After the success of our first Supersonic Kids Gigs in 2010, we return with another programme of big sounds for little people!

Tickets  will be £10 for 1 child +  1 adult and available from www.macarts.co.uk

As well as performing at the main festival, Lucky Dragons and The Berg Sans Nipple will be performing a special Supersonic Kids Gig this year, exploring experimental music aimed and kids and their families.

Saturday 22nd October

Lucky Dragons’ performances put the audience at the heart of the show, and encourage participation with the artists and with each other. Playing together whilst engaging with new sounds. The artist duo regularly conducts workshops to find new ways to engage people in experimental sounds

http://www.hawksandsparrows.org/

Sunday 23rd October

The Berg Sans Nipple is Lori Sean Berg and Shane Aspegren. The former is a suave Frenchman from the dirty rues of Paris, the latter hails from the dusty plains of Nebraska. Two drums, synths, samples, a ton of percussion and vocals hardcore kids gone gamelan, caught in devastatingly beautiful melodies and a mind bending rhythm section.

http://thebergsansnipple.tumblr.com/

British experimental musician Alexander Tucker releases his Thrill Jockey debut Dorwytch in April 2011. This record breaks new ground for Tucker by combining minimalist string arrangements with electronic manipulations and drones to produce doom chamber-pop songs and psychedelic music-concrete collages.

Tucker’s sound has developed over the years since his first self-titled solo album, which featured acoustic finger-picking, experimental electronics and was released on Jackie O Motherfucker’s U-Sound Archives label. Three years in the making Dorwytch finds Tucker refining his song craft and introducing minimalist string movements that build into dense spiraling riffs around his distinct vocals. This album will beguile and entice the listener, placing Tucker at the forefront of the experimental pop landscape.

A very special performance at Supersonic Festival will see a performance of this new material matched with projections of films made specially for the event The performance is a extension of the Alexander Tucker visual world of hair beings and other worldly creatures.

http://www.myspace.com/alexanderdtucker

In 2002, being inspired by Haitian vaudou musicians’ capacity to make intensely powerful music with almost no technology, William Bennett first employed djembes and doundouns on the classic Wriggle Like A Fucking Eel 12” by Whitehouse, in what was seen as a radical musical direction by many in the wider noise/industrial scene.
The Cut Hands project itself was founded by William Bennett in 2007 initially to experiment further with his obscure collection of Ghanaian percussion instruments in free-form work-outs alongside other types of (genuine) sound experimenting. The fruit of 8 years of recordings finally culminated in 2011’s critically acclaimed and best-selling release Afro Noise I.

The music of Cut Hands featured heavily in the VBS films Liberia (2009) and Mandingo (2010)

http://djcuthands.blogspot.com/

Part Chimp are a band from Camberwell in London that were formed by Tim Cedar, Jon Hamilton and Nick Prior in 2000. Current line-up is Tim (vocals & guitar), Jon (drums), and Iain Hinchliffe (guitar).

They play rock music with elements of noise. Both on record and live, Part Chimp have a reputation for sounding extremely loud. Their records are released in the UK by Rock Action records in Europe & Japan by Play it Again Sam and in the US by Monitor records.

http://www.partchimp.com/

Since their initial formation in 2006, the London-based Teeth Of The Sea have metamorphosized into the most adventurous and intrepid psychedelic rock outfit in the UK. Taking on board influences like Ennio Morricone, Eno, Delia Derbyshire, Goblin, Butthole Surfers and Harmonia, they’ve arrived at an incendiary sound that effortlessly marries the aural enlightenment of a far-reaching avant-garde sensibility with the reckless abandon of trashy rock & roll immediacy.

Teeth Of The Sea exist on a strange and beguiling astral plane, whereby the boundaries between the synth odysseys of the 70s, the guitar-noise-fuelled infernos of the 80s, horrorscore schlock, Reich-ian repetition, and a whole plethora of other cathode-ray and speaker-stack birthed epiphanies are blurred into one futuristic and fearsomely coherent whole. Teeth Of The Sea are spinning into a whole new orbit.

http://www.myspace.com/thewrongjaws

Alva Noto is a stage name of sound artist Carsten Nicolai who uses art and music as complementary tools to create microscopic views of creative processes. He is a member of the music groups Signal (with Frank Bretschneider, AKA Komet and Olaf Bender, AKA Byetone) and Cyclo. (with Ryoji Ikeda).

Nicolai transforms sound by looping oscillators and tone generators. He does not use sequencers, but edits his work to give his compositions rhythmic structures. Clicks and glitches are not used as ornamental additions to the compositions but make up the essential rhythmic and harmonic elements of the work.

“Nicolai, along with sometime collaborator Ryoji Ikeda, is in the vanguard of artists whose work represents a genuinely experimental fusion of visual and sound art.” The Wire

http://www.alvanoto.com

Olaf Benders, manager of Raster-Noto record label, performs solo under the name Byetone.

