Supersonic Festival 2012 Preview

With less than two months to go before Supersonic Festival’s milestone ten year anniversary commences, we present some more worthy additions to the near-final line up. This is a testament to Capsule’s strength as curators who always shape a festival that relies not on large headline acts that others are vying for, rather offering unique and memorable performances, exhibits and films that offer a multi sensory, multidisciplinary event like no other.

 

 

In this latest announcement we are pleased to announce some more highlights of the festival as well as rounding up some more films, talks and art exhibits that have been confirmed, as ever, there is much to absorb. One such highlight we wish to divulge is Kim Gordon‘s presence at the festival, which will extend beyond her performance as BODY/HEAD as she is to present a unique art installation entitled Reverse Karaoke. This collaborative installation by Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether consists of a painted Yurt style tent housing a lo-fi rehearsal set-up with guitar, microphone, bass, and drums and a basic PA system. The visitor is invited to play the instruments and record their own music along with a pre-recorded vocal track of Kim Gordon’s voice. The track is recorded live by a sound engineer who burns two CD copies of the track, while the visitor(s) decorate two CD sleeves using materials in the gallery. One copy of the CD becomes part of the piece itself on display in a record box, and the other the visitor takes home. Reverse Karaoke was originally commissioned by Electra for ‘Her Noise’, South London Gallery, 2005.

Another highlight includes Modified Toy Orchestra, festival alumni who first performed in 2005 (some may remember the set that was cut short due to the bomb scare) and again in 2006. In 2012, Modified Toy Orchestra continue to explore the hidden potential and surplus value latent inside redundant technology; a process creating sophisticated new electronic instruments from abandoned children’s toys.  They have been at the forefront of a worldwide underground movement called circuit bending, which involves rescuing children’s electronic toys and converting them into new strange and wonderfully sophisticated musical instruments. Taking them apart, they find new connections hidden within each toys circuit that reveal new sounds, thus exposing the surplus value of redundant technology.  Toys are reassembled, including switches and dials with which to control this surplus value. The results of this process can be shockingly beautiful, funny and also extreme.

 

 

Though the Custard Factory remains Supersonic Festival’s spiritual home, for their tenth birthday celebrations, Capsule are extending their events to other spaces in Birmingham, embracing the city which is such an important part of what they are about. ‘The Art of Listening’ is the name of a panel which will take place at the School Of Art during the day on Friday 19 October.  In partnership with Sound and Music, Supersonic present a half-day extended panel discussion exploring contexts for the presentation of sound works and performances and approaches to listening. Bringing together artists, academics and industry professionals the event is an opportunity for a discussion of how artists and producers can best stage work, how audiences can be best encouraged to enjoy it and how we can all become better listeners. Participants in the panel discussion include artist Lucas Abela (aka Justice Yeldman), music writer Frances Morgan (deputy editor at The Wire Magazine), curator Irene Revell (Electra) and Dr.Simon Hall (composer, sound engineer and academic). 

 

As previously mentioned, Small But Hard will officially launch their label at Supersonic and will bolster an already brimming line up of label affiliated artists with the addition of Sensational (ex-Jungle Brothers member, who also features on the latest Dead Fader release). He will be performing alongside Scotch Bonnet.

Other performances we can divulge includes, Moonn (featuring Conny Prantera who exhibited last year and Mark Wagner of Sunday Mourning), part of a myths and rituals theme which will be one key thread of this year’s festival. Moonn’s performance promises to be an alluringly unconventional one, inspired by the Heavens Above, created by Mark Wagner and Sanna Charles of S&M and Conny Prantera, with the collaboration of Emiliano Maggi of Estasy, photographer Marko Righo and costume designers Kamellia McKayed and Gloria Carlos. 

 

Continuing to embrace the locality of the festival, Soundkitchen represents a collective of composers with a background in electroacoustic and experimental music. They will present a collection of manipulated field recordings in response to myths and memories around Digbeth, the River Rea and its creatures. More on this very soon.

