
There are a number of 24 hr car parks around Digbeth and about a 5 mins walk away from the festival site.
Green Parking Ltd, Digbeth High Street, Oxford Street, Birmingham B5 6DY

Taxis
There are loads of taxi firms in Birmingham – Here’s numbers for a couple of them:

Atlas Cars 0121-643-8888

Ambassador Cars 0121-449-8888

T.O.A. 0121-444-8888

Royal Cars 0121-444-8888

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We have a bunch of amazing and entertaining stuff for you to do before we open the doors at Supersonic Festival 2018 and best of all they are all free.

FRIDAY
MOOG SOUNDLAB PERFORMANCE PROGRAMME
THE ROYAL BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE
200 JENNENS RD / BIRMINGHAM B4 7XR / FREE ENTRY
1400 – 1500 MOOR MOTHER IN CONVERSATION
1530 – 1630 SIMON HALL VOYAGE FOOG PHAT MOOG SURROUND SOUND DIFFUSION SEAN CLANCY
1630 – 1730 JAMES DOOLEY AND TOM TEBBY JAMES DOOLEY OPEN INSTALLATION
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TALKS : IF WET SALON
18.30 – 20.30 / FREE ENTRY
CENTRALA / UNIT 4 MINERVA WORKS / 158 FAZELEY ST | B5 5RT
Musical instrument maker Sam Underwood will host a special event that will provide a peek behind the scenes of a number of projects appearing as part of this year’s festival. Find out what drove Sam and Graham Dunning to collaborate on this work. Other artists include Brian Duffy AKA Modified Toy Orchestra, Farmer Glitch, Kathy Hinde and Mark Korven. In addition Centrala have a great selection of beverages to get your Supersonic weekend started.
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PERFORMANCE
FERRIC LUX PRESENTS A LINE BETWEEN THE HEAVENS & THE SOIL
VIVID PROJECTS / 16 MINERVA WORKS / 158 FAZELEY ST / B5 5RS
FRIDAY 22 JUNE / 20.00 / FREE
Exponent of blackened techno and ritual Ferric Lux returns to unleash an unholy mix of ambient noise, esoteric techno and black metal, scored over distorted, flickering images received from another plane. An event not for the faint hearted.
Approximate duration 40 minutes.

SATURDAY

VISCERISTAHOOD
VIVID PROJECTS / 16 MINERVA WORKS / 158 FAZELEY ST / B5 5RS
SATURDAY 23 JUNE / 15.00 – 17.00 / FREE
Performances and interventions from the Visceristahood will occur during the closing hours of HER HORROR … don’t be scared, now.

MOOG SOUNDLAB PERFORMANCE PROGRAMME
THE ROYAL BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE
200 JENNENS RD |BIRMINGHAM B4 7XR | FREE ENTRY
1400 – 1530  JAMES DOOLEY AND TOM TEBBY
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SUNDAY

PERFORMANCE MELODY OF NOSTALGIA
14.00 / FREE
CENTRALA / UNIT 4 MINERVA WORKS / 158 FAZELEY ST | B5 5RT
Polish artist, Anna Jochymek is bringing a male choir to Centrala to perform her immersive sound artwork Melody of Nostalgia; vocally interpreting digital recordings of Eastern European Migrant Women’s singing their nostalgia songs.

MOOG SOUNDLAB PERFORMANCE PROGRAMME
THE ROYAL BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE
200 JENNENS RD |BIRMINGHAM B4 7XR | FREE ENTRY
12.30 – 1500 JAMES DOOLEY OPEN INSTALLATION

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ONE WEEK TO GO YOU LOT!

 

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Supersonic Festival 2018 runs from June 22nd – 24th in Digbeth, Birmingham.
Box office is located on Floodgate Street | Digbeth | B5 5SR
Box office opening times to pick up your wristbands

Friday 21:00 – 23:30
Saturday 16:00 – 22:00
Sunday 15:00 – 20:30

TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE VIA https://supersonicfestival.com/product-category/supersonic/

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Read Luke Turner‘s take below, where he highlights Supersonic line up Gazelle Twin, Shirley Collins, Laura Cannell and Nik Void as his choice for this year’s festival…

 

 

New Weird Britain Essay #3

New Weird Britain: A Guide To The UK Underground In 2018

By Luke Turner

 

A dark smear on the road ahead, cars swerving to avoid the dismembered remains of a deer. Quiet car parks where solitary men emerge from white vans, furtively following one another into the bushes. Seasons topsy turvy from climate change. The Diggers, the Ranters, the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Archive documents that bluntly report tragedy, a dead baby wrapped in newspaper and dumped in a forest clearing. The crumbling concrete of obsolete fortifications, a reminder that the English landscape has always had within it the promise of violence. 

These are aesthetic and historical touch points for a gathering of the artists of New Weird Britain who are re-examining our relationship to the non-urban. Nature-inspired art can often have a sentimentality that’s a hair’s breadth from the reactionary, as Tom Nairn wrote in an analysis of Enoch Powell’s pastoral poetry, we might find “babbling brooks feeding rivers of blood”. New Weird Britain can help dam these malevolent streams as, with DIY artists forced out of our increasingly homogenized cities, it’s in the grubby hinterlands of the non-urban that we might increasingly seek insurrection.

On Saturday night, Gazelle Twin presents the debut of Pastoral. This record, made in the deep England of her Midlands home, has at its heart a brutalism and a politic that attacks the conservatism of the (frequently rural-dwelling) Baby Boomers who brought us Brexit. It ploughs up the increasingly outdated view that art related to the natural world and rural has to be soft and twee. Pastoral declares that the non-urban landscape is if anything more violent and defined by sex and death than the city. 

This might still be expressed in traditional forms. In Laura Cannell’s fiddle and recorder, the lark of Vaughan Williams is caught in the talons of JA Baker’s Peregrine, swooping over the flat lands of the east. There’s a common misconception that the world of folk music is inherently conservative, but the reemergence of Shirley Collins as a contemporary artist subverts simplistic notion. Her recent memoir All In The Downs is as much a polemic about the power of the old songs as it is a telling of her own life. 

