Solo performances by Australian artists Lawrence English and John Chantler mark the New York edition of Room40:15, an international series events celebrating the 15th anniversary of English’s imprint and multi-arts organization Room40. Working with a modular synthesizer setup, John Chantler patches a versatile system capable of spontaneous change— from self-generated, shifting patterns of sliding arpeggios and visceral noise to pointillist interjections, near silence and infinitely variable texture. Among the most prolific and recognizable figures in contemporary ambient and experimental music, the work of Lawrence English undertakes study of perception, memory, and sonic affect across a wide swathe of creative forms.
Lawrence English is composer, media artist and curator based in Australia. Working across an eclectic array of aesthetic investigations, English’s work prompts questions of field, perception and memory. He investigates the politics of perception via live performance and installation to create works that ponder subtle transformations of space and ask audiences to become aware of that which exists at the edge of perception. Wilderness of Mirrors is the latest album from Lawrence English. It is two years in the making and the first album created since the release of his 2011 ode to J.A Baker’s novel, The Peregrine. It is English’s most tectonic auditory offering to date, an unrelenting passage of colliding waves of harmony and dynamic live instrumentation.
John Chantler is an Australian artist and composer based in Stockholm, Sweden. This summer John Chantler will release Still Light, Outside, an extended suite in four parts for pipe organ and electronics that combines passages of stark minimalism centered at the bodily invasive extremes of the organ’s register with striking explosions of color; massed chords shot through with heavy distortion and electronics that operate according to their own dream logic. His previous three LPs were all released on ROOM40. Even Clean Hands Damage the Work (2014) included the first output from his time at EMS. It followed The Luminous Ground– released in 2011 and included in The WIRE magazine’s top releases of that year. The Luminous Ground was his first LP release focusing on the modular synthesizer system he first explored as part of the trio LP with Lawrence English and Tujiko Noriko – 2009′s U. Initiated in 2011 with a private edition LP, Chantler’s ‘Automatic Music’ series resumed in 2014 with a second volume on cassette via The Tapeworm and volume three coming as a 40 minute digital download of Automatic Music for Henry Flynt.
Room40 is an Australian based imprint and multi-arts organization existing at the nexus of contemporary sonic art and music practices. In 2015, Room40 celebrates 15 years of activities with a series of curated evenings across the globe. Working with artists from the label's eclectic roster, Room40:15 will take place in Australia, the UK, USA, Japan and Northern Europe across 2015. The events take various forms responding to the contexts in which they are set. In Australia, Room40:15 takes the form of a series of new commissions for presentation as part of two double evening concert events in Sydney and Brisbane during July/August. Artists participating include label head Lawrence English, Grouper (USA), William Basinski (USA), Paul Clipson (USA), Chris Abrahams (AU), Rafael Anton Irisarri (USA), Tujiko Noriko (JP), Erik Griswold (AU), John Chantler (SE) and many more. Public lectures, presentations and field trips are also planned in conjunction with curated evenings and events.