02/12 @ 8:00pm

Unsound Festival New York: David Daniell + Xavier van Wersch + Nadja

Unsound Festival New York presents Silence and Noise, Pt. 2: an evening of performances from David Daniell, Xavier van Wersch, and Nadja.

David Daniell is a composer and performer working in the intersections of acoustic and electronic instrumentation and of composition and improvisation. His music focuses on two primary areas of concern: perception and listening at the margins of audibility, through repetition, drone, and a gradual and lateral development of timbre; and the social narrative of musical forms, both in terms of improvisation and intuitive composition, as well as through the recontextualization and incorporation of sounds from and inspired by his rural heritage.

As a performer, Daniell utilizes acoustic, electric, and pedal steel guitar along with a variety of electronics. He has worked for over a decade as a member of the improvising blues-drone trio San Agustin, along with many other collaborators through the years, including Tim Barnes, Ateleia, Jeph Jerman, Thurston Moore, Sean Meehan, Loren Connors, Tomas Korber, Greg Davis, as lead guitarist in Jonathan Kane’s live band, and as concertmaster for Rhys Chatham’s 100- and 200-guitar performances.  Current active collaborations include a duo with guitarist Douglas McCombs (of Brokeback, Tortoise, Eleventh Dream Day) and a trio with Christian Fennesz and Tony Buck (of The Necks).

Daniell’s compositional work utilizes displaced and abstracted field recordings juxtaposed with manipulated acoustic instruments and sounds of purely electronic origin, with great attention to sonic detail and aural depth-of-field, as captured in two solo albums, 2002′s sem (Antiopic) and 2006’s Coastal (Xeric/Table of the Elements).  Recent compositions have incorporated a variety of instruments in larger ensemble settings.  One such work, Sunfish (for twelve to fifteen musicians), was performed at the Fugue State Festival in Chicago (June 2007) and the X Avant Festival in Toronto (September 2007).

Recent releases include two live solo recordings (Los Jacintos, a recording of a live electric guitar performance in Madrid in February 2008, and The Hideout, of an acoustic guitar and electronics performance in Chicago) released as part of Antiopic’s Live Series, as well as a solo LP in Table of the Elements’ 15th anniversary Guitar Series Volume 4. Sycamore, the debut album from Daniell’s duo with Douglas McCombs, was released on the Chicago label Thrill Jockey in August 2009.

Daniell has worked extensively with the record label Table of the Elements (including engineering John Fahey’s 1998 Table of the Elements release Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts and Other Contemporary Dance Favorites), and as producer and artistic director of his own record label Antiopic since 2002.  Antiopic’s catalog includes Alvin Lucier, Joyce Hinterding, Tetuzi Akiyama, Oren Ambarchi, Ultra-Red, Lee Ranaldo, Jim O’Rourke, Eddie Prévost and Alan Licht among others, as well as 2003′s critically-acclaimed Allegorical Power series of politically-charged web-only releases.  Daniell has recently started working with video, including a collaboration with artist Robert Longo as producer of the DVD of Longo’s 1979 Pictures For Music.

Xavier van Wersch

The work of Xavier van Wersch (NL ,1976) reflects an organical approach to the field of electronic music. In his compositions, performances and installations there is always an element of controlled chaos. He explores the relation between man and machine by conceiving the two of them together as a hybrid system in which erratic behaviour is the principal condition for interaction. Another common theme in his work is recycling. Like a modern Frankenstein, he constructs his machinery from parts of deceased equipment and disfunctional devices.

Van Wersch was raised with classical piano and violin training, which set the foundations for his experiments with composition and electronic music as a young teenager. At first spurning the conservative music academy for the freedom of visual arts, Van Wersch was eventually drawn back to study Sonology at Royal Conservatory in The Hague after discovering abstract electronic music. Van Wersch’s final exam composition entitled Odysseia was included on the compilation His Master’s Noise – The Institute Of Sonology, released on Dutch experimental label BVHaast Records in 2001. The compilation gathered pieces from artists who had worked or studied at the Institute of Sonology, including Iannis Xenakis, Edgard Varése and György Ligeti.

As well as performing under his own name, Van Wersch produces tracks under the moniker xaf. The first xaf releases appeared in 1999 on Dutch Breakbeat label Fluff Girl Wax, several more appeared on the more experimental Esc.Rec label over the next few years. As a sound designer he has worked with among others Nederlands Dans Theater, Icelandic National Ballet, Maska Ljubljana, the Poni Collective and Ivana Müller. He is the director and founder of re.Bug, an organisation that supports and develops projects in which art, technology and ecology meet, with support from cultural institutions in Holland.

