Posts tagged Oval

Opening of Moon Life Concept Store

Alicia Framis and Moon Life Foundation present the Moon Life Concept Store featuring products and concepts that represent future human life in space.

Date and location - Moon Life Concept Store

18 September 2011 – 15 October 2011 
Opening: Saturday 17 September 2011, 18 hrs
Opening Hours: Mon-Wed and Fri: 11.00-18.00 hrs, Thur: 12.00-20.00 hrs, Sat: 10.00-18.00 hrs, Sun: 12.00-18.00 hrs
Address: Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal 262 (ground floor of Sprmrkt Specials), Amsterdam

Participants include: Paula Ampuero / Atelier van Lieshout / DUS architects / EDHV / Alicia Framis / Sandra Gnjatovic / Barbara Imhof / John Lonsdale / Maryme-JimmyPaul / Satyendra Pakhalé / Tao Sambolec (with Brian McKenna) / Maria Serret / Sarah van Sonsbeeck (with Susan Bijl and Maria Jobse) / Marina Toeters / Monica Tormell and Staffan Björk / United Nude / Femke de Vries / Juha van ‘t Zelfde

Moon Life is a project by renowned Spanish artist Alicia Framis. It is designed to speculate on the possibility that humans will live in space in the future. With this thought in mind, the project is a stimulus for artists, architects and designers to create futuristic, radical, political but humane concepts for an extreme lunar environment.

The Moon Life Concept Store creates its own futuristic world in which visitors can explore and test or experience the products and concepts that represent future human life in space. The Moon Life Concept Store is a pop up shop and art exhibition which will travel around the world, with larger contribution by the Moon Academy. 20 international professionals architects, designers, fashion designers and musicians are personally invited to propose a contribution to Moon Life. I am delighted that Alicia has invited me as one of these 20 to contribute to the store with a soundtrack I have called Zero History, a title adopted from William Gibson’s incredible novel.

Zero History is both a soundtrack for the Moon Life Concept Store and an exercise in imagination. Firstly, it is a soundtrack for the store experience by adding music that resonates with the speculative nature of the products and concepts that represent future human life in space. The artists selected here, from Kuedo and Kode9 to Phonophani and Philip Jeck, are all contemporary explorers of new musical possibilities. Their music, oneiric in texture and propulsive in rhythm, evokes a nostalgia for the future. Secondly, this is an attempt to imagine the synthesis of conflicting emotions inflicted by leaving behind life on Earth for a new existence on the Moon: a sense of loss of a past that has no future, and a longing for a future that has no past.

Zero History - Deceleration
1 Transit: For Suchan Kinoshita / Alva Noto
2 Lens-Flared Capital / Oval
3 Zurnas / Phonophani
4 Darker Earlier / Dntel
5 Alien Observer / Grouper
6 Vacuum / Fennesz
7 Aether, Rotterdam / Machinefabriek
8 The Piano Drop / Tim Hecker
9 Veil / Philip Jeck
10 Hole In the Sky / Kode9 & the Spaceape
11 Zucht 2 / Machinefabriek
12 Return From the Great Unknown / Ras G & The Afrikan Space Program

Zero History - Acceleration
13 Cascading Celestial Giants / Drexciya
14 Warlord / Hype Williams
15 Shutter Light Girl / Kuedo
16 In System Travel / Jamie Vex’d
17 SP / Morgan Zarate
18 Cherry Moon / Lorn
19 Otherman / Kode9 & The Spaceape
20 Scissors / Kuedo
21 Voices (Dorian Concept Remix) / Nosaj Thing
22 Ascension Phase / Kuedo
23 Darkside / P-fang
24 Quantum / Kode9 & The Spaceape
25 Neko / Rustie

Mark Fell ‘Multistability 2-A’. If Ryoji Ikeda and Oval controlled Wikileaks the cables would sound like this.

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Videos of Hyperrhythm at the Bimhuis





Phonophani performing live at Hyperrhythm at ADE 2010 at the Bimhuis, Amsterdam. Video recorded by Alex Tirajoh.