 

 

I find it significant that these artists are female, subverting the paradigm of the poet of nature being the lone male, conquering territory. At the heart of our thinking around New Weird Britain as a navigation of place must be a focus on diverse and oft-unheard voices. In my spoken word piece for Modern Ritual, I discuss a queering a landscape, arguing that a re-sexualising of the pastoral (a different take on the current vogue for re-wilding nature) might bring us a more sensual engagement with the land. In this fecund exploration of place we might begin to cleanse it of the polluting forces of nostalgia and nationalism; reclaiming England through sound. 

New Weird Britain at Supersonic, according to Luke Turner:

Gazelle Twin
Shirley Collins
Laura Cannell
Nik Void

 

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In amongst our killer line-up over the festival weekend, Supersonic is proud to host the works of visual artists Kathy Hinde and Mark Titchner. Keep an eye out for their installations at the Custard Factory, Ikon Gallery and across our main stages. 

 

Kathy Hinde

Supersonic and Supernormal join forces to present Kathy Hinde’s Piano Migrations

The inside of an old piano becomes a site for live performance. Recycled into a kinetic sound sculpture, Kathy Hinde mixes video projections of birds to create different musical patterns from their movements, providing an ever changing musical score where nature controls machines to create delicate music. She is joined by Matthew Olden, who performs with his own live sampling software ”i am the mighty jungulator”  whilst videos of birds are projected. Together they create a captivating performance where image becomes sound and sound becomes image through a series of transformations realised through acoustic sound, live sampling, automata and projections. The installation can be found in the Custard Factory’s courtyard, adjacent to The Mockingbird Cinema.

 

Installation: Mark Titchner – Find Your World In Ours

Ikon | 1 Oozells Square I B1 2HS | Free | 20 June – 8 July

Supersonic stages – throughout the weekend

 

‘Find Your World In Ours’ are a series of newly commissioned digital artworks curated by artist Mark Titchner and features films that explore ideas of ritual, repetition and collective experience. Artists include Anna Barriball, Sean Dower, Mustafa Hulusi, John Lawrence and Rachel Lowe. Reflecting Titchner’s interest in the intersection between visual art and experimental music these works are presented at Ikon and as large scale projections during Supersonic Festival across our main stages.

 

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In addition to our stellar film programme, Supersonic favourites TOMAGA will be paying homage to experimental, underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger in this very special screening where the band will be performing a livesoundtrack to 1966 occult classic from Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle.

Incorporating the surreal, homoerotic and the occult, Anger’s films were ahead of their time. Deemed as one of the first openly gay filmmakers, he opened up gay culture to the American screen in a powerful, unique way which we celebrate.

We are very excited to see TOMAGA return to Supersonic Festival, channelling various forms of multi-instrumentalism into music that moves by turns through industrial, jazz, psychedelia and minimalism. Devoted to musical exploration, this London based duo obsessively deconstruct familiar tropes, looking for the tension that lies between improvisation and form.

 

 

Abandoning musical convention in favour of freeform flair, drummer Valentina Magaletti and bassist Tom Relleen are master shape-shifters of improvisation. Over a steady stream of releases and live dates, they’ve amassed a fleet of homemade instruments which help them push the boundaries of rhythm and bass, incorporating jazz, electronic, industrial and psychedelia.

Outside Tomaga, Tom and Valentina make up the rhythm section of psych-rock trio The Oscillation and between them have played in loads of other genre-bending bands like Neon Neon, Raime, Shit n Shine and Voice of the Seven Thunders. Together they produce improv music that rocks, rather than swings; improv that borrows more from krautrock and psych than classical and jazz.

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Technology and innovation has always had a big part in shaping music. When Steinway added a middle pedal to its grand piano in 1902 for example, it presented possibilities in composition that were only imaginable before. Yet, despite leaps in technology over the past hundred years, the instruments we play have barely changed, and the new ones look a lot like the old ones.

Cut to Supersonic Festival 2018 artists Mark Korven (The Witch), and Graham Dunning & Sam Underwood and Kathy Hinde. These acts have created their own contraptions as a means of creating sounds that make up for unusual, erratic and purely unique compositions.

Supersonic is honoured to be hosting the UK premier of Korven’s ‘Apprehension Engine’, and equally thrilled to have Connected Devices debut their contraption. Read more below, and see them both live at this year’s festival!

Find out what drove Sam and Graham to collaborate on this piece at Centrala on the Friday, where Sam will be hosting a special event that will provide a peek behind the scenes of a number of projects appearing as part of this year’s festival. Artists have been invited to come and show their work and discuss their thinking behind it, with audience members gaining a unique insight into a number of beautiful and bizarre contraptions, works and approaches.

 

CONNECTED DEVICES

Sam Underwood & Graham Dunning

Premiering at Supersonic Festival, Connected Devices is a mechanical, modular music contraption created by Sam Underwood and Graham Dunning. Designed as a two-player, semi-autonomous musical instrument, it plays unusual, sometimes erratic compositions drawing on drone music, minimalist repetition and barrel-organ-monkey techniques. Visually, the machine resembles a sprawling, partially robotic drum-kit, or pared-down, clunky fairground organ. Throughout the performance, Dunning and Underwood will act as conductors, engineers, organ grinders and musicians, working with and against the machine to complete the assemblage, inspired by the pair’s research of instrument design from the musical instrument collection of the Horniman Museum, London.

Sam Underwood is a musician, sound artist and musical instrument designer. His work in musical instrument design focuses on the development of new musical instruments; predominantly acoustic and in the bass/sub-bass register. Sam has an almost unhealthy fascination with sound and finding new ways of creating interfaces with instruments and technology.

Graham Dunning’s live work explores sound as texture, timbre and something tactile, drawing
on bedroom production, tinkering and recycling found objects. He also creates visual work, video and installations drawing on these themes. Much of the work evolves through experimentation with different processes: considering the methods by which sounds become music; process as a continuum encompassing both improvisational and procedural methods; and testing analogous processes across different media.

 

THE APPREHENSION ENGINE

Mark Korven

Mark Korven is a Toronto based composer for film and television. He is best known for his work on the 2016 period Horror film THE WITCH, for which his composition has received great acclaim along with huge box office success.

