On Thursday 11 June we launch Supersonic 2015 with a very special opening concert will take place at the famous Birmingham Town Hall, a Victorian Roman revival grade I listed building. In the sixties and seventies, the venue saw performances from the cream of contemporary music, including Soft Machine, Roberta Flack and, of course, Black Sabbath.

The Will Gregory Moog Ensemble is set to be a breathtaking aural and visual spectacle in these hallowed environs. As one half of the electronic music sensation Goldfrapp, producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Will Gregory is passionate about creating new sounds and reinventing old ones. Here a stellar line-up stretches the possibilities of the Moog synthesiser through newly composed music, transcriptions of classical works, and their own versions of music from popular culture and film. Marvel at ten musicians on stage, including Portishead’s Adrian Utley and composer Graham Fitkin, perform works by Bach, John Carpenter, Burt Bacharach and Oliver Messiean on a fascinating array of vintage instruments, their oscillators so sensitive to temperature and movement that there seems almost something organic about these gorgeous machines.

To mark the tenth anniversary of Robert Moog’s death, a new piece by Gregory features a clocking device specially built for the ensemble that enables all ten synths to be synced, producing music previously impossible to perform live. The result will be the audio equivalent of a Bridget Riley painting; full of colour and interlocking complexity whilst driving and immediate.

Fains are a new improvised project by Nick Jonah Davis on electric guitar and Johanna Cormack on violin creating sonic landscapes and new musical textures.
www.nickjonahdavis.com

Produced by SoundUK and hosted at Town Hall

As part of the Frontiers Festival. Rhys Chatham will perform ‘ A Secret Rose’ (UK Premiere)

See Chatham, section leaders David Daniell, Seth Olinsky, and Toby Summerfield, Birmingham-based rhythm section Laurence Hunt of Pram and bassist Sebastiano Dessaney joined by 100 guitarists perform his mesmerising piece, A Secret Rose, in the magnificent setting of Town Hall. Pictures for Music (1979) by Robert Longo will accompany the performance as visual projections. Whether experienced as spectator or performer, A Secret Rose for 100 Guitars will be a truly awe-inspiring and unifying once-in-a-lifetime event.

The combined elemental force of one of the world’s most questing musical units and Led Zeppelin’s legendary multi-instrumentalist resonates deep over a select set of UK dates in November 2012. The art of instant composition will be taken to new and beautifully realised places by a peerless group of musicians. Over decades and across innumerable live and recorded projects, both sides of this remarkable collaboration have embedded themselves on the map of exploratory contemporary music: this tour will see them push each other further, harder, wilder and freer… a heavyweight collaboration entering uncharted sonic zones.

The Norwegian ‘deathjazzambientavantrock’ ensemble Supersilent have just one rule: no rehearsals. Every recording and concert is entirely improvised, approaching each show with a conceptual rigour that makes each one a distinct and coherent soundworld. they have released 11 wildly contrasting albums on Rune Grammafon/ECM, playing live across the globe to rapturous and committed audiences. Whether dreaming up coruscating noise, minimal ambient meditations or electro-acoustic explorations the trio, comprising of Arve Henriksen (trumpet, electronics, drums, vocals), Ståle Storløkken (keyboards) and Helge Sten aka Deathprod (electronics)  instinctively push to the outer limits and are capable of creating compositions of both profound beauty and elemental power.

A prolific session musician in the 1960s, John Paul Jones (bass) played, arranged and recorded with artists including Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones, The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart and Cat Stevens. Following his unparalleled career as founder member of Led Zeppelin, he worked as a performer, arranger and producer for artists and groups including Diamanda Galas, REM, Brian Eno and La Fura dels Baus. He released his debut solo album Zooma in 1999, followed by The Thunderthief (2001). Since 2004, his sonic explorations have also led him to perform as part of John Cage’s Music Circus at the Barbican under the direction of Stephen Montague, touring with bluegrass trio Nickel Creek, and working as co-composer and performer for Merce Cunningham’s Nearly Ninety.

In 2009 John co-founded the band Them Crooked Vultures, with Dave Grohl and Josh Homme, releasing a universally acclaimed album and touring the world to sold-out venues. In 2011 John toured with Seasick Steve, appeared and performed in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s opera Anna Nicole, and is currently writing an opera based on Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata.

www.supersilence.net

www.johnpauljones.com

Aki Onda (USA/Japan) is an artist whose musical instrument of choice is the
cassette Walkman, which he has been using for over 20 years. He captures field recordings on tape and manipulates his source material electronically in spellbinding electro-acoustic performances. Onda started making music with Eye Yamatsuka (of The Boredoms) and Nobukazu Takemura in Osaka in 1990. He then became a sought after producer before starting his travels and recording his own poetic and highly personal solo albums, the result of re-examining moments of time he has spent travelling and recording.

www.akionda.net

Cluster is a German experimental musical group who influenced the development of contemporary popular electronic and ambient music. They have recorded albums in a wide variety of styles ranging from experimental music to progressive rock, all of which had an avant-garde edge. Cluster has been active since 1971, releasing a total of 13 albums. Musician, writer and rock historian Julian Cope places three Cluster albums in his Krautrock Top 50 and “The Wire” places Cluster’s self-titled debut album in their “One Hundred Records That Set The World On Fire”.
 