Van Wersch has presented work at a.o. TodaysArt Festival (The Hague), Club Transmediale (Berlin), LOW festival (Budapest), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), State X New Forms (The Hague), Dis-Patch (Belgrade), Lab030 (Augsburg), NEXT festival (Bratislava), KIMAF (Kiev), Festival Pomladi (Ljubljana), Unsound (Krakow), Ultrahang Fest (Budapest), B-link (Belgrade), Garage-g  (Stralsund), Les Chants Mécaniques (Lille), Touch (Amsterdam), and in many more festivals and venues throughout the world.

Nadja is a duo of Aidan Baker & Leah Buckareff alternately based in
Berlin, Germany and Toronto, Canada. Nadja originally began in 2003 as
a solo project for Baker to explore the heavier/noisier side of his
experimental/ambient guitar-based music. In 2005 Buckareff joined to
make the project more than just a studio endeavour and allow Nadja to
perform live. Together, they create music that has been variously
described as drone metal, ambient doom, and shoegazer, combining the
atmospheric and textural elements of electronic and experimental music
with metal and post-rock structures.

Nadja
Nadja has toured extensively in North America and Europe and has released numerous albums with such labels as Alien8 Recordings, Important Records, Beta-lactam Ring Records, Conspiracy Records, Hydrahead Records, and Crucial Blast. They have also collaborated with a number of artists, including Black Boned Angel, Fear Falls Burning, A Storm of Light, and Pyramids.

As individuals, Baker is also active as a solo musician and a writer. Buckareff isalso  a bookbinder, operating under the name Coldsnap Bindery.

Links:
http://www.nadjaluv.ca
http://www.myspace.com/nadjaluv
http://www.aidanbaker.org
http://www.myspace.com/aidanbakermusic
http://www.coldsnapbindery.com
http://www.alien8recordings.com/artists/nadja

Unsound Festival New York, Co-Presented by:

Unsound, Fundacja Tone, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York and the Goethe-Institut New York.

In Co-operation With:

Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Romanian Cultural Institute New York, Austrian Cultural Forum New York, Consulate General of Finland New York, Pro Helvetia, Fonds Pop Over Zee
Blurb:

“Since 2003, Unsound Festival, Poland’s most adventurous music festival, has brought a bold and uniquely modern program of music to Kraków, a city previously unknown for this kind of experimentation. Now, with seven festivals in their native city under their belt (and outpost events further east in cities like Minsk), Unsound is coming west to New York for their first ever North American edition. Unsound Festival New York’s mission is to forge new links between music genres, between generations and even between artistic practices.

The driving force in the assembling of the New York program has been Unsound Festival’s commitment to forms of music and sound art that involve experimentation and risk. Unsound Festival has made a worldwide reputation by breaking new ground while dealing with vibrant electronic, experimental, independent, post-classical and club music scenes from around the world.

Taking place over the course of nine days starting on Thursday February 4th 2010, Unsound Festival New York will boast an ambitious lineup of artists from both Europe and the US.

One of the cornerstones of the festival is Eastern Promises, a substantial undertaking in the New York program that aims to expose a wide range of musicians from east of Berlin that have long been ignored in North America. Never before has this broad a range of producers and musicians from Eastern Europe been assembled to perform alongside their US and West European counterparts. Confirmed for the festival are techno artists Jacek Sienkiewicz (Poland), Petre Inspirescu (Romania) and Marcin Czubala (Poland), minimalist composer Jacaszek (Poland), experimentalist Zavoloka (Ukraine), bass mutator TRG (Romania), new music ensemble Kwartludium (Poland), dub electronic artist Pavel Ambiont (Belarus), drone specialist Zenial (Poland) and a special exhibition of historical Polish Soundcards.

Unsound Festival New York will also feature a special series of events dedicated to and inspired by Andy Warhol. The Warhol Program will feature the worldwide debut of Carl Craig (USA) and nsi (Germany) performing live electronic soundtracks to vintage Warhol films, as well as the North American debut of Groupshow (Jan Jelinek, Andrew Pekler and Hanno Leichtmann) (Germany) performing an eight-hour long live improvised soundtrack to Andy Warhol’s “Empire.” Additionally video artist Lillevan (Germany) will be creating a special series of Warhol inspired screen tests during the festival.

Additionally, Unsound Festival New York will feature the US live debut of the Moritz Von Oswald Trio (Germany), the US debut of Vladislav Delay (Finland) & Lillevan’s audio / video performance, a special program of the music of Henryk Gorecki, classical interpretations of the music of infamous US punk noise label SST, two nights of noise, drone and experimental work, a Brooklyn electronic music showcase, two nights at the Bunker featuring the very best in contemporary Techno / House and a special Bass Mutations showcase dedicated to dubstep and beyond. In addition, there will be a unique festival feature called Kids Patch (a special kids only workshop in electronic music), thought-provoking panel discussions and unique film screenings.”