 

Finally, the emerging new band Grey Hairs featuring members of Kogumaza will perform at the ten year anniversary. What started as a fictional band to act as an excuse for the members to go to the pub on a weeknight has become something a bit more proper of late after some shows with Flipper and records in the pipeline.  Even though they were probably aiming for something between Pere Ubu, Pissed  Jeans and Scratch Acid it’s no surprise, with the members being kids of the early 90s, it ended up sounding like Nirvana. Just don’t call it a mid-life crisis.

 

To mark this milestone, Supersonic have gone all out with the film programme and have teamed up with fellow curators Network Awesome. Network Awesome’s manifesto states that “Broadcast TV has changed for the worse and isn’t getting any better – we offer something different. Network Awesome mines the resources of YouTube to bring you treasures vast and plentiful, packaged and gift-wrapped in an easier-to-watch format.  Unlike regular TV, this will not melt your brain. Instead, it causes you to re-think what TV can and should offer you. Network Awesome is a real TV network located online.  It’s free, it’s not full of junk and it broadcasts new shows each day.  We also produce original content focusing on music, fitness, the internet, and culture – but that’s coming soon.” At Supersonic Festival, they will host a number of films from their archive as a means of simultaneously entertaining the audience whilst raising awareness of this independent forward thinking TV channel. Today we can announce their participation, entitled Blood Harvest which is a look at the wild stuff that happens way out on the back roads. Wildmen, talking animals, folk tails, and some of the culture that surrounds them all. An hour long presentation of animations, short films, and video clips that is sure to provoke and inspire. 

 

Supersonic are also proud to play host to some weird, wonderful, strange yet highly anticipated films, one of which very much continues the aforementioned theme of myths and rituals, this being Black Mass Rising, a lo-fi experimental film exploring visions of the darkness, The Mystic, The Occult, The Religious and The Apocalypse. The soundtrack features Master Musicians of Bukkake, Menace Ruine, Burial Hex and many more.

 

Also hosted on the Supersonic cinema screen is Trash Humpers, a 2009 American drama film directed by Harmony Korine. Shot on worn VHS home video, the film features a “loser-gang cult-freak collective” and their whereabouts in Nashville, Tennessee. Korine remembered, as a teenager growing up in Nashville, a group of elderly peeping toms who would come out at night. He has described them as “the neighborhood boogeymen who worked at Krispy Kreme and would wrap themselves in shrubbery, cover themselves with dirt, and peep through the windows of other neighbours.”

 

 Supersonic Festival present an exhibition hosted by local curators, Outcrowd as a perfect means of incorporating the heritage of Birmingham into the festival’s ten year celebrations. For this anniversary event, Outcrowd will present: Festival of the Rea.
Four years ago the Outcrowd stumbled upon some curious and bizarre old traditions based around the area of Birmingham’s birth place, the crossing of the River Rea, now known as Digbeth. Intrigued we delved further, eventually leading us to discover the lost Festival of the Rea, with roots in Pagan and traditional religions, echoed in similar festivals still celebrated throughout Europe. For Supersonic Outcrowd will re-create elements from the Festival of the Rea and build a shrine known as the “house of Beorn”, the first to be built in the area for over a century. A selection of artists with mythical potential will be invited to create offerings to this shrine and members of the public will also be invited to contribute their own offering to this ramshackle, weathered and sacred cabin during the festivities. There will also be a walking tour of Birmingham’s city centre, exploring the hidden history of these celebrations of spirits and beasts which can still be found in the architecture of our modern metropolis. As the sun goes down on the last night of the festival, past and present all will come together in a climax of channeled energy and sound where the magic of the event and the natural powers of the river will awaken and release the long lost spirits of the city they call home.

 

LIFE DRAWING WORKSHOP ADDED TO TENTH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS…
 
As a final announcement to round up today’s festival additions, Supersonic Festival are celebrating their birthday in an utterly bizarre style with the addition of life drawing, with a difference! Wildman Life Drawing is a life drawing class using a semi tame Wild Man as the model. No need to book, just drop in. The workshop will be conducted by Stephen Fowler, an illustrator and printmaker based in London. He runs printmaking and bookbinding workshops and teaches drawing at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, Wallace Collection, Kingston University, University of the Creative Arts and Oxford and Cherwell Valley College.

