Cut and Splice: Acousmonium May 5, 2006

Cut and Splice: Acousmonium | website
A hardcore festival of radical electronic music and sound art spread across the whole weekend.

Cut and Splice brings the multi-loudspeaker orchestra, the Acousmonium, to London for the first time in its 30 year history. The ICA, Sonic Arts Network and BBC Radio 3 provide a rare chance for audiences and artists alike to experience this performance machine first hand. The festival presents some of the leading international names in current experimental electronic music including Hans-Joachim Roedelius, John Wall, Zbigniew Karkowski, Eliane Radigue and Florian Hecker - performing alongside the great figures of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), François Bayle, Michel Chion and Christian Zanési.

Festival Programme:
Friday 5 May, 7.30pm doors, 8pm start

Christian Zanési - Recent work from this principal contemporary GRM figure and exponent of the French acousmatic.

John Wall - An exclusive and ultra-rare live performance from this celebrated British electroacoustic composer. "The listening ear is kept at a pitch of
alertness" (The Wire)

ICA Bar: Cut and Splice teams up with Touch Records for a celebration of their 25 year anniversary and an audio-visual performance by Phil Jeck.

Saturday 6 May, 5pm doors, 5.30pm start

Carl Michael von Hausswolff - Swedish sound conceptualist considered one of the foremost figures in the field of radical sound performance and minimal electronics. "Definitely for
the intrepid" (BBC)

Zbigniew Karkowski - Field (world premiere)
"Brilliant chamber group" Apartment House deliver a new extended work for amplified string quartet and multichannel sound from this master of sonic extremes. "Unrelenting intensity that falls between the totalitarian
critiques of Laibach and the sonic bloodletting of Hermann Nitsch"

Michel Chion - Requiem. A classic extended piece of 1970s cinemagraphic electroacoustic music from this renowned composer and leading theoretician of the acousmatic and
audio-visual arts. "Musique concr?te at its purest and leanest, perhaps at its most profound."

Florian Hecker - new work - A performance developed for the Acousmonium by established Mego sonic artist and post-Xenakis purveyor of dynamic, volatile sound-objects. "More complicated, viscous and vicious than just about anything out on the free market."

ICA Bar: Cut and Splice DJ set from leading UK sound surgeon Russell Haswell. "What a sound, a large, abrasive worm and it's burrowing down your auditory canal!"

Sunday 7 May, 5pm doors, 5.30pm start

Hans-Joachim Roedelius - Recognition (world premiere) - New "philosophy in sound" for the Cut and Splice festival from this self-taught Krautrock pioneer and heralded former Cluster member. "Serenity without the sugar of New Age" (New York Times).

Eliane Radigue - Elemental - Laptop supergroup The Lappetites (Kaffe Matthews, AGF, Ryoko Kuwajima)
perform the music of this respected and highly individual Parisian figure. "One of the most important and under-recognised composers working today - her music is extraordinarily evocative."

François Bayle - L'Expérience Acoustique
Cut and Splice climaxes with this celebrated hero of French musique concr?te presenting his visionary two-hour journey through the listening experience and the sounding world, an epic work, unrivalled in scope and ambition. "Beauty is priceless and unattainable and here it is, relentlessly and
without effort."

ICA Bar: post-festival listening hosted by ReR records, one of the UK's leading and longest standing experimental music labels.

Broadcasts:

Catch Cut and Splice performances and exclusive artist interviews on BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now, 90-93 FM, 13 and 20 May, 11.00pm.

"Artistically inspired, Cut and Splice awed" - The Wire

Official Website: http://www.ica.org.uk/