His award winning scores are spine- chilling and atonal, employing obscure instrumentation from hurdy gurdys, nyckelharps and creaking fiddles. His creation of discordant, ghostly qualities send tremors through the heart, utilising feverish cues and pauses with intelligence and to a remarkable effect. Now Korven and Tony Duggan-Smith have teamed up to create a musical instrument specialising in horrifying sounds: The Apprehension Engine. It is this haunting device which Mark brings to his first UK performance, chilling Supersonic audiences this summer.

 

KATHY HINDE

Supersonic and Supernormal join forces to present Kathy Hinde’s Piano Migrations. The inside of an old piano becomes a site for live performance. Recycled into a kinetic sound sculpture, Kathy Hinde mixes video projections of birds to create different musical patterns from their movements, providing an ever changing musical score where nature controls machines to create delicate music. She is joined by Matthew Olden, who performs with his own live
sampling software ”i am the mighty jungulator” whilst videos of birds are projected. Together they create a captivating performance where image becomes sound and sound becomes image through a series of transformations realised through acoustic sound, live sampling, automata and projections.

 

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Meet the artists resisting colonial legacy and gender stereotype in South Africa through their dazzling sound…

 

The exploration of gender fluidity or genderlessness has come very much to the forefront of art and performance in recent years. Within Supersonic Festival 2018 alone we have performances from the mystifying Gazelle Twin, the indefinable Yves Tumor, and, of course the enchanting, rhythmic craft of FAKA and Angel-Ho; these are all artists who serve as key examples of transforming the rules of identity in their separate ways, only confirming the interchangability of the term itself.

FAKA and Angel-Ho proudly represent black and queer creativity with potent sound and vision. Both on the NON WORLDWIDE platform (a combination of experimental record label, radical art project and social network of which Angel-Ho is co-founder) these artists’ output confronts restrictive power structures in ways which represent the electronic underground’s most exciting collectives. FAKA and Angel-Ho make up part of a community of musicians which straddle African diaspora, fighting against the silencing of black and queer identities around the world.

 

ANGEL-HO

Angel-Ho is an artist assured of their own destiny. Over the past four years, the sonic and stylistic savant (born Angelo Valerio) has built a global following out of their explorations of classism, identity and gender through an amalgamation of their unrelentingly experimental electronic music and glamorous sense of style and couture.

Based in Cape Town, a city with a deep history of oppression, intrusion and slavery since the 17th century, the exceptionally intelligent artist, musician and activist creates dense, emotional electronic tracks which aim to bring light to the “mechanized systems of oppression” that exist in society.

Angel-Ho is a neo-pop recording artist transforming elements genres into new musical territories. At Supersonic Festival they will be performing her debut album that features dance, live vocal story telling and expression of the “feminine trans queenie” that proves to be the workings of a future pop force in global music.

 

FAKA

Surpassing the ‘performance art duo’ descriptor with which they may have started, FAKA explore a combination of mediums ranging from sound, live performance, literature, video and photography, creating an eclectic aesthetic. The isiZulu word faka, which means to penetrate, seductively nuances how the artists validate new vocabularies of communication about black queer identities, and in expressing themes central to their experience as black queer bodies, FAKA navigate through the “cis-hetero-topia of post-colonial Africa” through creating a safe-space in their work that allow black, queer, gender non-conforming or trans people to reflect and be celebrated.

 

 

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Taking a breather between acts? Head to *The Mockingbird Cinema* within the Custard Factory over the festival to keep your wind-down stimulating. We have the perfect line up of films to keep your energies high, including screenings of The Ballad of Shirley Collins ahead of her Sunday performance, and The Witch to give you a taste of the haunting sounds of Mark Korven’s apprehension engine…

 

Friday
Studio 54 | Director Matt Tyrnauer

Matt Tyrnauer’s thrilling and definitive documentary captures the delirium — and the dark side — of the legendary New York disco. Studio 54 was the epicenter of 70s hedonism–a place that not only redefined the nightclub, but also came to symbolize an entire era. Its co-owners, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, two friends from Brooklyn, seemed to come out of nowhere to suddenly preside over a new kind of New York society. Now, 39 years after the velvet rope was first slung across the club’s hallowed threshold, a feature documentary tells the real story behind the greatest club of all time.

 

Saturday
The Ballad of Shirley Collins | Director Rob  Curry  &  Tim  Plester

 

Shirley  Collins  is  widely  regarded  as  the  20th  century’s  most  important  singer  of  English  traditional  song,  Alongside  her  sister  Dolly,  she  stood  at  the  epicentre  of  the  folkmusic  revival  during  the  1960s  and  ‘70s.  However,  in  1980  Shirley  developed  a  disorder  of  the  vocal  chords  known  as  dysphonia,  which  robbed  her  of  her  unique  singing  voice  and  forced  her  into  early  retirement. Granted  intimate  access  to  recording  sessions  for  Shirley’s  first  album  of  new  recordings  in  almost  four  decades,  and  featuring  contributions  from  (amongst  others)  the  comedian  Stewart  Lee  and  David  Tibet  of  Current  93,  what  emerges  is  a  meditative  and  carefully  textured  piece  of  portraiture.

 

The Witch | Director Robert Eggers | Composer Mark Korven

In honour of hosting Mark Korvens first UK performance at Supersonic Festival we thought it was only fitting to do a late night screening of this exquisitely made and terrifying horror film. The age-old concepts of witchcraft, black magic and possession are innovatively brought together to tell the intimate and riveting story of one family’s frightful unraveling in the New England wilderness circa 1630.

 

Upon threat of banishment by the church, an English farmer leaves his colonial plantation, relocating his wife and five children to a remote plot of land on the edge of an ominous forest — within which lurks an unknown evil. With suspicion and paranoia mounting, family members accuse teenage daughter Thomasin of witchcraft, charges she adamantly denies. As circumstances grow more treacherous, each family member’s faith, loyalty and love become tested in shocking and unforgettable ways.
Don’t miss Korven’s live performance with his Apprehension Engine on Sunday.

 

 

Sunday
Betty – They Say I’m Different | Director Phil Cox

Funk  Queen  Betty  Davis  – controversial  music  and  cultural  pioneer,  wife  and  muse  of  Miles  Davis,  who  disappeared  mysteriously  from  the  music  scene  35  years  ago,  returns in  her  life  story documentary.