 

Believe it or not, there are still some more musicians and other elements of the festival to round up and complete the line up in the coming weeks. As well as summarising some of the festival’s key themes and revealing day ticket breakdowns. As we get ever closer we can see the majority of the line up coming together and I for one cannot wait for the 19 October to come around.

 

 

Below you will find the full listings and extended information about each of the acts already confirmed:

 

 
KIM GORDON

A founding member of Sonic Youth – where she plays bass and guitar and sings, Kim Gordon has also been involved in numerous collaborations with other artists and musicians including Julie Cafritz and Yoshimi in Free Kitten, Mirror/Dash with Thurston Moore and others including Lydia Lunch, Vincent Gallo, and Yoko Ono. With an extensive history in the world of art, both as an artist, writer and curator Gordon has maintained ongoing creative relationships with visual artists such as Dan Graham, Raymond Pettibon, Mike Kelley, Jutta Koether and Richard Prince and exhibited her own installation work across the US, Japan and Europe.

Guitarist Bill Nace has ripped a new black hole in the free rock universe as a constant, energising presence in the Boston area performing with Chris Corsano in Vampire Belt (and together with Jessica Rylan as Vampire Can’t), Thurston Moore in Northampton Wools, x.0.4 with Jake Meginsky & John Truscinski and a coruscating duo with free reed player Paul Flaherty. His collaborations even extended to a short-lived association with Brighton noiseniks Dylan Nyoukis & Karen Constance (aka Blood Stereo) under the Ceylon Mange moniker.

Nace has released LPs on Ecstatic Peace!, 8mm, Ultra Eczema and more…

Bohren & Der Club of Gore

 
If you enjoy it slow and low, Germany’s Bohren & Der Club Of Gore will very likely do the trick. In fact, with each subsequent release the German quartet’s music grows increasingly refined. Playing together since 1988, that band hint at doom, jazz, drone and contemporary classical with an unparalleled restrain. Live shows are few and far between. We are honoured to host them at Supersonic Festival 2012.
http://www.bohrenundderclubofgore.de/

The Bug’s music draws influence from dancehall, noise grime and hip hop. More subtle influences include dubstep and dubtronica.

The Bug’s first album, Tapping The Conversation, was released in 1997 on the seminal Wordsound label. The album was conceived as an alternative soundtrack to the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola film The Conversation. In this incarnation The Bug consisted of Kevin Martin and DJ Vadim was in more of a downtempo and trip-hop vein. From 2001-2004 The Bug collaborated with UK reggae soundsystem veteran The Rootsman on a number of limited edition 7″ singles, released on the Razor X label. These releases were characterised by their harsh, aggressive nature both musically and vocally (vocal artists including Jamaican MCs such as He-Man and Wayne Lonesome). The Bug’s second album, Pressure was released on Rephlex Records in 2003. It included a number of more ambient, dub-influenced tracks alongside the ragga-tinged onslaughts. The Razor X singles were compiled on the Killing Sound album (along with newer material) which was released by Rephlex in 2006. Bug projects have included collaborations with a number of singers and MCs including Cutty Ranks, Flow Dan, Warrior Queen and Ras B. In 2005 he collaborated with Mark Stewart and Keith Levene and has released records on Rephlex, Tigerbeat6 and Klien Records. The Bug produced some radio sessions, including a clash with Soundmurderer on John Peel and a 2006 Breezeblock session with 10 MCs.

In 2006, The Bug launched a monthly London-based reggae club night entitled BASH, in collaboration with dubstep producer Loefah. 2008 saw the release of London Zoo, the third full release from the project, to critical acclaim. Since then Kevin Martin has been involved in countless other musical projects under many different guises.

