Thursday, April 5th, ISSUE is pleased to present the debut NYC showcase of Pacific City Sound Visions, an experimental label helmed by Spencer Clark, well known for his work with seminal noise duo The Skaters (with James Ferraro), and his alternative aliases Tarzana, Fourth World Magazine, and Monopoly Child Star Searchers. The evening features debut American performances from Francesco Cavaliere and Leila Hassan, as well as new work from Lieven Martens Moana and Clark’s own Typhonian Highlife project.
Berlin-based Italian sound artist Francesco Cavaliere presents one of his “audio stories” -- an invented mythological narrative surrounded by abstract electronic music, presented in Italian with english subtitles. After years of live performance and intense studio work, Francesco has developed a unique style using his voice and an incredible archive of homemade sound effects as his primary sound sources. Inspired by extended, fragmented surfaces from literature and film, Cavaliere has iteratively developed a veritable dictionary to catalogue the strange beings that inhabit his universes, undefined by reference points: hybrids of objects, minerals, animals, plants, planets, trails, cosmic objects and physical and perceptual phenomena. For this performance, Cavaliere presents work described as “a design of dust and debris on some magic sand...a highly dangerous archaeo-cosmic zone.”
Belgian artist Lieven Martens Moana presents a few topical narratives (The Three Strings Of The Habu Snake; Monserrate Palace; The Sound Of Waves). Describing the works as encounters with “subjects” saturated into sounds, Marten’s practice surveys elements of new age -- but ultimately contribute to a larger tradition of programme music and classical Romantic and Impressionistic composers like Berlioz and Debussy. With Pacific City Sound Visions having released his acclaimed work Idylls, a suite Martens describes as “a storytelling collection in four parts,” Martens’ extra-musical narratives and diaristic sound collecting commented on ethnography, illustration, and ritual. He describes, “I’d like to stay far away from a sensational bubblegum approach to (religious) pseudo-ethnography, to the copying of ethnic behaviour, or to approaching it as something odd or weird. These behaviourisms unavoidably invoke the end of all rituals, thus making the world a duller place.”
Sea Urchin, Egyptian-Austrian artist Leila Hassan’s collaborative project with Francesco Cavaliere, also performs in their American debut. Exploring a unique blend of poetry and dub music, their practice modulates sine waves, tapes, and electroacoustic devices while turning fluorescent minerals, mirrors, and materials into ever-changing projections. The duo began in 2011 with the creation of “dragon water music cassettes,” a series of tapes that detail musical relations with objects, writings and textiles. In 2016, KRAAK records released their debut full length album Yaqaza, arabic for “daydream.” Taking on the frame of a magical-realist narrative, the album’s ten songs are dedicated to specific topics, territories and characters: Sicilian salt miners and their muscle mirror glasses, Bolaji Badejo (the first “Alien” actor from 1979), and Cheba Nouria (known as “the Queen of Raï music”) -- an unknown Algerian pop star who recorded some of the most beautiful maghreb disco songs of the 1980’s.
Spencer Clark himself performs his Typhonian Highlife project’s newest record The World of Shells. Presented as three long-form medley-style works for double keyboard with projections, the performance is a live showcase of a work described as Clark’s “most pellucid and detailed.” With this release, Clark distinctively replicates the strangeness of memory recollection -- its hauntological aspects that cross-reference apocryphal pseudo-science, poetry, and ambient culture as they have been constantly sampled and osmotically absorbed into the popular psyche.
ISSUE extends thanks to Jaclyn Miller for assisting in organizing this performance.
Spencer Clark, the tentacle behind Typhonian Highlife, was a member of the seminal noise duo The Skaters (with James Ferraro), and has recorded under the aliases Tarzana, Fourth World Magazine, and Monopoly Child Star Searchers, whose album, Bamboo For Two found wide critical acclaim. His new Disc, The World of Shells on Kraak Records, dawns the genre tab: "DEMON CLASSICAL AQUATIC FUSION,” as it invites nature, Sci-Fi Fantasy SFX, and romantic melodies to juxtapose a startling vision of the WORLD OF AUSTRALIA. Miles Bowe of Fact Magazine has said this of The World of Shells: "While his contemporaries in similar “world-building” music like James Ferraro and Oneohtrix Point Never often attempt to refract something of our own world, Clark’s music feels like exotica by way of H.P. Lovecraft, building mythologies and painting places that feel removed from any reference point. Deep listening can offer glimpses into an impossible realm -- and now we enter The World Of Shells, the culmination of a journey both physical and psychic, travelling from California to Australia to Sicily and drawing on everything from alien reptile conspiracy theories to Renaissance sculpture, rock formations and the films of Peter Weir." Clark's label, Pacific City Sound VIsions has been Disc-Flexing for nearly ten years the Exotic, SuperNatural, and Premonitioned future realities that add to the Fruitopian Wealth of 2018.
Lieven Martens Moana (formerly Dolphins Into The Future) creates new impressionism; and, observes. Using various recording techniques, he composes a conceptual form of programme music. His works are like narrative stills in a contemporary dialect. Over the past few years he has been performing all over the globe, including Mexico City, Tokyo, Niigata, Lisbon, Lecce, Honolulu, and Brussels. Between 2009 and 2012 he released several albums under the Dolphins Into The Future moniker on various record labels (Not Not Fun, USA; Fonal, Finland; NNA Tapes, USA; et al). His first LP under his birth name -- titled “Music From The Guardhouse” -- was produced by KRAAK (Belgium) in 2013. In 2015, he self-published a compilation of outtakes and sketches, produced on various formats (c.q. “Songs Of Gold, Incandescent”). In March 2017, his newest LP “Idylls” came out on Pacific City Sound Visions (USA) in co-production with his own Edições CN. And in October 2017, the prolific EM Records from Japan released “Three Amazonian Essays,” a modern classical reinterpretation of the Spanish cult classic “Amazonia” by Finis Africae. These albums have received critical acclaim on many music websites and in many print. Next to these activities, Martens runs a private press on which he releases records and editions; and, he has been writing commissioned music for ensembles, national radio (KLARA), television (RTBF), commercials (a national radio / online campaign for theatre company Toneelhuis), and for art exhibitions. He recently has been collaborating with fellow artists like Francesco Cavaliere, Roman Hiele (as Hiele Martens), Floris Vanhoof, Spencer Clark, and Mia Prce (aka Miaux). In 2016, he received a grant from the Flemish Department of Culture.
Francesco Cavaliere (b. 1980 Piombino, Italy) is known for the sensitivity with which he combines sounds, materials and space, showing a highly particular taste for the most diverse forms of exoticism. His works are capable of enlivening his listeners’ inner states in an imaginative journey populated by ephemeral presences, phenomena generated by glass, minerals and voices recorded using analogue and digital technologies. First introduced to the world through the tape "Neverending Somersault,” Francesco Cavaliere is also author and interpreter of the "Gancio Cielo" audio stories, released as a full length LP on the label Hundebiss (IT) in 2016, as well as a second volume in the same year.
Leila Hassan is a Berlin-based, Egyptian-born visual artist and distinctive speaking voice. She talks mainly through her textiles, light sculpture, and ceramics works and gives voice and life to radio plays, poetry, and interpretation of other worlds. She is founder of the music & art project Sea Urchin with Francesco Cavaliere.