Funk Queen Betty Davis changed  the  landscape  for  female artists  in  America.  She  “was the first…”  as  former  husband  Miles  Davis  said.  “Madonna before Madonna, Prince before Prince”.  An aspiring songwriter from a  small  steel  town,  Betty  arrived  on  the  70’s  scene  to  break  boundaries  for  women  with  her  daring  personality,  iconic  fashion  and  outrageous  funk  music.  She befriended Jimi  Hendrix  and  Sly  Stone,  wrote  songs  for  the  Chambers  Brothers  and  the  Commodores,  and  married  Miles  – startlingly  turning  him  from  jazz  to  funk  on  the  album  she  named  “Bitches  Brew”.  She then, despite  being  banned  and  boycotted,  went  on  to  become  the  first  black  woman  to  perform,  write  and  manage  herself.  Betty was a feminist  pioneer,  inspiring  and  intimidating  in  a  manner  like  no  woman  before.  Then suddenly  – she vanished.

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“Without a doubt, hers is the most original compositional voice to emerge in Ireland in the last 20 years.” – Michael Dervan, The Irish Times

 

Composer, performer, vocalist; Jennifer Walshe’s body of work is vast and impressive. She is never anything less than surprising, thought provoking and relentlessly imaginative, today being one of a great number of composers contributing to an explosion of new writing, pieces with a bold, subversive approach like that of XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!, perhaps her best known work.

 

 

Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1974. Following her study of composition at Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and Kevin Volans in Dublin Walshe graduated from Northwestern University, Chicago, with a doctoral degree in composition in June 2002. Since then she has been the recipient of endless awards, residencies and commissions, spanning both her composition and vocal work to an international broadcast.

The crux of much of Walshe’s work has an overarching structure of several sections, in which her voice is used in different ways, with different techniques in each part, but she is also the creator of a breadth of alter-egos and creative outlets. Irish Dada is her creation, as is the minimalist Dordán (Irish for drone) project, and so too the Breathnach archive (his name translates as ‘Kevin Walshe’) that Walshe inherited in buying a house in the west of Ireland. Walshe is responsible for so many manifestations occurring in her extraordinary music and performances, each meticulous practices that extend the creation of characters, voices, and events into dizzying bodies of work. The Grúpat collective, a fictional ensemble or “insurgency group” of alter egos that Walshe founded in 2007 to generate sound works, photography, self-built instruments and costume designs, serves as another example for Walshe’s enticing provocation, emphasising herself as an artist who delivers astute, sometimes savage observations on every day life, and who’s next move nobody can guess.

“Stepping away from her alter egos and into the day-to-day performance of everyday life, Walshe is a trim blonde woman of medium height; but in her work she shifts to a multiplicity of different forms: bearded drag queen, ukulele-playing chanteuse and neatly coiffed vamp.”- Musicworks

 

Make sure you catch her on the Saturday of Supersonic Festival 2018. 

 

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Supersonic Festival is delighted to be partnering with the internationally renowned Moog Sound Lab and The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire to create a four week artist residency programme. The Moog Sound Lab is focused on organic experimentation and is a unique opportunity for artists to explore analog sound-scaping, synthesis and effects. Artists who will be part of the residency include Moor Mother, Nik Void, Gum Takes Tooth and Brian Duffy (Modified Toy Orchestra).

 

 

When Robert Moog unveiled the Moog synthesiser to the world in 1964, he not only radically changed music, but culture itself. From the butterflies- inducing bassline on Donna Summer’s I Feel Love, to the unmistakable melody that weaves through New Order’s Blue Monday, the list of game changing songs and records from the last four decades all share one thing. The greatest pioneer of electronic music wasn’t a musician, but an eccentric physicist with a longstanding love of taking things apart and putting them back together again. This is the staple DIY, explorative and captivating behaviours that is staple to not only The MOOG Sound Lab, but rooted within Supersonic Festival itself. 

The lab moves to different venues and was previously Pioneered at Rough Trade NYC. It becomes a temporary residency space, offering a unique opportunity for artists to explore, experiment and create. A physical manifestation of the intersection of music, art and technology, the lab offers a unique resource to artists to make new work.

 

 

Residents will also include a number of students from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. These artists are all at different  stages  of  their  compositional  journeys  and will be joined by staff using the residency to work on significant research projects. These are to include baroque transcriptions  for  synthesizers (Martin  Perkins  &  Robin  Bigwood),  Integra  Lab experimentations,  and recordings  of  new  pieces  for  synthesizers  by  Seán  Clancy,  James Dooley,  and  Simon  Hall.  In  addition,  Music  Tech  lecturer  James  Dooley  will  lead  an ensemble  of  synthesists  from  both  Music  Tech  and  Composition  departments,  creating  a devised  collaborative  work  over  a  day  long  residency  in  the  Moog  Soundlab.

 

Listen below and whet your appetite for Supersonic Festival…

Moor Mother

 

Nik Void

 

Gum Takes Tooth

 

Brian Duffy

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3 WEEKS TO GO!!! Here’s a little something to keep you going until then…

Come visit us @ DIGBREW tonight where we’ll be spinning even more Supersonic favourites, and giving a sneak preview of the work our artist in residence DENNIS MCNETT has prepared for the festival.

 

 

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Supersonic Marketplace

Open Friday 21:30 – 01:00; Saturday 16:00 – MIDNIGHT; Sunday 15:00 – 22:00.

Welcome to the Market Place, the hub of the festival. This is a space for independent distributors, record labels and pedlars of curiosities to sell their wares, network, and meet our audiences face to face. The marketplace is also where you can find band merchandise, and is the home of various exciting workshop activities and talks over the weekend. The area is equipped with a tearoom serving a selection of epicurean delights, including some cravable cakes, tea and coffee and a can/cocktail bar for those who take their lemon drizzle with a tasty ale.

You will no doubt already be stunned by our marvellous lineup of music, art and film – but no Supersonic would be complete without its vibrant Market Place, complete with talks, high-energy DJ sets and extracurricular activities.

So here’s the lowdown on all the sellers joining us at Supersonic, plus a taste of the wondrous activities you’ll encounter in the Market Place over the course of the weekend.