 

 
If you prefer old SST label cassette tapes or an early Spaceman 3 cassette you recently found wedged in the back seat of your car to super slick modern day music production, you may dig Carlton Melton. Their music is recorded live inside a geodesic dome, and is entirely improvised.
http://carltonmeltonmusic.com/

Clifford Torus

 
Clifford Torus is Anders Hana (Moha!, Ultralyd & Noxagt) on drums & electronics & Leon Barnett (Horacio Pollard) on guitar & vocals. Heavy, hypnotic, drenched in feedback and driven by a super charged rhythm, Clifford Torus deliver a mesmerising multi-layered rhombus harsh noise.
http://cliffordtorus.blogspot.co.uk

You know who these men are. They have been other men. Who they were before does not matter. What matters most is who they are now. These men, with two menacing guitars, violent drums, and wild words will fill that void in you. Born from the ashes of Arab on Radar, Doomsday Student come from that untouchable tradition of noise rock from Providence, Rhode Island.
http://www.doomsdaystudent.com

 
Primal hardcore thrash vibes from the lovely brothers of Baltimore. Dope Body are road doggies, funsters, and gleeful pummellers of basement and attic parties alike, wide-eyed fanatics of the craft that the more reasonable among us might mistake for insanity (it isn’t entirely so). Dope Body is a spasm of styles and directions, showering sparks from a half-melted thickness. They writhe under their own influences and experiments, swinging and swaying from guttural chugging to charming riffs n licks within the confines of a single tune. Promoting their brand new album, Natural History, Dope Body are in possession of what might be their most COMMERCIALLY ACCESSIBLE album ever – especially if your idea of “commercially accessible” is Half- Machine Lips Moves/Psychic, Powerless…/or “Salad Days”-era punk. They have well and truly honed their own off-kilter sound, replete with heavy walls of rhythm, raw electronics and vocals that grunt and yelp with an animalistic ferocity. Lock up your daughters, your boyfriends, your kids – keep your own body in check – no one body’s the same, but everybody’s body is sure to get weird when it comes into contact with Dope Body!
http://www.dragcity.com/artists/dope-body

Drunk in Hell

 
BORO SCUM PUNK INFLUENCED By BOOZE, DRUGS, SEX, VIOLENCE, VIOLENT SEX, PORN, ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION HELL, PERSONALITY DISORDERS, INSOMNIA, PARANOIA, HANGING AROUND WAITING TO SCORE, SCORING SHIT GEAR, SHIT NIGHTS OUT, HANGOVERS, COMEDOWNS, MALNUTRITION, BOREDOM, THE DOLE, SHIT 9-5 JOBS, PUBLIC TRANSPORT, BEING FUCKING BROKE, RELIGION (ESPECIALLY ROMAN CATHOLICISM), CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIENDS, SERIAL KILLERS, LANDLORD CUNTS, ARSEHOLE ‘FRIENDS’, DEAD FRIENDS, SUICIDE, DEATH, MURDER AND PARMOS.
www.myspace.com/drunkinhell

Legendary Earth guitarist Dylan Carlson recently set out to pursue a solo endeavour, up to now he has released a cassette as drcarlsonalbion but there still remains an air of mystery and much anticipation as to what direction this solo musical endeavour will go next. For Supersonic, he will be teaming up with a number of other musicians including Teresa Colamonaco on vocals, Michael York on bagpipes, and Rogier Small on snare drum.
http://drcarlsonalbion.wordpress.com/

Flower/Corsano

 
As a powerful and loud guitar/drum duo, Lightning Bolt comparisons come cheap….the Flower-Corsano Duo are something else – more like a white-punk-jazz-trash Konono No.1 or an Eastern sound, opiate-fixated Harry Pussy. As a duo they have that special power to elevate through noise, rhythm and primal harmonix. An exhilarating sight/sound that shudders the body and cleanses the mind. Obsessive stuff.
http:www.cor-sano.com/

A collective who hail from a small and very remote village in deepest, darkest Sweden, Goat produce heavy, afro psych punk, with absorbing percussion. Old tales of voodoo and curses from their village Korpolombolo inspires their music. One to watch!
http://goatsweden.blogspot.co.uk/