After a decade long hiatus Cluster reunited in 2007. Capsule are extremely proud to welcome this legendary duo to play in Birmingham. Cluster has been widely influential not only to ambient and electronic music artists, but to techno, electronica and popular music as well. Musicians from David Bowie to Brian Eno have been influenced by (and even participated in) Cluster’s groundbreaking recordings.
www.myspace.com/theonlyclusterthatmatters

From the deepest depths of the industrial heartlands of Middle England comes a small ray of light. Since late 2003 a warm glow has steadily grown into what can only be described as a fireball. From this point on let this gentle fireball be known as Einstellung.
Blending glorious monotonous Krautrock with melodic tones and heavy slabs of Sabbath riffage, whilst finding time to declare sonic warfare on those tinnitus victims who have passed the point of no return.
www.myspace.com/einstellung 

Capsule, Birmingham’s most innovative art and music producers kick off their 10th birthday celebrations with an extraordinary night of entertainment at the spectacular Town Hall Birmingham. Special guests include old friends Tunng who combine a perfect mixture of skewed electronica and pastoral English Folk music. Six Organs of Admittance, psych-folk-pop, hippie jams updated for the kids of today. Lightning Dust, the side project of Amber Webber and Joshua Wells, both members of Canadian band Black Mountain. Complimented by the bewitching Bela Emerson, an innovative and prolific performer of electric cello, electronics, tenor viol and musical saw.

http://www.myspace.com/thisistunng
http://www.myspace.com/sixorgans
http://www.myspace.com/lightningdust
http://www.myspace.com/belaemerson

Town Hall Birmingham is one of the oldest concert halls in the world. It has been at the centre of British musical life, and at the heart of Birmingham’s cultural scene, since the day it opened in October 1834. In 2009, the much-loved venue marks its milestone 175TH anniversary with a special series of events including concerts, talks, dances, films and more.
www.thsh.co.uk/

Capsule present as part of Fierce an evening of the occult with visionary rock musician and musicologist, hip archaeologist and one-time front man of the Teardrop Explodes JULIAN COPE
followed by a screening of cult film Häxan, Witch Craft through The Ages (1922, dir. Benjamin Christensen, Swedish/Danish) accompanied by a live sound track by art house electronix outfit Bronnt Industries Kapital (Static Caravan/Warp).

” A weird and rather wonderful brew of fiction, documentary and animation” Time Out

Cope will present one of his infamous lectures, similar to those given at the British Museum in 2001, based on his years of study of the occult, mythology and Britain’s prehistory and responsible for best- seller THE MODERN ANTIQUARIAN, a full colour 484-page hardback that shocked the publishing world by selling over 50,000 copies.

“I went from Odin to Christ via the various pagan pre-cursors of Christ. The very nice old guys at The British Museum in dicky-bows had been saying, “You’re not the normal kind of person we have here, but you do it the way you want.” So I did the lecture in full face-paint and five inch platform shoes, two nights, sold out. It was amazing!”

A truly stunning piece of cinema history, Häxan, directed by Benjamin Christensen, features grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, baby sacrifices and an unforgettable depiction of a satanic sabbath. Bronnt’s soundtrack matches Christensen’s extraordinary depiction of historical witchcraft with a totally unique, otherworldly and constantly shifting musical landscape ranging from chilling electrical/concret passages to joyous electro-acoustic ensemble pieces.

www.headheritage.co.uk
www.silentagerecords.co.uk/bronnt
myfiercefestival.co.uk/
www.thsh.co.uk

All things avant-garde come to Town Hall tonight, courtesy of Capsule,
one of Birmingham’s most innovative art and music promoters. Capsule
has curated a programme of live performances from two pioneers of the
experimental music scene: Pram and Modified Toy Orchestra.
Modified Toy Orchestra circuit-bend toys beyond their original
capabilities, creating perfect pop songs from imperfect instruments,
whilst Pram Birmingham’s Pram craft fairytales from concrete reality. The second
city’s spin cycle of perpetual renovation, from the slum clearances to
its current cosmetic upgrade, is etched in Pram’s restless groove, an
endearing and gently refusenik mix encircling early Rough Trade
innovators The Raincoats, astro jazz, sci-fi soundtracks, creepy
Victoriana, tropical analogue and tumbledown funk. Joined by Shady Bard, a miniature indie orchestra of pianos, guitars,
casiotones, violin, cello, French horn and samples which burst
occasionally into catastrophic scuzz.

Tickets are £10
buy them here

or phone 0121 780 3333

Town Hall, Birmingham will re-open on Thursday 4 October 2007 with
a two-week festival of events on the theme Celebrating the Past,
Pioneering the Future.

http://www.thsh.co.uk/

http://www.myspace.com/pushthepram
http://www.myspace.com/toyorch 

http://www.myspace.com/shadybard