SCI-HI - paul winstanley (nz)
electronic feedback, filtered and modulated into atomised forms of unpredictable, ululating gliss tones that erupt from and then are quickly dissolved back into silence.
‘blobs of mercury sliding down a Teflon surface’ - sound projector 12

almost totally eschewing the static tones of onkyo and only occasionally referencing the more caustic industrial style of david myers/arcane device, sci hi has fostered and explored a 3rd area of sonic possibility within the world of electronic feedback.

while describing performances as personally being ‘the struggle to maintain control over a constant threat of feedback’ the sonic results convey something entirely different. natural sounds like insects or birds are evoked as single tones tease themselves into existence, wildly flagellating a stuttering, random melody before swooping into the horizon. and while this moment repeats itself again and again, each is unpredictable, adding to the impression of a complex and interesting yet stable system.

sci hi has been operating since 1996 with the 1st results appearing on the CD ‘forbidden fruit’ by ure thrall and the fruitless hand. since then 4 solo CDs/CDRs have been issued, on eden gully, evergreen partie and CMR in addition to collaborations w/witcyst and comdozer on the lifespace and totalitarian labels.

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Greg Kingston was born in Tasmania, Australia in 1954. Lived and worked in Adelaide (1978 - 1982), Oxford, England (1985 -1988) and Benissa, Spain (1988 - 1990). Now resident in Hobart, Tasmania.

Greg’s performances are those of a modern virtuoso augmented by the use of toys, vocals and home-made instruments. One of the great performers in improvised music from anywhere.

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Carolyn Connors (Melbourne), voice
Carolyn is an virtuoso vocalist, a charismatic force of nature, humorous and serious in equal measure – a devastating presence and a true theatrical force. One of the stars of last years festival.

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Louise Dibben - audio visuals

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Thomas Meadowcroft (Electric Organ) & Clare Cooper (Guzheng)

Armed with an organ and the ancient Chinese Guzheng, Thomas and Clare build creepy, beautiful shapes that draw from sharp but distant memory. Both of them are based in Berlin, where they met in 2004 and recently collaborated in trio with Minit’s Jasmine Guffond in 2007 as ‘Ten Gentle Joys’. A long way from home, they are trying to find a way to slip pieces of the Australian landscape into their sound.

Thomas Meadowcroft was born in Canberra in 1972 and was raised in Toowoomba, Queensland. He moved USA in 1994 to study classical composition with George Crumb and Brian Ferneyhough. He has lived in Berlin since 1998. His compositions have been performed at various contemporary music festivals in Europe such as Wiener Festwochen, ‘Klangaktionen’ Munich and ‘Présences’ (Radio France) Paris. As an electric-organ player he performs regularly together with Australian percussionist Steven Heather and keyboardist Boris Hauf (Vienna/London) in the trio ‘’The Understated Brown/TUB’ which is dedicated to classic rock and drone music. In 2007 he formed the organ and tuba duo ‘Robin Hayward and Thomas Meadowcroft’ with British tuba virtuoso, Robin Hayward.

Clare Cooper grew up in Sydney and has spent much of the past 7 years listening to and playing improvised music around the world. She organised the series ‘if you like improvised music, we like you’ with partner Clayton Thomas for 7 years in an effort to create a regular open-listening meeting point for improvisers in Australia, this series gave birth to the NOW now festival (which taught her everything she knows). Clare is interested in creating an electronic-sounding acoustic vocabulary on traditional string instruments, and has spent many hours recording and transcribing farm machinery sounds for Harp. She believes that Australians are making the most fascinating music in the world today, and wishes those in the position to do so would get behind it so that the world can celebrate it.

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Passenger of Shit
Passenger Of Shit’s tracks are all so over-the-top that you can’t help but see them as taking the piss out of hardcore in general. Once you think of it that way it’s actually pretty funny.

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Akemi
Akemi is a non-profit, DIY, venue/ collective/ share house, located in Medlow Bath, Blue Mountains, roughly two hours west of Sydney. Their membership consists of residents and members of the local community.
Previous events have included community events such as the Lake Cowall documentary launch, music gigs like Kevin Blechdom, Tim McMillan, Lucie Thorne, Jackie Marshall, The Thaw & BluFM Blue Mountains Music Week. Akemi has also held ongoing weekly or monthly events such as cult film nights and Brackets & Jam – open mic night.
Akemi members have been involved collectively in many social action events outside of the venue itself. These include fundraising to save the Tassie forests, providing portable sound at the APEC summit protests, protests in Newcastle around the coal industry and many other important grass roots causes.

