Tue 5/31 @ 9PM
While Cleveland has a strong little community of musicians who work in the electronic/improvised/experimental/noise/sound art genre, it’s also hosting a group of players converging from faraway parts: Denver, London, Bristol and Brisbane, Australia.
The show at alternative venue the Hive Mind in Akron will feature, we’re told, “wearable synths, participatory performance, recycled/circuit bent game consoles, audio/visual art, synth pop, dark as hell jams.” Four acts will perform: Phantom Chips, Scraps, Solypsis and Psychiceyeclix.
Phantom Chips (pictured) is Tara Pattenden from Bristol, England who makes her own wearable synthesizers, which she stretches and squeezes to create a mix of soothing and jarring sounds. She also solicits audience participation, sharing her noisemakers with the crowd and encouraging them to be part of her show.
Brisbane-based Laura Hill, who performs as SCRAPS, specializes in lo-fi synth pop, featuring her disjointed, disembodied vocals floating over liquid, fluttering electronic instrumental beds. Her music is the most conventionally melodic and structured of the four performers, acting as a palate cleanser for the noisier performers on the bill.
In contrast, Denver’s Solypsis aka James Miller, constructs tracks — he claims to have released 1,600 in the last 18 years — from jarring, hammering noise, layered in dense piles that surge forward relentlessly without the comfort of traditional, regular rhythmic markers.
Finally, the London-based Psychiceyeclix is a musician/instrument maker who builds his gear from recycled game consoles, drum machines, camcorders and other electronic discards, modifying and rewiring them — he claims to have made more than 400 such devices. He uses them to construct his glitch-based performances which blend audio and visual elements.
Doors open at 8pm; show starts at 9. A minimum suggested donation of $10 at the door, but guests are urged to be generous if they can since the musicians are coming from so far away – and the money goes to them.
Akron, OH 44302