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AUDIOMAT release – Live at MOE

At Gallery Bunkier Sztuki in Krakow, Audiomat, one can buy a live recording from our concert with Michael Fischer at MOE, Vienna!

When in May 2016 Alisa Beck invited me and Michael Fischer to play at MOE, legendary viennese space dedicated to contemporary art and experimental music, we had already performed together at Zentrale and concert at Amann Studios in Vienna. I met Michael in November 2016 during my residency stay, and was completely amazed with his use of analogue feedback saxophone, as well as his work as instant composition conductor. During our very first meeting and performance in November, we were very happily surprised how his sounds blended with my electronic sounds, governed by scanning of activity of brainwaves (using well-known Mindwave Neurosky hardware) and electromagnetic fields (Electrosluch by LOM Instruments). We wanted to investigate the timbral and structural potential of this unique instrumentation, and went back to Amann Studios just before Christmas in 2016. With over 90 minutes of recorded material, ranging from raging rhythmically-oriented structures, through massive drones, to fluctuating colorful ambients, we were  enthusiastically looking forward to present the music in front of the audiences again.

Performance at MOE was indeed such great occasion. Our music is very sensitive to current conditions, both acoustics of the space and metal state of performers (which might have been delicately affected by all-night-long birthday party at viennese Ateliertheater the night before). We played in spacious, rough environment of hall filled with various items, some of them being installations, some of them being just furniture and stuff. MOE is free of institutional pressures and expectations, yet has its own conscious and demanding audiences.

The resulting performance was probably the most concentrated play, focused on micro-scale sound processes. One can easily spot the two-part form, with the first one in piano-pianissimo and dominated by sounds of violin and electromagnetic fields, and the second one in powerful dynamics of Michael’s raging passages on saxophone and my brainwave-governed sounds. This was also the first time when in used Mindwave to control IRCAM’s SFChromax patch, used to generate noises of different timbres (in part I).

Shortly after our performance, due to real-estate case, MOE lost possession of the hall (which is kind of signum temporis in Vienna, with many great spaces disappearing, among them original Ursula Blackle Videoarchiv at Kunsthalle, or Generali Foundation Conceptual Art museum & library), but continues its activity in various events and locations. And for us with Michael, this was just the beginning of our musical adventures.

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