A day of site-specific performances, installation and discussion featuring ‘Lingering in the Golden Gleam’, a project from the Open Music Archive and originalprojects; Held in Great Yarmouth at Ex Marks the Spot, from 21 September - 19 October.

Artists:

CLIP

CLIP is a Colchester-based experimental music and sound collective that meets every Monday. Their current programme of activities includes explorative workshops on subjects such as improvisation, tape looping, field recording and deep listening.

For YARMONICS 2018 CLIP produced an amazingly charming and brave performance of Terry Riley’s ‘In C’ but actually in the C, it was the culmination of a series of workshops that focused on many of the techniques used. This year CLIP will create an improvised performance of circuit bent instruments and toys, again incorporating skills, experience and learning from their rich offer of workshops.

EMIL KARLSEN

Originally from Norway, Emil Karlsen is a young drummer/improviser currently based in Leeds, UK. He is active on the UK jazz and improvised music scene currently establishing himself as a new, original voice. His musical philosophy highlights dynamics, timbre and textures, all done with an organic mindset. His work as improviser consists of doing both acoustic and electro-acoustic solo performances, working in ensembles spanning from duos to octets and beyond, working with graphic scores with an interest in audio visuals using both digital and analogue medias, all done with a focus on creating boundary-pushing music.

When we invited Emil to perform at YARMONICS he was very keen to learn of the various acoustic properties of each of the proposed performance spaces. Intending to perform acoustically, the resonant properties of the performance space is of unique importance and Emil made no hesitation in choosing to perform in the Minster; one of the the countries largest parish churches, the Minster is of giant proportions, a gentle and quiet space that commands acute attention from its visitors.

HEAVY LIFTING

Heavy Lifting is the performance moniker of electronic artist, Lucy Cheesman. Heavy Lifting performances are created exclusively using live coding; algorithms and sample banks are the instruments of choice to create sometimes recognisable, sometimes totally alien electronic music. Due to the unpredictability of live coding and its pattern-based origin, the music of Heavy Lifting is morphs continuously whist grabbing your attention with washes of techno.

Whilst performing at YARMONICS, this Heavy Lifting performance also marks the opening of Lingering in the Golden Gleam project which sits alongside the festival. As part of the project three electronic artists have been invited to create unique performances using specially collected sample libraries created from the Open Music Archive process (pre-1962 records from Great Yarmouth are stripped of their rudimentary musical parts and sorted into banks). For her performance at YARMONICS Heavy Lifting will use only samples created from the Open Music Archive, sounds originating and possibly recorded from Great Yarmouth more than fifty years ago.

JOHN BOWERS

John Bowers (UK) works with modular synthesisers, home-brew electronics, reconstructions of antique image and sound-making devices, self-made software, field recordings and esoteric sensor systems. He makes performance environments which mix sound, image and gesture at a fundamental material level, sometimes accompanied by spoken text. His practice often combines improvised performance with walking, urban exploration and the investigation of selected sites to conduct research in an imagined discipline he calls ‘mythogeosonics’.

He has performed at festivals including the collateral programme of the Venice Biennale, Transmediale/CTM Vorspiel Berlin, Piksel Bergen, Electropixel Nantes, BEAM Uxbridge and Spill Ipswich, and toured with the Rambert Dance Company performing David Tudor’s music to Merce Cunningham’s Rainforest. He contributed to the design of The Prayer Companion - a piece exhibited twice at the Museum Of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, and acquired for their permanent collection. Amongst many musical collaborations, he works with Sten-Olof Hellström, Tim Shaw, Kerry Hagan and in the noise drone band Tonesucker. He helps coordinate the label Onoma Research and works in Culture Lab and Fine Art, Newcastle University.

The second half of the YARMONICS programme is housed in the basement of originalprojects; premises ‘Ex Marks the Spot’, we have selected artists that can make the most use of the great acoustics, atmospheric setting and high quality club PA. Creating richly textured swathes of electroacoustic sound, intercepting VLF radio and licks of modular synthesiser, John Bower’s performance will feel quite at home in this unique space.

laura cannell

Straddling the worlds of experimental, folk, chamber, early & medieval music, performer/composer Laura Cannell is a unique and important artist whose original and singular vision sets her apart from her contemporaries, whilst her music exists as a culturally vital exploration of the link between medieval, traditional and modern musical idioms.

As founder of the independent record label Brawl Records and creator/curator of the Modern Ritual performance series, Laura has built an impressive and nurturing platform for the release and performance of music that sits outside of the contemporary mainstream.