Bender creates his music digitally. He assembles sine tones to complex sound fabrics. digital clicks and effect plug-ins are essential to create the rhythms. All this is brought in a timely relation and so a track is born — an artificial world without any physical effort.

Bender uses visuals in the sense of animated light. Abstract animations support the abstract pieces of music — in this way the rhythm of music is transformed into a graphic equivalent. Bender controls the animations in realtime. In connection with sound effect processing this enables him to interact live on stage.

http://www.myspace.com/benderbyetone

Silver Apples appeared on the New York scene in 1967. Far from the Dead/Airplane-influenced West Coast hippies, their psychedelic music came with a dark-repetitive-New-York-scary flavour that did not sound like the rest of the Summer of Love.

Decades after their brief yet influential career first ground to a sudden and mysterious halt, the Silver Apples remain one of pop music’s true enigmas: a surreal, almost unprecedented duo, their music explored interstellar drones and hums, pulsing rhythms and electronically-generated melodies years before similar ideas were adopted in the work of acolytes ranging from Suicide to Spacemen 3 to Laika.

The band is now touring as a solo act, SIMEON, aka “The Oscillation Man”, who sings and plays his famous hand-made instrument, ‘The Simeon”, made of “nine audio oscillators piled on top of each other and eighty-six manual controls to control lead, rhythm and bass pulses with hands, feet and elbows”…

http://www.silverapples.com/

Fresh from their artist residency at Roadburn Festival, Supersonic are delighted to announce that both Circle and Pharaoh Overlord will join the festival bill.

Formed in 1991, Circle is the most visible and prolific name in the Finnish avant-rock underground. Having survived innumerable lineup changes, the band and its founder, bassist/vocalist/guitarist Jussi Lehtisalo, have constantly reinvented themselves, weaving hypnotic mantras out of exacting Krautrock beats, heavy riffs, arty noise, dark psychedelia, and soundtrack-like beauty. Hard, chilly repetition has served as the lone unifying theme throughout 15 years of experiments.

http://www.circlefinland.com/

To accompany this performance, we will be screening a special new ‘documentary’ on the band, ‘Man with a Video Camera‘.

TONY CONRAD is a giant in the American soundscape. Since the early 1960s, he has utilized intense amplification, long duration and precise pitch to forge an aggressively mesmerizing “Dream Music. “Conrad articulated the Big Bang of “minimalism” and played a pivotal role in the formation of the Velvet Underground. Conrad continues to exert a primal influence over succeeding generations with his ecstatic oscillations and hypnotic drones.

“Tony Conrad is a pioneer, as seminal in his way to American music as Johnny Cash or Captain Beefheart or Ornette Coleman, one of those really savvy old guys whom all the kids want to emulate because their ideas, their style are electric and new and somehow indivisible.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Conrad invents a new musical language … unbearably intense and gloriously ecstatic.” The Wire

http://www.tonyconrad.net

Fresh from their artist residency at Roadburn Festival, Supersonic are delighted to announce that both Circle and Pharaoh Overlord will join the festival bill.

Pharaoh Overlord are a self described “Stoner Rock” side project of Circle, but don’t go getting visions of Nebula and Kyuss in your head just yet: this is more like “Stoner Minimalism.” Pharaoh Overlord deconstruct the standard rock song creating vast soundscapes that stretch time and space. Riffs capable of moving mountains repeat endlessly and when the silence finally comes, it’s deafening.

http://www.ektrorecords.com

FIRE! is a high calibre allstar combo from Sweden featuring Mats Gustafsson from The Thing (saxophone/rhodes), Johan Berthling from Tape (bass) and Andreas Werliin from Wildbirds and Peacedrums (percussion), now with added firepower on this special run of dates courtesy of Australian drone lord and Sunn O)))/Gravetemple alumnus Oren Ambarchi (guitar/electronics). Their sound is a frenzy of monolithic rock textures, scorched electronics, kosmiche grooves and
an all-channels-open free jazz spirit, all amped up at blistering psychedelic voltage.

FIRE! released their debut album “You liked me five minutes ago” through Rune Grammofon in 2009. A new LP featuring Jim O’ Rourke on guitar is on the way. They keep good company and coax a sound that engulfs your expectations and stretches taut grooves into endless panned-out vistas and back.

http://www.earthwindand.com

This performance is presented in partnership with Birmingham Jazz

http://www.birminghamjazz.co.uk

Producing work that is epic in concept, sound, and artistic approach, Steve Moore and A.E. Paterra, the masterminds and multi-instrumentalists behind Zombi, have re-imagined the architecture of progressive rock and dynamic instrumentals -carving a niche in underground music distinctly their own.

http://www.myspace.com/zombi

Secret Chiefs 3 were founded by guitar and sax player Trey Spruance and are based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Their music styles vary throughout their albums with their performance of surf rock, Persian, death metal, and other various styles – the only thing unifying the diverse range of styles they play is how precisely and accurately they play them.
Some of the members were also key members of Mr. Bungle.

http://www.myspace.com/secretchiefs3

The project of former Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris. The project was formed in the early ’90s by Harris along with Nic Bullen (one of the founder members of Napalm Death in 1981). Bullen left the group in April 1995 and the projects continues on to this day as an essentially one man show.

