04.02.11 - 8:00pm

Unsound Festival New York Labs: Collaborations 2: MKM + Günter Müller w/ Taylor Dupree + Norbert Möslang w/ Lizzi Bougotso + Jason Kahn w/ Richard Kamerman

Unsound Festival New York Labs and ISSUE Project Room continue their exploration of collaboration. Gang Gang Dance singer Lizzi Bougatsos meets experimental musician Norbert Möslang. Ambient innovator Taylor Deupree meets improvisor Günter Müller. Jason Kahn meets fellow improvisor Richard Kamerman. Möslang, Müller & Kahn collaborate as MKM.

COLLABORATIONS 2 continues the theme started the night before at ISSUE Project Room. This time five musicians from Switzerland, Germany and America come together to explore the notion of “collaboration.” Opening the bill is Switzerland-based, German Günter Müller who will perform for the first time in a duo with New York State resident – ambient innovator Taylor Deupree. Following this, Switzerland-based Norbert Möslang collaborates for the first time with New Yorker Lizzi Bougatsos who is best known as Lza Bylza, singer and percussionist in the Warp-records-signed experimental band Gang Gang Dance. Americans Jason Kahn and Richard Kamerman continue the duo explorations, then Kahn returns to join Möslang and Müller to perform as the band MKM.

Günter Müller + Taylor Deupree

Günter Müller was born in Munich but has been based in Switzerland for most of his musical life. Müller was originally a drummer and percussionist. In the early 80s he mutated his drum set into a new instrument with customized mobile pick-ups and a microphone system of his own invention. That system allowed Müller to modify and modulate hand-generated sounds electronically. In the late 90s he added minidiscs to his set up and then in the early ‘00s he added an iPod. Nowadays, more often than not he plays with just an iPod and electronics only. As well as performing solo, Müller has collaborated with a large number of musicians, including Jim O’rourke, Christian Marclay, Butch Morris and Otomo Yoshihide. He founded the respected label For 4 Ears in 1990 and has also recorded for Erstwhile, Cut, Grob, List, Audiosphere, Amoebic, Rossbin, Creative Sources and others. Tonight he will perform in a duo with Taylor Dupree for the first time, as well as the band MKM.

Taylor Deupree is a sound artist, graphic designer, and photographer residing in New York. In 1997, he founded 12k, a record label that focuses on minimalism and contemporary hybrids of acoustic and electronic music. The label has released over 70 CDs by a roster of international sound artists.  Since 1993 Deupree has created critically acclaimed recordings for labels worldwide including Spekk, Plop, Noble, Ritornell/Mille Plateaux, Raster-Noton, Disko B, Sub Rosa, Fällt, Audio.NL, Room40, Instinct Records, Caipirinha Music, Plastic City, Dum, and of course 12k and former sister label LINE. His solo works in recent years have explored a fusion of digital sound manipulation with organic and melodic textures that take influences from his interest in architecture, interior design, and photography. Themes of minimalism, stillness, atmosphere, nature and imperfection pervade throughout his work. An intense passion for recording and studio technology creates a strong technological backdrop for all of his compositions. Deupree continues to evolve his sound and approaches each project with a new direction and different process. Continued shifting and sound exploration is vital to his work. His most recent album “Shoals” was released on 12K in 2010. Collaboration with other musicians is also a very important aspect of Deupree’s work and in the past he has worked with Christopher Willits, Kenneth Kirschner, Eisi, Tetsu Inoue, Frank Bretschneider, Richard Chartier and Stephan Mathieu. Deupree feels the importance of collaborative work is to not layer two individual styles but to create a 3rd, fusion sound that incorporates the strengths of each collaborator yet sounds like a unique, 3rd identity. Tonight he will perform with Günter Müller for the first time.

Norbert Möslang + Lizzi Bougatsos

Norbert Möslang is from St.Gallen, Switzerland. He plays cracked everyday electronics. Möslang was the member of the band Voice Crack until the end of 2002 and has also played also in Poire_z. Additionally he has collaborated with many musicians including Borbetomagus, Otomo Yoshihide, Günter Müller, ErikM, Jerome Noetinger, Lioinel Marchetti, Jim O’rourke, Kevin Drumm, Jason Kahn, Oren Ambarchi, Tomas Korber, Keith Rowe, I-sound, Carlos Zingaro, Florian Hecker and others.
 Möslang, like his collaborator Lizzi Bougatsos, also in the field of visual arts. This is the first time he’ll be appearing in duet with the singer. He will also appear tonight in the band MKM.

Lizzi Bougatsos is the stylish singer and percussionist who also performs under the name LZA when performing with her decade-old psychedelic experimental New York-based band Gang Gang Dance who are signed to Warp Records. She has also had a duo project Sadie Laska from Growing since 2008. As if that wasn’t enough she has also created an extensive and diverse range of mixed media visual art since the late 90s which has been cited as poking holes in the stuffy art world. The James Fuentes LLC gallery in New York represents her visual work. Lizzi has performed all over the world and continues to do so – saying she sees touring as her way of spreading a message “of love and creation.” She says she likes to “takes risks” and tonight for the first time she’ll be appearing in duet with an artist equally as eclectic Norbert Möslang.