Alt. Vinyl

alt.vinyl has been a physical and online store, promoter of live events and a diverse and eclectic record label producing over 70 releases with a roster of artists including lichens, richard dawson, warm digits, zoviet france, winter family, rhodri davies, robedoor, astral social club and many more. these days alt.vinyl concentrates on providing the rarest, collectable and hard to find sonic ephemera on analogue formats.

Box Records

Box Records from Newcastle Upon Tyne has been exploring the UK underground since 2009. Specialising in extrodinary and unformulated music Box Records has championed early releases from the likes of Richard Dawson, Terminal Cheesecake, GNOD, Bong, Lower Slaughter, Casusal Nun, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs and more.

Defunkt Dialekt

Birmingham-based record label creating vinyl for a worldwide selection of artists.

Boswell’s exact origins are shrouded in mystery, but it is rumoured that he was found as an infant by a tribe of penny-farthing newts beneath the town of Frome in Somerset, U.K. Taking the form of paintings, sculptures, illustrations, visions of both darkness and vibrancy can be seen in the myriad record covers, comic strips, illustrations for the underground press and zines and large-scale paintings and sculptures he has created around the world.  They can also be heard echoing through the bass riffs he has played as a member of various bands through the years.

Eastville Project Space

Yeovil based arts space founded in 2014.  A collaboration between producers Stephen Ives (a.k.a Farmer Glitch) and Zoe Li.  Specialising in a range of sonic devices built into discarded found objects.  Noise machines and lighting kits to build.  Audio releases. One-off pieces and limited-editions from guest artists.

Edgeworld Records

A Supersonic regular since 2011, specialising in all things Alternative, Outsiders, Emergent…VINYL!

This year the Edgeworld store is offering a Flash Sale! Everything marked down to wholesale price or less. Decades of Alternative/Experimental/interesting DIY and Indie represented here, perfect for the discerning (but financially constrained) Supersonic Vinyl Hound. LPs/12”/7” and maybe a few CDs too. Fill yer boots.

God Unknown Records

God Unknown Records was founded in 2013 by Jason Stoll and has sought to bring together diverse artists to share a 7” single, birthing the God Unknown Records Singles Club. Releases include music from established artists such as Bardo Pond, Xylouris White, Thor Harris, Clinic, Goat, Hey Colossus, Gnod. As well as a growing list from the likes of Sly and the Family Drone, Dead Neanderthals, Tomaga, Woven Skull & Rainbow Grave.

Grassi Art

Grassi currently lives and makes art in the North East of England.

Where collage, drawings and paints set aside the familiar to investigate a developing bridge between the surreal and literal routines embedded within curiousity.

Lewes Herriot

I’m an artist living and working in Birmingham. I’ve spent just over a decade creating artwork for bands, promoters and musicians in the form of gig posters, album art and merch. I also sell prints, and recently a book, based on characters and landscapes from my personal work, which is heavily inspired by wildlife, cartoons and psychedelia.

Shelanu: Women’s Craft Collective

Migrant and refugee women working with Craftspace to develop craft skills, confidence and well-being through social enterprise. Shelanu, which means belonging to us, is a developing social enterprise of migrant and refugee women producing high quality craft objects inspired by their new home, the city of Birmingham. They will be selling their Interlocking Stories and Migrating Birds jewellery collections and their Birmingham souvenir range.

Sleep Sparrow

Sleep Sparrow is the work of Birmingham based, Falmouth graduate, Sophie Chadwick. Influenced by atmospheres found within music, brutalist architecture and modernist design, she explores the interaction between various colours and shapes.

Wayside and Woodland

Wayside & Woodland Recordings is an artist led record label based in Staffordshire. Founded in 2006, by genre-melding experimental artists epic45 (Ben Holton & Rob Glover) as a platform to release work unrestrained by the conventions of a traditional record label structure.

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Our best times are made by those we share them with. That’s why Supersonic Festival is proud to be spending the weekend with some of our very good friends Supernormal and Fat Out, bringing the glitz, energy and fun that’ll keep you going over the jam packed weekend. 

We really are spoiling you this year, what with our stellar line-up and fantastic workshops for audiences to get involved with. On top of it all, we have some amazing additional activities hosted by our friends Supernormal and Fat Out that’ll make you want to let your hair down and rev you up in between acts.

 

Black Sabbath Karaoke

Market Place, 11-12:10 pm

Come all ye Children of the Grave, accept the challenge to embrace your inner Wizard, and sing your heart and lungs out to your fave Sabs anthem. Supernormal – the annual Oxfordshire festival enclave where the most otherworldly wonders of the underground converge – has been reaping minds and destroying larynxes with a regular karaoke session each year honouring the likes of Prince, Kate Bush and The Fall alike, and it seems only fitting that they should bring the Sabbathian version of this spectacle to Birmingham, the Home Of Metal and motherlode of all things Iommi-Butler-Osbourne-Ward. Moreover, we’ve enlisted the help of an unholy incarnation of both Ozzy and Sharon O. to host the ceremony. Satan’s coming round the bend, indeed.

SUPERNORMAL will be taking a break from their annual festival in the countercultural enclave of Braziers Park, Oxfordshire this year, so come see them in their down time during the Supersonic weekend.

 

Fat Out Nail/ Glitter Bar

Market Place, 8:00- 9:10 pm

Do you dream of a Lionel’s Tash or to reveal your third googley eye? Do you see your real self as Ozzy, The Mitchell brothers, a Polar Bear or Rihanna? Does your already beautiful face need a touch of glittery sparkle? Well you can live all of the above and so much more in ‘Fat Out’s One Stop Transformation Shop’. Come as you are. Leave as your your most fabulous party self, fully prepped to rip up any Supersonic dance floor! And if your band schedule is too militant to make a visit to our stall then look out for the Glitter police, doing on the spot makeovers so everyone can transform into their most party confident selves.

 

Remember to get your tickets in time! See you there…

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Don’t miss THIS FRIDAY’S #DFF! We have some right treats coming your way ahead of Supersonic Festival across Digbeth, including a very special sneak peek at our artist in residence Dennis McNett’s work at Digbrew and some supersonic ladies spinning some tunes over at Centrala.