Oval - O Live Poz Modern Festival

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Oval - Do While (94 Diskont). Classic Oval.

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Interview with Phonophani

Phonophani is Espen Sommer Eide from Bergen. He will perform at Hyperrhythm at the Bimhuis during the Amsterdam Dance Event on Thursday 21 October, with Oval and Mike Slott. Juha asked Espen a few questions via e-mail, and Espen set a new record by responding within an hour.

Juha Hello Espen, how are you doing? What are things up north?

Phonophani Hi Juha. As you know winter is coming fast. Have to work hard before the snow brings isolation.

Juha How much time are you currently spending on making music, and could you describe how you work?

Phonophani I am right now in a working period, so I pretty much think, play, make and eat music 8 days of the week. I am lucky to have a studio at a place called Bergen Center of Electronic Arts, where I have access to all sorts of equipment. Some days I am working in the sound studio, other times I build instruments on the work-bench. As you know I usually design and build my own instruments. A lot of time goes into this. This is a two way process: I learn to play the instrument while building it, and vice versa.

Juha Some people may know you as one half of Norwegian duo-and-sometimes-trio Alog, that releases taylor-made albums on the celebrated label Rune Grammofon. What is Alog up to these days?

Phonophani We are meeting up in various studios in Norway and Sweden (Dag-Are, my collaborator lives in Sweden) and recording a lot of different sketches for the future. So far I don´t want to promise any specific timeframe, but I hope there will be a new album at the end of this. And so far it sounds like it will be our best work so far! (of course)

Juha With Alog you have played at the Bimhuis. What did you think of the venue?

Phonophani I really enjoyed it a lot. Maybe it was one of our best concerts. Looking forward to having a go at it solo!

Juha Phonophani is your solo project. What does Phonophani stand for?

Phonophani I started making electronic music in Tromsø in the end of the 90s, and had made one track (“I.F.A” from my debut) that I played to Geir “Biosphere” Jenssen at a party. He surprised me by saying that I had to make 9 more and then he would release it as an album. So then I needed a name. It became Phonophani as I was studying ancient Greek language at the time, and it would mean something like “Sound becoming vision”. Phonophani stands for everything that I find fascinating with music. I want it to be limitless regarding any particular style or such. I make each song a new direction.

Juha What can we expect from Phonophani at the Bimhuis?

Phonophani Expect the unexpected. I can reveal that I will play my accordeon instrument Concertinome, that was heavily used on my latest album. The rest will be a surprise!

Juha You are going to work with Pierre Bastien in France end of this year. What are you planning to do?

Phonophani I hope to develop some new instruments for this show and we will combine forces for the first time. I expect our quite different approaches to instrument-building will fit together in surprising ways. I expect to learn a lot from Pierre - a true master builder.

Juha Thank you Espen, I look forward to hearing you play again.

Listen to Phonophani’s new album ‘Kreken’ on Spotify. Follow Espen Sommer Eide on Twitter.

Oval ‘Ah!’, from his new album ’O’. He will perform at Hyperrhythm at the Bimhuis on 21 October, during the Amsterdam Dance Event. He is joined by Phonophani and Mike Slott.

“70 tracks. It sounds ridiculous, it should be far too bitty to work as an album. Yet somehow Popp pulls it off. It is all held together by that fastidious attention to detail: the sounds on this album are absolutely magnificent, as good as anything I’ve heard this year. It is so pure, so pretty, and and yet so fragmented; it is like a hall of smashed mirrors. As good as the first disc is, I actually prefer the stripped back nature of the second, which really lets the myriad of samples sing. The recurrent texture is of those beyond-the-bridge guitar strings, but there is plenty of variety in their treatment – sometimes clipped and crackling, sometimes with buzz and echo (not for the first time I find myself wondering if Popp is a fan of Derek Bailey). Trying to describe any of them in detail is a futile task. Like spiders, these little pieces appear very quickly, are strangely beautiful from a distance, but as soon as you try to examine them, their spindly little limbs come off in your hands and you are left with nothing.”

Scott McMillan

Phonophani plays live at Bimhuis on 21 October 2010. Mike Slott and Oval are also playing.