Industrial and experimental in nature, much of the output focuses on minimalist beats with an emphasis on very deep bass lines, often resembling dub and trip-hop in structure.

http://www.myspace.com/mjhscorn

Lucky Dragons are about the birthing of new and temporary creatures–equal-power situations in which audience members cooperate amongst themselves, building up fragile networks held together by such light things as skin contact, unfamiliar language, temporary logic, the spirit of celebration, and things that work but you don’t know why. There have been hundreds of these simple yet shifting and unpredictable instances–with audiences ranging from the intense intimacy of one person to the public spectacle of thousands of people. At the heart of it all is playing together–building up social collectivities, re-engaging the wonder and impossibility of technological presence. It sounds–and looks–like simple and ancient patterns coming together and falling apart in a sincere attempt to let wires and screens and words become clear and crystal.

http://www.hawksandsparrows.org/

The heaviest band in the world. The oblivion and ecstasy of crushing doom and high grade marijuana, a sonic aural trip far, far away from this world, where only cyclopean walls of crackling vintage valve amplifiers set to the full overdrive and primal ritualistic beats can wash away all the filth and drudgery of everyday life. Our music is DoomMetal, the only true definition. We toll the bell of hell, our sound is a crushing behemoth of funeral march psychedelia.
Violent, bleak and ritualistic, we bow to the black altar of the RIFF. We do not rock, we kill!

http://www.myspace.com/electricwizarddorsetdoom

After a storming DJ set at last year’s Supersonic, we’ve invited Cloaks back for more, considered to be one of the more abstract and uncompromising production teams to have emerged from the spannered and industrial-edged UK dubstep scene. Their distorted and often claustrophobic sound, created using found sound and circuit bent instruments was first debuted on the London based Werk Discs, with their output drawing comparison to not only modern bass music but to the darker sounds of noise and industrial.

http://www.3by3cloaks.blogspot.com
http://www.3by3music.com

Bardo Pond are an American psychedelic rock band from Philadelphia, formed in 1991, and who are currently signed to London based label Fire Records. The current members are Michael Gibbons (guitar), John Gibbons (guitar), Isobel Sollenberger (flute and vocals), Clint Takeda (bass guitar), Jason Kourkonis (drums), and Aaron Igler (synth/electronics). Bardo Pond’s drug-inspired music is often classified as space rock, acid rock, post-rock, shoegaze, noise or psychedelic rock.

http://www.bardopond.org/

Lichens (aka Rob Lowe) is not just performing at Supersonic, he is also curating a series of film screenings in the Theatre space.

Outer Limits is an exploration of contemporary works dealing with observations and ritual practices in connection with the natural world and the cosmic plane.

Subtle, glacial and turbulent, like the simple seismic shift of Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara’s “Earthquakes Agave” , or the deep breathed bliss of Sabrina Ratté’s “Mirages”. These video works provide an open door into the next phases of image capture, while embracing the history of the medium.

With Paul Clipson and Rose Kallal both working in a multiple image16mm film format, it makes for a warm and saturated feel that is properly visceral. You truly understand the intuition and process both attribute to their craft as they immerse themselves in the violence and awe of nature and what is unknown.

The centerpiece of this program is “Guardian of the Veil”. Matthew Barney’s first in a series collaborations with Jonathan Bepler that will be seven performances to convey the stages of Norman Mailer’s novel “Ancient Evenings”. This documentation is a performance at the Manchester Opera House in 2007. With precision of form, Barney gives a nod to the old Gods, while presenting Egyptian ceremonial rites from his own perspective, and a fresh one at that.

This will be an exclusive screening, as this has not been shown in a format larger than a video monitor as of yet.

http://www.myspace.com/ruinsband

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http://www.myspace.com/mothlite

Dark Age Soon from Mothlite on Vimeo.

http://www.myspace.com/chromehoof

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The Corps was founded by Drum Major Major Russell McEwan as an extension of Glaswegian subterranean metallers Black Sun. A mix of Scottish Highland pipe band imagery with industrial and tribal rhythms; Russell McEwan will be leading a percussion parade through the festival site. A mix of Supersonic Festival performers and audience members will be contributing percussion, creating a visceral and live massed drumming experience.

http://www.myspace.com/legionofblacksun