 

SUPERSONIC AT DIGBETH FIRST FRIDAY
FRIDAY 1 JUNE | FREE
DIGBREW | 43 RIVER ST | DIGBETH

Come join us at Dig Brew for Digbeth First Friday this June to catch a sneak peek of Supersonic artist in residence Dennis McNett’s work as we spin some tunes from 8 til late.

Combining design roots in traditional wood cuts with the raw high-energy imagery pouring out of the early 80’s skateboard and punk rock scene, Dennis has carved an intricate tribe of mythical entities and tales. His Wolfbat moniker, a symbol for rebellion against authority, brings to light our animalistic rituals, he brings to life our beasts.

As part of Digbeth First Friday MJM Bespoke will be opening their studio doors, welcoming visitors to come and see their new workspace. 

 

 

As if that weren’t enough, Vivid Project’s HER HORROR will host a preview with The Visceristahood as part of Digbeth First Friday.

Embrace your dark side and experience HER HORROR this June with Vivid Projects and Supersonic Festival. Expect a darkly ecstatic blend of ritual, body horror and transformation as we celebrate the bicentenary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at this week’s Digbeth First Friday. Visceristahood (Kate Spence, Sarah Walden, Siân Macfarlane and Vicky Roden) will be performing a live soundtrack to their ‘Frankenfilm’; an assemblage of horrifying fragments in 4 movements. This will be followed by an exhibition starting 15 June featuring new work from each member of the Visceristahood- more info here.

 

Supersonic Recommends…

 

Three Models for Change- Exhibition Opening @ Centrala

In collaboration with Grand Union and the University of Birmingham, join us for the opening of ‘Three Models for Change’ as part of Digbeth First Friday on Friday 1 June, 6-9pm.

Three Models for Change is a group exhibition asserting the importance of historical awareness in establishing future potentials of communities. The works in this exhibition fluctuate between three actual and staged narratives: the formation of a fictional Quaker-punk band; the staging of cross-generational Queer histories; the uncertainty surrounding a newly formed volcanic island and its territorial disputes.

This exhibition includes existing work and new commissions by artists Chris Alton, Ian Giles and Greta Hauer.
Curated by Ryan Kearney, Alice O’Rourke and Ariadne Tzika.

Supersonic will also be spinning some tunes in the downstairs gallery- so come say hello!

 

Eastside Projects: Gallery Relaunch 
6–9pm Friday 1 June 2018

This is the gallery and the gallery is many things. And there are lots of people – artists, curators, designers, engineers, plumbers, policymakers, guests and all kinds of whatnots. Together we support and care for art, artists, our city of Birmingham, and the world. We are, after all, the public who make art.

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“Supersonic has had a longstanding relationship with multidisciplinary artist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe…He has proven time and time again that anything he puts his hand to will be extraordinary. We have no doubt that this collaboration with such accomplished artists as Yoshimio and Susie will be nothing short of awe inspiring.”– Lisa Meyer, Supersonic Festival

 

Three improvisational luminaries will be performing live together for the first time in the UK at Supersonic Festival before continuing on the second Outlands tour.

 

 

Multi-instrumentalist YoshimiO (Boredoms, OOIOO, SAICOBAB), avant-garde percussionist Susie Ibarra, and this year’s Supersonic guest curator – Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (Lichens). Will be sharing a stage in this truly inspired performance.

 

YoshimiO is a drummer and member of the revolutionary group Boredoms who also plays guitar, keyboard and trumpet. She is the leader of the experimental band OOIOO, a member of Free Kitten with Kim Gordon (ex. Sonic Youth), and most recently the vocalist in SAICOBAB – a quartet who blend ancient Indian musical traditions and instruments with electronics and modern sounds. She is widely known for her ability to improvise in a variety of contexts.

 

Susie Ibarra, is one of the most significant female percussionists and composers of our time, known for her work as a performer within contemporary, avant-garde, jazz, classical, and world music. Ibarra studied with jazz luminaries Earl Buster Smith (of Sun Ra Arkestra), Vernel Fournier and Milford Graves, and Philippine Kulintang gong-chime music with Danongan Kalanduyan.

 

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is strongly rooted in exploration of moments and the hypnagogic state. Movement and gesture play key factors within this process, and in the performance realm are focused on by voice and modular synthesizer. His work ranges from hypnotic solo modular synth and voice explorations as Lichens, to acting in films directed by artist Ben Rivers, composition for film and playing in legendary doom band Om.

 

The performance will explore spontaneous composition and showcase the freedom and musical immediacy of all three artists’ ability to interplay as well as their individual unique techniques to create engaging experimental sounds.

Experience this magical performance for yourself on the Sunday of Supersonic Festival!

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‘They’re not the first to approach techno from a hardcore punk sensibility, but their energy on stage is pushing them into a league of their own. Imagine Container and Alan Vega attempting a peak-time techno record, and you’re halfway to grasping the Giant Swan sound’ – Resident Advisor

 

Giant Swan have been confirmed for a right royal round off to Supersonic Festival’s Friday line-up.
They join Croww / Goat / Housewives / Moor Mother / The Ex / Wetware / + Ideas of Noise curated stage of experimental sounds from the Midlands
TICKETS HERE!

 

 

Vital players within Bristol’s Howling Owl collective and with strong ties to the city’s deep musical heritage, Giant Swan are a maelstrom of energy, bleeding between sonic movements that both obliterate and invigorate. The brainchild of Robin Stewart & Harry Wright; the two create an acerbic marriage of energised, aggressive dance music, quaking bass and hypnotic electronic noise. Building on a foundation of rhythmic tension and frenzied improvisation, no two performances are the same as the duo re-build and destroy their twisted vision of techno-not-techno over and over again.

The acclaimed release of the Earn 12″ on FuckPunk in 2016 confirmed them as one of the most exciting electronic acts to emerge in recent years, and this 2017’s EP on Timedance along with game changing performances at Villette Sonique, Berghain and Unsound Festival has taken things to a whole new level.

 

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Our audiences are at the heart of what we do. That’s why we strive to give them experiences which get them closest to the things they love.