Jason Kahn + Richard Kamerman

Jason Kahn was born in New York in 1960 and grew up in Los Angeles. He moved to Europe in 1990, first living in Berlin until 1999 then moving to Switzerland. He is currently based in Zürich. Kahn came of musical age in the late 1970′s, starting to play drums in punk bands and later making many records for the Los Angeles-based SST label. He turned more to improvised music in the late 1980′s, culminating with his move to Berlin where he spent many years working as a drummer and percussionist in different projects of improvised music, as well as playing in composer Arnold Dreyblatt’s group The Orchestra of Excited Strings. In Berlin Kahn also began working with electronic instruments and composing pieces of concrete music. He began releasing CD’s under his own name in 1998 on his own imprint Cut, which he started in 1997 and which ran until 2007. Kahn also began exhibiting sound installations in 2001 and has since shown work in museums, galleries, art spaces and public sites around the world. Kahn collaborates regularly with many musicians, both in improvised settings and in the context of graphical scores which Kahn composes for specific groupings of musicians. He has performed throughout Europe, North and South America, Australia, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Turkey and South Africa.

Richard Kamerman says his artistic interest is aimed foremost on the task of magnification. Small sounds, small gestures – made large. Inconsequential events – made important. The vast difference made to a narrative by a small change in focus. Room acoustics, microphone/pickup placement, and amplification are often very important to his live construction of sound and he places great weight on the embracing of unintended consequences – e.g. errors in translation/format conversion, bursts of feedback, power supply failures. Although primarily a percussionist, he rarely sits behind a drum kit, preferring to explore the percussive behaviors of various re-purposed electronics, ranging from computer circuit boards to a system of found mechanical parts – fans, motors, etc – that he has been developing since 2006.  Frequent collaborators include Reed Evan Rosenberg (as the duo Tandem Electrics), Billy Gomberg & Anne Guthrie (as Delicate Sen), Steven Flato & Corey Larkin (as Fyxzis), Jordan Topiel Paul, Eric Laska, and the quintet Frogwell. Richard will be appearing tonight in a duo with Jason Kahn.

MKM formed itself spontaneously when the individual members, Günter Müller, Jason Kahn and Norbert Möslang, were asked to give a talk during a tour of Japan in 2006. Since talking was not enough, the three musicians were asked to play for a short set. The results were so good that the three decided to go on working together. In 2007, the trio did an extensive tour of Mexico and South America. They have also toured in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The trio’s sound hovers between the at-times harsh rhythmic noise of Norbert Möslang’s cracked everyday electronics and the rich sonorities of Günter Müller’s percussion-based samples and electronics. Jason Kahn’s work on analog synthesizer bridges these two worlds, adding high frequency interference and processed piezo microphone and short wave radio input. MKM’s music will appeal to enthusiasts of noise, experimental electronics and improvised music.

Unsound Festival New York is presented by:

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

In Cooperation With The Trust For Mutual Understanding, The Adam Mickiewicz Institute, City of Krakow, Krakow Festival Office, 6 Zmysłów, Austrian Cultural Forum in New York, Instituto Cervantes de New York, Consulate General of Finland in New York, Royal Consulate of Norway New York, Pro Helvetia

BAMcinématek, Backspin Promotions, Bedroom Community, The Blackened Music Series, Beyond Booking, The Bunker, The David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, Electronic Music Foundation, European Cities of Advanced Sound, International Cities of Advanced Sound, Film Comment Selects, ISSUE Project Room, Kiss&Tell, (le) Poisson Rouge, Littlefield, No Fun, RVNG/FRKWYS, Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building.

Fundacja Tone is a non-profit, non-governmental organization established in 2008, to promote new forms of art – both sonic and visual, initiating intercultural dialogue by fostering international collaborations Based in Krakow, Fundacja Tone organizes Unsound Festival in Krakow. Like Unsound, Fundacja Tone is committed to promoting music and artists from the eastern side of the EU and creating bonds between the East and West of Europe. Fundacja Tone has realized various cultural projects thanks to support of, and in collaboration with, major Polish and international public institutions and partners.

The Polish Cultural Institute in New York, established in 2000, is a diplomatic mission dedicated to nurturing and promoting cultural ties between the United States and Poland. The Institute initiates, organizes, promotes, and produces a broad range of cultural events in theater, music, film, literature, and the fine arts. It has collaborated with such cultural institutions as Lincoln Center Festival, BAM, Film Society of Lincoln Center, The Museum of Modern Art, Jewish Museum, PEN World Voices Festival, Yale University, and many more.

The Goethe-Institut New York is a branch of the Federal Republic of Germany’s global cultural institute, established to promote the study of German and German culture abroad, encourage international cultural exchange, and provide information on Germany’s culture, society, and politics.

Supported in part by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia