The Total Art of Katalin Ladik
Born in the heart and soul of the former Yugoslavia, poet and artist Katalin Ladik has been an active yet under-appreciated proponent of language as a tool and medium for art. Always exploring and transforming boundaries, Ladik’s vocal compositions are stripped of the morphological components of language and instead replaced by the fullness of its materiality. By allowing spontaneity to guide the process, the primal, intuitive aspects of the spoken word engulf the overwrought semiotics in lively sound collages for the mind.
31 October 2019 |
AG 14
Maika Garnica
The memory of summer turns exceptionally abstract as dense packs of gray clouds lay down a soothing gloom over Deurne’s Tweemontstraat. A few houses ahead of us, a sizzling little bomblet is thrown out of a hastily closing door: its loud bang echoes between the rows of houses. Inside, children can be seen hiding behind the windows on all fours, curiously observing the effects of their prank. Further down the road, Maika Garnica stands waving at us through the drizzling mist. Her new atelier houses in an industrial building, renovated and managed by Studio Start and home to a dozen young artists. With the complex neighbouring the base of some Polish construction workers as well as a good old-fashioned “drinks center”, she usually finds herself in good company here. Yet on this very last Sunday of the year, the site lies abandoned. Inside, an old, dysfunctional kitchen is the sole reminiscent of times passed. Nowadays, the room functions as Maika’s creative headquarters, giving shelter to the outlandish clay instruments she has created throughout recent years, many of which are stripped of their bubble wrap protection during our conversation. More so than mere lifeless aesthetic objects, they appear as stages within an ongoing research into matter, vibration and community.
26 February 2019 |
AG 14
Sam Kidel
Sam Kidel is the Customer Service Agent. Working office hours, he probes and reshapes Ambient Music, exploring its emotional and sensory effects, and its relationship with capitalist production, known as Muzak. At KRAAK festival 2019 he will revisit this term and flip it upside down in the light of his Disruptive Muzak compositions.
29 January 2019 |
AG 14
Marc Matter
Deep in the Black Forest lives Marc Matter — musician, theorist and regular contributor to The Avant-Guardian. He works on a trans-medial practice in which theoretical research, language abstraction and experimental turntablism is combined. His music is a playful field where vocal poetry intermingles with text-sound composition, and in which electro-acoustic abstraction displays a sensitive mind for the hidden qualities of the voice.
19 June 2018 |
AG 12
LEILA BORDREUIL
is a French, New York-based cellist who improvises her way into unknown territory in the so-called dusty genre of improv and new music. She handles the cello as an abstract resonant body to challenge conventional cello practice. She is one of the rare musicians to master sensitive micro-textural composition just as well as vital and wild improvised noise. Collaborations are numerous and all-telling: Nate Wooley, C. Spencer Yeh, Toshimaru Nakamura, Susan Alcorn, Chris Corsano, Bill Nace and many more.
19 February 2018 |
AG 11
NATIVE INSTRUMENT
Under their Native Instrument moniker, Stine Janvin Motland and Felicity Mangan, blend abstract vocals with wildlife sounds to create their immersive insect techno. CAMO, the debut release of the duo, has to be one of the most pleasantly alienating records of the year, presenting four pieces which absorb the listener into the imaginary biotopes from which they emerged.
07 December 2017 |
AG 10.1
Will Guthrie
Will Guthrie is one of those performers who continually seem to question the boundaries of his artistic practice. His latest LP “People Pleaser” sees him expanding his drum kit with a diverse range of samples, including everything from the sound of skateboarding to religious chant. In his live performances too, Guthrie seems eager to move beyond conventions, his project “solo for one person” being an excellent case in point.
29 May 2017 |
AG 9.1
Steven Warwick
Nadir is the opposite of Zenith. The latter refers to a high point, the first to the lowest point. It’s also the intriguing title of Steven Warwick aka Heatsick’s new release. The album is conceived as a conceptual mixtape. It deals with contemporary issues as dislocation, emotional fragmentation and intermediation — or the tension between the so-called ‘real’ or material and the virtual world. Every song is a collage of seemingly banal fragments out of (his?) daily live. The lyrics could be random snippets derived from newfeeds, or Peréc-like observations devoid of meaning. Somewhere he sings: “The mezzanine is your dancefloor. It is your Chessboard” and “It feels like an airport, the difference is… at any plane you can choose to leave.”
The mood of Nadir is melancholic, the sound artificial and synthetic. It’s an open record that mixes the literality of pop art with modernist dandyism. It provides a complex of clues, leaving you confused in a most compelling way.
15 February 2017 |
AG 9
Lino Capra Vaccina
Vaccina is a legendary cult composer and percussionist which created a unique version of American minimalism. With gongs, Tuvan throat singing, and stripped down analogue electronica he composed the revolutionary and meditative album Antico Adagio somewhere deep in the 70ties. He disappeared after this release in the shadows of the music history. Luckily last year Die Schachtel re-released the album. And now, finally, live on stage in the heart of Europe.
24 February 2016 |
AG 7
Sarah Davachi
Sarah Davachi is a young canadian composer and musician. She explores deep spaces of hardcore minimalism through the magical rots that avant-garde music once produced: analogue modular synthesis. Here music is rooted deeply in the mystic tradition of drone music. More specific, the beautiful branch planted and cultivated by two other grand ladies in electronic music, Eliane Radigue and Laurie Spiegel, with whom she shares the same interest in overtones hidden in the potential of electronic an acoustic instruments. For the records: Davachi holds a master’s degree in electronic music from the famous Mill’s College.
24 November 2015 |
AG 6
Yong Yong
In 2013 two youngsters scratched their way out of the ass of Europe. Their cut up, out there hip-hop, was born in the basement and squad scene of Lisbon, the city with too much sun and no work. They hipsterised Portugal, with LP’s released by Night School records and a swag tape on Goaty Tapes. Currently they reside in Glasgow, making their way to the top, opening doors to a theatre centred around mythical personae. Crappy synths are the sceptres to open the furthest side of irreality. A chat on their beginnings.
07 March 2015 |
AG 5
LEIF ELGGREN AND DANIEL LÖWENBRÜCK
Leif Elggren and Daniel Löwenbrück might stem from different regions and generations, but their art reveals a similar view on reality and the human race. They both embrace the visual as well as the auditory in a challenging interpretation of the concept of performance art.
05 December 2014 |
AG 4