So whether you’re taking a breather between acts or an early bird with a free morning before starting, we have some exceptional workshops planned for you to get involved with! With those that aren’t drop in’s around the festival, information with how you can register your interest and book a place can be found below…

 

DO.OM YOGA

Saturday 12:00 – 1:30 (£7) BUY TICKETS
Sunday 12:00 – 1:30 with live soundtrack by AYN S0F Paddy from Gnod (£10) BUY TICKETS
Centrala | Unit 4 Minerva Works |  158 Fazeley St | Birmingham | B5 5RT
Spaces are limited and tickets must be purchased in advance

Great music is a synthesis between sound and silence . The greater the synthesis the deeper the music goes .The sound creates the silence and the silence creates the receptivity to receive sound . You become centred, rooted . The earth and sky meet. The body and soul are no longer separate They lose their definitions.

Do.omYoga is a slow vinyasa based yoga practice with a strong emphasis on connecting deeply connecting ‘passive postures’. Practiced alongside loud atmospheric Doom/ Drone/ Ambient/ Avant-garde/ Psychedelic music, the intensity of the music acts as a driving force invigorationg strength, yet at the same time complimenting the pace of the practice, unlocking the capacity to aid releasing tension and help sustain holding asana postures for longer through its emotive nature.

A selection of music from the slower, heavier, vibrational and at times ambient end of the music spectrum, acts and is chosen to serve as the ‘active’ principle balancing the energy of the practice into a harmonious integrated whole resulting in an immersive experience. ALL LEVELS WELCOME.

 

 

PECHA KUCHA- SUPERSONIC SPECIAL

Sunday 5:30- 6:30 I Supersonic Market Place

PechaKucha is the snappy presentation format where speakers have just 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide to get their point across. What started out in Tokyo is now in 900 cities across the world. Themes for PechaKuchas can include nearly anything, but for Supersonic we’re inviting you to share your music obsessions, record collections, sonic adventures and live experiences. That could mean your top 20 metal albums, rarest band memorabilia, best album sleeves, 20 heaviest riffs, backstage encounters or moments from your own band’s on-the-road anecdote repertoire. Surprise us! PechaKucha works best when audiences don’t know what’s coming.

It will be an informal set up – it’s all about the fun of sharing rather than a slick, rehearsed presentation.

Get in touch by emailing [email protected] with ‘PechaKucha’ in the title if you have an idea and we’ll just ask you for 20 slides in advance of the day (which will be the afternoon Sunday 24th June). Slides will be on a timer, so all you’ll need to do is talk along to the slides to a compact audience and we’ll do the rest.

 

 

Modern Ritual: Workshop

Sunday 24th June I Supersonic Festival Workshop

Ahead of their performance on the Sunday evening, there is an opportunity for the audience to attend a free short participatory workshop and to take part in one of the new commissions, this piece is called:
THESE WE HOLD CLOSE, THESE WE HOLD DEAR
Workshop Led by Charles Hayward & Laura Cannell

Make a mental list of the names of people you love, of neighbours and work colleagues, of friends far away, of long lost friends. We will move through different zones, vocal spaces, using these names as lyrics.

The Workshop 30 – 40 minutes

Participants will be invited to perform the piece as the finale of the evening [Modern Ritual] performance. Music by Charles & Laura.

Spaces are limited to 15 to book your place email [email protected] with ‘modernritual’ in the title

 

 

DENNIS MCNETT: PROCESSION PREPARATION

Saturday 12 pm- 4 pm

Sunday 12 pm – 4 pm

2018 is a monumental year for Supersonic. This June, we bring to the back streets of Digbeth the FIRST EVER major project in the UK from prolific artist, Dennis Mcnett. Our Artist in Residence, Dennis will produce a NEW large-scale work to embody the beating heart of this year’s festival, using Supersonic musicians and audience alike.

Work alongside Dennis and help bring the Supersonic beast to life! You will be creating a series of large-scale masks and costumes that will form part of our procession- the heart of this year’s festival.

 

“It’s easy to be cynical in this world. For me, it’s not always easy to walk through life with positivity and try to offer that positivity back to the world. I find it fun and effective to offer it with characters, story telling, collaboration, made-up myth and meditation.” Dennis Mcnett.

 

Conjurer of the colossal, Dennis doesn’t just exhibit work in galleries, he parades it down the street. Sculpting full scale temples or engineering viking ships inspired by Norse mythology to cruise through New York City. Birthing a 16ft puppet operated by 20 people in elaborate masks with costumed dancers and caterwauling musicians. Whatever the setting, the results are astounding.

Combining design roots in traditional wood cuts with the raw high-energy imagery pouring out of the early 80’s skateboard and punk rock scene, Dennis has carved an intricate tribe of mythical entities and tales. His Wolfbat moniker, a symbol for rebellion against authority, brings to light our animalistic rituals, he brings to life our beasts.

Limited to 15 people
Book your place by emailing [email protected] with ‘dennis_masks’ in the title

 

 

DEVIATION: A SURREAL LIFE DRAWING EXPERIENCE

Saturday 5 pm – 6:30 pm Supersonic Market Place

DROP IN

From  the  strange  and  abnormal,  to  the  beautiful  and  repulsive,  Deviation  aims  to  give people  the  chance  to  experience  drawing  models,  environments,  situations  and  installations  which  offer  different  and  interesting  shapes,  textures  and  lighting  that  aren’t  usually encountered  within  a  normal  life  drawing  class.

 

FAT OUT’S ONE STOP TRANSFORMATION STOP

Saturday 8 pm – 9:10 pm Supersonic Market Place

DROP IN

Do you dream of a Lionel’s Tash or to reveal your third googley eye? Do you see your real self as Ozzy, The Mitchell brothers, a Polar Bear or Rihanna? Does your already beautiful face need a touch of glittery sparkle? Well you can live all of the above and so much more in ‘Fat Out’s One Stop Transformation Shop’. Come as you are. Leave as your your most fabulous party self, fully prepped to rip up any Supersonic dance floor! And if your band schedule is too militant to make a visit to our stall then look out for the Glitter police, doing on the spot makeovers so everyone can transform into their most party confident selves.

 

 

SHELANU

Sunday 3 pm – 7 pm Supersonic Market Place

DROP IN

In addition to their spot within the festival Market Place, Shelanu will also be running a stamped key ring workshop. Come along to decorate your own copper key ring with your favourite bands or Supersonic memories.

