Eroteme teams up with the BBAALLOONN’s crew for a night of Psychoacoustics featuring : Serge Modular Synthesist Thomas Ankersmit & Basque Instrument-builder / sound artist Alex Mendizabal... Rounding things off is the warped algorithmic computer music of Manchester’s WEȽ∝KER!
“Razor-sharp and incredibly detailed sounds appear in high-definition … Ankersmit constructs a seductive and highly unpredictable sound-poem in which space, non-space, or the illusion of one or the other, play a key role. Uncompromising and revolutionary, with the equipment on the torturing rack … Outright genius.”
→ Sven Schlijper, KindaMuzik.
Thomas Ankersmit is a musician based in Berlin and Amsterdam. He plays the Serge Modular analogue synthesizer, both live and in the studio, and collaborates with artists like Phill Niblock and Valerio Tricoli.
His music is released on the Shelter Press, PAN, and Touch labels, and combines intricate sonic detail and raw electric power, with a very physical and spatial experience of sound. Acoustic phenomena such as infrasound and otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves) play an important role in his work, as does a deliberate, creative misuse of the equipment.
For this concert he will perform new, loosely structured solo material that’s perhaps more cinematic and musique concrète than his earlier work - a project commissioned by Cafe OTO.
A music of scenes, spaces, sonic perspectives - all of it performed on the Serge Modular analogue synthesizer: no samples, no field recordings, no digital effects. The music exists in the tension between abstraction and representation - with Ankersmit trying to 'breathe life' into the electricity, as it were.
At the same time, he’s approaching the synthesizer as an ensemble, sometimes referencing traditional instruments as well (horns, strings, percussion).
The practice of Alex Mendizabal is characterized by the construction of instruments and sound spatialization. It often adopts unusual forms, such as blind films, concerts in movement, or underwater music. He has spent thirty years researching different areas of music and sound. His proposals range from music for an orchestra to experiments with graphical notation, scores of less than a second, and concerts for geological movements. In 1996, he stopped composing in order to dedicate himself to making instruments and incorporating space and a reflection on listening as the basis of his proposals.
On this occasion, Mendizabal will occupy the Burgess Center with balloons, soap, chickpeas and the sound intersection produced by their coming together.
In his closets and pockets one can find writings and poems. He has played in all kinds of venues, as well as festivals, museums and venues in various countries (Serralves, Portugal; the Biennale of Music and 25FPS, Croatia; Visitazioni, M.A.C.RO. and Biennale Venezia, Italy; Pépète Lumière, Nantes, Bayonne, France; Anthology Film Archive, San Francisco Cinemateque and Whitney Museum, USA; La Casa Encendida, Museo Reina Sofia and MACBA, Spain; Ghent, Belgium; Rotterdam Film Festival, Netherlands; Ertz, Tabakalera and Larraskito, Basque Country, Cafe Oto, UK; among others).
\ \ Messrs Dujat and Beedles dredge up a lucent world of fluctuating sound and rhythm, often narrated by an impossible throat hawking up glottal stops. Their playful approach to composition pushes “GULP” untethered through shimmering corridors, jagged rips of discord and rib-shaking bass weight.
Sound designer / composer / audio technician based in Manchester UK with a focus on surround sound & 360 audio.
My compositional work ranges from sound for theatre, installations, live performances and composed works. I also deliver workshops, academic teaching, tech for music research facilities, live sound tech, and mixing for multichannel surround arrays / 360VR.
I have been the MANTIS (54 channel surround-sound diffusion system) technical director since 2016 and started a full-time post as the NOVARS (Martin Harris / Manchester University) research centre technician in 2020.
I hold degrees in computer music production (BA), electroacoustic composition (MA, UoM) and a doctorate in spatial electroacoustic composition (Victor Sayer award 2016-19).
Eroteme is a Manchester based concert series championing experimental music from the hinterlands. Home of the Uncategorizable. Foraging new sonic territories in electronics, improvisation and beyond.