 

 
What started as a fictional band to act as an excuse for the members to go to the pub on a weeknight has become something a bit more proper of late after some shows with Flipper and records in the pipeline.  Even though they were probably aiming for something between Pere Ubu, Pissed  Jeans and Scratch Acid it’s no surprise, with the members being kids of the early 90s, it ended up sounding like Nirvana. Just don’t call it a mid-life crisis.
www.honeyisfunny.com/greyhair

 

 
“Hey Colossus are the closest thing the UK has to inheritors of the crown of the Butthole Surfers…. like the whole Texas Chainsaw Massacre family drunkenly shouting along to Neu! and Loop during Ragnarök” Stool Pigeon
http://noisestar.co.uk/colossus/

Hookworms fling themselves headlong into classic 80’s/90’s psych-rock like they’re trying to break something. Hailing from Leeds and cramming themselves giddily within the well established formal properties of the genre, they walk the scorched road behind Loop, Spectrum, and any other titan of two-chord songs who’s ever slowly wah-ed a chord until they saw colors.” – Cameron Stallones (Sun Araw/Sun Ark)
http://hookworms.bandcamp.com

On record, Hype Williams make music laced with their signature hazy glow and full of crunched eurovision lullabies, kinetic drum machine jams, unsettling funk, smeared walls of synth, and moments of unadulterated opiated bliss. Live, the band offer a completely different and intense side to their music with each performance being different to the last, so expect to see nothing like it again.
http://www.myspace.com/hypheewilliams

 

 
A unique energy, Jarboe’s music draws from a variety of charged sources. Her 14-year involvement with Swans cemented her place as an icon in avante garde music and she has worked prolifically as a solo artist and collaborator since. Her delivery has been described as voice acting and also channeling. A primary objective for Jarboe is to close in on the gap in the audience/performer relationship via complete submission and vicarious experience through her performance.
http://www.thelivingjarboe.com

Godflesh, Head of David, Napalm Death, Techno Animal, Jesu, Greymachine, Palesketcher – just some of the projects from the insanely prolific Justin Broadrick, who in his new relationship with 3by3, raises his Techno Animal moniker JK Flesh from the dead for it’s debut full-length outing, to once again prove his mastery of all things brutal.
Soul-crushingly dark beats and bass, layered with Broadrick’s inimitable guitar and vocal fuzz, providing a stark contrast to 2010’s Palesketcher output, that will resonate with fans of Godflesh and the post-dubstep landscape alike.
justinkbroadrick.blogspot.com/

Kevin Drumm

 
Emerging from the Chicago’s improvised music scene, in the 1990s he became one of the world’s pre-eminent prepared guitar players. Since then his work has expanded to include electroacoustic compositions and live electronic music made with laptop computers and analog modular synthesizers. Drumm’s work draws upon musique concrète, electronic sound, improvisation, heavy metal, and noise music. He is also a black metal fanatic.
http://recreationalpanick.blogspot.ca/

 

 
Tokyo based KK Null (Kazuyuki Kishino) is a multi instrumentalist and experimenter. As well as being part of a number of influential progressive rock bands, KK Null has played an important role in the relationship between rock and extreme music/noise.
http://kknull.com/en/

 

ORE and KK NULL are delighted to be part of Supersonic 2012 performing as a distinctive collaboration for the tenth anniversary.  In many ways, KK NULL’s collaboration with Lash Frenzy at Supersonic 2010 acted as a proof of concept for the amplified tuba sound of ORE, so it’s entirely fitting for Capsule to bring the two entities together this year. Better still, KK NULL and ORE have gelled so well in the early stages of working on this collaboration that they have also decided to release a limited split CD-R single together, which will be available at the festival.

This will be a large scale improvised noise collective. you could reference the kk null performance which went down well. this will feature members of Anaal Nathrackh,  Beestung Lips, Benediction, Sally, Einstellung.