 

JUNEAU PROJECTS

Sunday 3 pm – 7 pm, Supersonic Market Place

DROP IN

Spinal Tappers

A Percussive Instrument workshop by Juneau Projects

Join this drop-in workshop with Juneau Projects to create your own wooden percussion instrument to use as part of Dennis McNett’s procession piece. Select an instrument shape from a range of animal-based designs created by Juneau Projects and then assemble and customise it to create your very own unique ‘Spinal Tapper’.

Limited edition badge

Juneau Projects have created a range of lasercut badge designs to allow you to build and customise your own unique wooden badge.

 

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Saturday 12:00 – 1:30 (£7) BUY TICKETS
Sunday 12:00 – 1:30 with live soundtrack by AYN S0F Paddy from Gnod (£10) BUY TICKETS
Centrala | Unit 4 Minerva Works |  158 Fazeley St | Birmingham | B5 5RT
Spaces are limited and tickets must be purchased in advance

Great music is a synthesis between sound and silence . The greater the synthesis the deeper the music goes .The sound creates the silence and the silence creates the receptivity to receive sound . You become centred, rooted . The earth and sky meet. The body and soul are no longer separate They lose their definitions.

 

Do.omyoga is a deeply connecting , meditative and immersive experience.

A slow vinyasa dynamic-restorative yoga practice soundtracked to atmospheric doom/drone/ ambient /psychedelic vibrations takes you higher and brings you deeper. Music from the heavier and slower end of the music spectrum acts as the driving force invigoration strength at the same time helps aid releasing tension by helping to hold postures ‘Passively” for longer through its emotive nature .

Equal focus us placed on Mantra , Asana, Pranayama breathing culminating in Meditation for a holistic YOGA practice.

Prepare to be wrapped in a sonic blanket on Saturday as they take you on an inward journey to another dimension soundtracked to a playlist of heavy music.

Do.omyoga will also run a very special LIVE session on Sunday with special guest AYN S0F ( PADDY GNOD)

MATS PROVIDED

NO experience needed – ALL LEVELS WELCOME

 

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Supersonic Presents…
Dorcha (single release show)
Rattle
Adrena Adrena
TICKETS £6 in adv. £7 otd
https://supersonicfestival.com/product/dorcha-rattle-adrena-adrena/

31st MAY @ THE HARE AND HOUNDS, KINGS HEATH

 

DORCHA

Dorcha are a genre-fluid 5 piece band of synths, strings, electronics and heavy beats. A dynamic, versatile group with a refusenik attitude, Dorcha obsess over transporting listeners to a pool of shifting, nearly gothic, barely pop, experimental songwriting. Praised by the likes of BBC Radio 6’s Stuart Maconie on the Freak Zone, 2017 saw further progression in Dorcha’s recognition, with a live performance on BBC Radio 3 Late Junction, appearances at Flatpack Film Festival, Supernormal, Supersonic Festival and more. This May the band launch a brand new single from the forth-coming album set for release later this year. Bubbling with a new energy, this home-town show will be one not to be missed!

“Dorcha already know their own collective mind and are starting to channel a genre defying path through the increasingly fractured musical landscape. They deliver original and ambitious ideas with attitude and commitment, combining their considerable aptitude as players with an impressive musical sensibility. They clearly enjoy what they do. In Anna Palmer they have a tenacious front woman whose ability to move convincingly from sweet song to dark folk to visceral noise is captivating. Dorcha are a tight, grounded, self assured band delivering solid ideas that demand some attentive listening.” – Verity Sharp, BBC Radio 3.

 

RATTLE

RATTLE are Katharine Eira Brown and Theresa Wrigley. Rattle began as an experiment in crafting rich songs and melody using only drums and voice. Their music weaves and intertwines post-punk, minimalism and experimental rock, through off-kilter rhythms, patterns and counter melodies. Their debut album, ‘Rattle’ (via Upset The Rhythm and I Own You Records) led to invitations to support Animal Collective on a short UK tour and The Julie Ruin on their European tour. Their live performances, at once hypnotic, monastic and danceable entranced audiences in the UK, Spain, Belgium and Ireland in 2017. The band have just completed their second album in their home town of Nottingham, UK due for release later this year. Rattle will join Protomartyr on their UK tour in May 2018.

 

ADRENA ADRENA
Adrena Adrena is a collaboration between visual artist Daisy Dickinson and drummer E-Da Kazuhisa, previously the drummer of the Japanese noise band Boredoms and currently British electronic/post-rock band Seefeel (Rephlex, Warp Records).
The duo cut a raw blend of drums, noise and organic visual work, featuring in their performances an eight foot white sphere that hangs above Kazuhisa’s drum kit and which Dickinson maps videos on to; her work was described by William Barns-Graham of Fluid Radio as ‘cosmological and transcendental, drawing attention to the wonder of the earth and our sensuality on it’.

 

Supersonic Presents is brought to you by the curators of Supersonic Festival, “The best European festival for new music” (The Quietus) happening in Digbeth, Birmingham June 22nd – 24th 2018.
Weekend tickets on sale now!!

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“The mechanical influence is apparent from the start… like a robot recycled from the remnants of a steel drum who yearns to play the electro-harp for Cluster “ – Playground mag

 

“I always have a spatial vision of music” says Cico Beck, the heart of electro plaything Joasihno. Sitting in his basement studio among self-made synthesizers, records and weird instruments, he points at a tiny robot beating an electronic drum: “That’s one of my new musicians”.

 

 

Psychedlic machine music from Munich, Cico Beck (Aloa Input, the Notwist) and Nico Sierig have manifested a stunning electronic set up with the assistance of a “robot orchestra”. Switching between analogue synths, world percussion instruments and computer programming, Joasihno’s sound rings inspiration from many great experimental pioneers- from Mort Garson and the melancholy of Kraut Electronica, to Moondog and the patterns of Steve Reich. Beck’s brave experimentation has brought Joasihno into ambitious, unusual terrain.

These guys are experts in contemporary beat making, playing with a variety of sounds that build from minimalist wobble to expertly layered mixtures of electro twinkles, soothing synth chords and warm oscillations.

Expect a set with a krautrock pulse, fuzzy distortion and wordless exhalations. Get a taste for them in action below, and experience them live this June.