Now based in rural East Anglia, Laura’s semi-composed, semi-improvised compositions draw on the emotional influences of the landscape and explore the spaces between early and experimental music that is rooted in but not tethered to the past, but rather forges a new space for her minimalist chamber music.

Laura’s fifth album is “The Sky Untuned” (2019) which represents a new musical phase for the composer & performer, moving away from the adoption of music from the past by embracing a completely untethered exploration of new spaces for her music. Her latest album Sing As The Crow Flies was a vocal collaboration with Polly Wright and was names Folk Album of the Month by The Guardian (Aug 2019).

Laura’s style has evolved out of long self-taught sessions alongside dedicated training as well as employing her very open approach to join the dots with contemporary music makers. Laura studied the recorder at London College of Music graduating with 1st class honours in Performance. She also has a Masters in Performance Studies.

Recent projects include creating music for film, broadcast work for BBC Radio 3, “Reckonings” (2018) a collaborative album with Andre Bosman, tours with the cellist Lori Goldston (Earth, Nirvana) & collaborations with This Heat drummer Charles Hayward & Mira Calix, as well as commissions for Hampton Court Palace, The Immix Ensemble, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra & The Zuckerman Museum of Contemporary Art (US).

Opening YARMONICS on the beautifully solitary jetty, Laura will perform a solo improvisation for overbow fiddle.

LUCIANO MAGGIORE & LOUIE RICE

Luciano Maggiore lives and works in London. Active in the field of electroacoustic music, in recent years he has developed a strong interest in the mechanisms of sound diffusion, using speakers and several analogue and digital devices (walkmans, CD players, tape recorders) as principal instruments. His interest is focused on the architectural and psychoacoustic as well as dynamic and directional values of sound with a strong emphasis on fixed sounds.

Louie Rice uses electronic and acoustic systems utilising the physicality of the medium, signal chain and spatial context to create disruptive audio, performance and installation. The duo regularly perform together and have released several recordings, most recently ‘Actions for Synthesisers’ on the ‘N O P A O N’ tape series.

Also utilising the Ex Marks the Spot basement, the duo will build a sonic an environment where the audience will be deprived of light, enhancing sound and spacial perception to create a delicate and immersive performance.

POLLY WRIGHT

Polly Wright is a composer and performer; having played in bands such as The Tiger’s Bride in London, Polly’s approach to making music is now much more connected and informed by place and landscape, in particular the bucolic Suffolk countryside where she now lives. Her most recent project with Suffolk based musician, Laura Cannell is a wonderful exploration into the voices of the lost, forgotten and hidden people who have lived through the centuries in the rural landscape of the Norfolk/Suffolk border.

Details of Polly’s YARMONICS performance coming soon

SOPHIE MARRITT

Sophie Marritt is a Norwich based artist working with sound, video and painting. Paintings distil sparse landscapes with traces of urbanisation, industry or habitation. Videos capture passing moments, enhanced by temporal distortions and layered sound to create an extended contemplation of place.

Born in Sheffield (1965), Sophie moved to Norwich in 1990 to work as a researcher in biophysics at UEA. She graduated in Fine Art Painting at the Norwich School of Art and Design (NUA) in 2001.

For YARMONICS Marritt has created the immersive installation ‘submarine’. Composed of a selection of recordings - both processed and in their raw form - from various sources of water in and around Great Yarmouth. The piece can be heard in the crew’s quarters of the extraordinary Lydia Eva; the last surviving steam drifter from Great Yarmouth’s herring fishing fleet. The piece, heard in this unique setting, submerges the listener into a place where thoughts of Great Yarmouth’s past, present and future swim around simultaneously.

Lingering in the golden gleam

Open Music Archive will be visiting Great Yarmouth to explore the musical scene from the early 1950s to the end of 1962, recording the music of the age and making the sounds available for contemporary electronic musicians to work with.

Open Music Archive is a collaborative project, initiated by artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White, to source, digitise and distribute out-of-copyright sound recordings.

There will be an accompanying exhibition of memorabilia from the period collected by Peter Jay (from Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers).

Drop in to listen to recordings, see performances and share your memories, music and memorabilia

Open Thursdays - Saturdays 12 - 6pm

Saturday 21 September - Saturday 19 October

Free and all welcome

Ex Marks the Spot 3-7 King Street Great Yarmouth NR30 2BB

Images from the exhibition and performances from heavy lifting, Lauren Doss and David Ross.