 Lau Lau

 
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is an artist and multi instrumentalist working with voice in the realm of spontaneous music Through collaboration Robert has worked with such artists as Lucky Dragons, Alan Licht, Lee Ranaldo, White/Light, Kevin Martin, Tyondai Braxton and Genesis P-Orridge.
http://www.lichensarealive.com/

Merzbow

 
Masami Akita performs as Merzbow. Since 1979 he has been a hugely influential practitioner on the fields of sound art, noise and extreme music. Abrasive and restrained in equal measure, Merzbow is considered to be the most important artist in noise music.
http://www.merzbow.net/

 
Modified Toy Orchestra explore the hidden potential and surplus value latent inside redundant technology; a process creating sophisticated new electronic instruments from abandoned children’s toys.  They have been at the forefront of a worldwide underground movement called circuit bending, which involves rescuing children’s electronic toys and converting them into new strange and wonderfully sophisticated musical instruments. Taking them apart, they find new connections hidden within each toys circuit that reveal new sounds, thus exposing the surplus value of redundant technology.  Toys are reassembled, including switches and dials with which to control this surplus value. The results of this process can be shockingly beautiful, funny and also extreme.
http://www.modifiedtoyorchestra.com/

Feat. Conny Prantera who exhibited last year and Mark Wagner of Sunday Mourning – part of the myths and rituals theme.

That which is below is like that which is above that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing. And as all things have been arose from one by the awareness of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.

The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nurse.

A performance inspired by the Heavens Above, created by Mark Wagner and Sanna Charles of S&M and Conny Prantera, with the collaboration of Emiliano Maggi of Estasy, photographer Marko Righo and costume designers Kamellia McKayed and Gloria Carlos.
http://moonn.bandcamp.com/

 

 
An Australian minimalist band, My Disco (named after the Big Black song) have to bet he most danceable guitar band around. If you like your party music on repeat, then it’s time to switch onto the Melbourne trio.
http://www.myspace.com/mydiscomydisco

 

Rangda

 
Jan Anderzen is a Tampere based artist who rearranges images and sounds to create Tomutonttu. Streams, mutilated voices and found sounds are some of the ingredients Anderzen uses to mould his ecstatic music. Jan Anderzen is also the leader of the band Kemialliset Ystävät – one of the most recognized Finnish experimental music makers.
http://www.kemiallisetystavat.com/tomutonttu/ttinfo.html

 
Ufomammut is a power trio formed in 1999 in Italy by Poia, Urlo and Vita, worldwide recognized as the creator of a unique brand of psychedelic sludge.

With long songs, droning vocals and massive effects the band combines a monumental riffing attitude with the psychedelia of the more visionary Pink Floyd. Ufomammut’s live show is supported by the internationally acclaimed graphic and video art of Malleus.
http://www.ufomammut.com/

Warm Digits

 
Warm Digits is the krautophonic blizzard-wave duo of Andrew Hodson and Steve Jefferis, based either side of the Pennines in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Manchester. Warm Digits make a semi-improvised brew of metronomic rhythms, snowstorm guitar and radiophonic electronics, dual-laptop electro, swathes of no-wave guitar and frantic free jazz drumming, taking their cue from the hypnotic repetition of Neu!, the textural overload of My Bloody Valentine, the glacial otherworldliness of Emeralds, and the sensuous modernity of cosmic disco; there are hints in the mix too of Eno, Giorgio Moroder and Holy Fuck.
http://warmdigits.co.uk

Zeni Geva

 
Japanese noise rock group led by singer and guitarist KK. Null. Zeni Geva’s music can be diverse and experimental, incorporating elements ranging from death metal and hardcore punk to math rock, psychedelic, and noise rock. Their music is often technically unorthodox and demanding,
http://zenigeva.jpn.org/

 

 

Kim Gordon/Jutta Koether/Electra

 

 

 
A lo fi experimental film exploring visions of the darkness, The Mystic, The Occult, The Religious and The Apocalypse. The soundtrack features Master Musicians of Bukkake, Menace Ruine, Burial Hex and many more.
http://blackmassrisingsociety.blogspot.co.uk