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FROM A BASEMENT ON A HILL #1: Experimental night feat:
-> Bad Ambulance A/V (tape launch) - Melb/Naarm
-> Shoeb Ahmad - Cbr/Ngunawal
-> Yichen Wang w/ Charles Martin - Beijing + Cbr/Ngunawal
-> allofyourdreams (first show) - Cbr/Ngunawal
From a basement on a hill in O’Connor, overlooking the city below...
Canberra is a small place, and it has been said that the city’s experimental music scene is smaller than cities such as Tokyo and Berlin. So, when an experimental show takes place here, the ossified sub-generic demarcations that afflict larger cities are refreshingly absent.
Case in point, this forthcoming show that places high-intensity hallucinatory EDM, AI-fuelled sound art, and mood-based exploratory pop under the sign of an evening of experimental music. The vibes will progress from coffee-shop to gallery space to club, so come prepared with a thermos of something hot, a pencil and paper, and the outfit you wore to Berghain.
The occasion is the Canberra launch for Melb/Naarm based artist Bad Ambulance (Jack Palmer), who has just released a tape via the esteemed Nice Music. Jack lives in Melbourne, but he grew up in Canberra. In fact, he used to live over the fence—as in literally over the fence—from the basement where this launch will take place. As the moon waxes and wanes, timelines come full circle; a new celestial order is in alignment. This time, Bad Ambulance won’t have to jump the fence to get there.
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Bad Ambulance A/V:
Bad Ambulance A/V is a unique improvised loop-based collage practice that syncs samples from the Bad Ambulance catalogue with an ever-shifting audio-responsive backdrop of found-footage and internet “video-junk”. A Bad Ambulance track is rhythmically focused holographic display.
Using a custom designed integration of Ableton Live and Max/MSP/Jitter, music and video samples are looped, overlayed and modulated in realtime producing a hypnotic chain of near-danceable bardo (you’ll have to look that up) spaces. Like ghosts stuck on repeat, they emerge and dissipate with a dream-like logic.
Bad Ambulance’s boutique knife-edged tracks compound the sonic pallet of various drum focused EDM subsets with the artists own insatiable thirst for cross-meter experiments and visceral aural-imagery. To key open the vast well of psychic symbolism, uncanny imaginings, and deeply seeded fears and humours of an existentially novel age, you’ll have to be there in person.
https://bfan.link/intel-95
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Shoeb Ahmad:
Using guitar, keyboard, voice and electronics, Sia Ahmad brings together her experimental sound art practice with the purity of honest pop songwriting and deep beat heavy production for one of her trademark solo sets. An influential member of Canberra’s experimental scene through endeavours such as hellosQuare records, Spartak, Tangents, Agency, and over a decade of releases under Shoeb Ahmad, Sia’s live performances are not to be missed.
https://shoebahmad.bandcamp.com
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Yichen Wang & Charles Martin:
Yichen Wang hails from Beijing and is currently a PhD researcher at the ANU working at the intersection of musical creativity and computer science. Her research encompasses new interfaces for musical expression, augmented reality and the entangled nature of digital music ensemble in human-computer interaction.
https://yichenwangs.github.io
Charles Martin, also at the ANU, is a computer scientist specialising in music technology, musical AI, and human-computer interaction. He also makes music with Ensemble Metatone and Andromeda is Coming.
http://charlesmartin.au
Together, Yichen and Charles will present "Off-the-Shelf”, a 15-minute performance featuring a trio of human and AI collaborators. The performance includes a human electronic musician using a generative AI system to control a compact synthesizer and a second human electronic musician playing on a separate synthesizer while interacting with the AI's actions in a mixed reality space. The AI musical agent, embodied as a virtual keyboard interface, visualizes its musical actions alongside the human musician’s instrument, redefining co-creative artificial musical experiences.
In case you’re not a computer scientist and that sounds at all abstract, you can glimpse a previous performance here—it’s intriguing:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C8HFTSnvveG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D&img_index=1
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allofyourdreams:
is a new solo project from a member of Vanishing Sound, playing their first show. Expect de-tuned guitars, evocative instrumentals, and understated pop songs. A single is forthcoming.
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$10, music starts at 7pm. Location will be revealed closer to the day.
We are looking to borrow a projector for this event. If anyone has one they might be happy to lend, please let us know and we’ll do free entry for you and two friends.
This event is a safe space. No discriminatory, aggressive, or otherwise inappropriate behaviour will be tolerated.
Taking place on the lands of the Ngunawal & Ngambri people—sovereignty was never ceded.
Poster by Lani Shea-An.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
O'Connor, Australian Capital Territory, 2 Sundew Cres, O'Connor ACT 2602, Australia,Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