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Dale Gorfinkel enjoys building instruments and making stange sounds.

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Rod Cooper (Melbourne), hand-made instruments
Since 1988, Rod has transformed traditional instrument designs into new metallic hybrids. Each instrument has a large range of sounds, incorporating percussion, bowing mechanisms resonant springs and acoustic noise.

“ Comfort in dissonance.”
Rod Cooper klunk

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Jo Truman
“Think about the spread of singIng from,say, Robert Johnson to chinese opera. Jo Truman covers such a breadth of approaches, and then some. She can also sound like smashing crystal, a fountain playing or a flock of birds. The music of birds is an inevitable inspiration for improvisors and composers, and Truman,s ability to mimic is especially breathtaking and exhilerating. Her virtuosity is just a means to an end, which as spenthralling that her exceptional tonal control and articulation, not to mention her range,could almost escape notice….” John Shand, Jazz CD reviewer, “The Sydney Morning Herald”.
jo’s site

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mike majkowski, 24, is a double bassist who is interested in a wide spectrum of contemporary music.
he is a member of the splinter orchestra, farfinkel pugowski, the mike nock trio, roil (with chris abrahams and james waples), and recently participated in jim denley’s ‘west head project II.’ he is very proud to be a part of the nownow family.

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photo credit: Susan Murphy
Ross Bolleter (WA)
From Perth, Ross Bolleter (who shared his ‘obsession’ on the ABC program, ‘Collectors’, on 21 July 2007) will find music on a piano so ruined that others would take it to the tip. Ruined Piano Website

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Jon Rose (Blue Mountains)
For 35 years, Jon Rose has been at the sharp end of experimental, new and improvised music. Central to that practice has been ‘The Relative Violin’ project, a unique output, rich in content, realising almost everything on, with, and about the violin - and string music in general. Most celebrated is the worldwide Fence project; least known are the relative violins created specifically for and in Australia.

In the area of interactive electronics, his work is considered exemplary, having pioneered the use of the MIDI bow in the ‘Hyperstring’ project in the 1980s with the Steim Institute, Amsterdam - and with whom he continues to collaborate.

Apart from Europe, considerable interest in Rose’s output currently comes from California where he was recently offered the David Tudor Residency at Mills College and completed a concert and lecture tour of all the major UC campuses.

Over the years, Rose has made over 30 radiophonic works for the major radio corporations in Europe and the ABC. These focus on the history of music and its re-writing. A more confusing phenomena is the violin playing dynasty known as ‘The Rosenbergs’ - are they a quasi-biographical appendage or surrealist satire?

In recent months Jon Rose has given a two-day seminar to the Kronos String Quartet on how to play the fence; performed a completely new and improvised solo part for the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra; created a major radiophonic work for the BBC on the history of the piano in 19th century Australia; toured in Europe with his improvisation group ‘Futch’; premiered his interactive Ball project at The Melbourne Festival; and been apprehended by the Israeli Defence Forces at the Separation Fence near Ramallah in the occupied territories.

He holds 3 passports, one of which declares him a ‘Berliner for life’.
www.jonroseweb.com

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Brendan Walls made his first recordings as a teenager living in the middle of nowhere in rural Australia. Working in isolation for years before eventually moving to the city, he began building his own acoustic and electronic instruments out of discarded equipment from his depressing job in a pawnshop.
His early embrace of public failure as an integral part of life and art, first established with his early Bovine tape series which presented carefully selected low points (the most inept and pathetic moments lovingly highlighted), continued for a time with his often confusing live shows in which his temperamental machines refused to obey their maker.
Although he rarely performs live, he continues to record and collaborate with his closest and dearest friends. An analogue purist, Walls prefers watches with hands and tape hiss to digital silence.

(James Tsai)

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Emmanuelle Pellegrini
I improvise using words, sounds and gestures. One could more or less
call it “Sound poetry performances”. I sometimes work solo but I also
like to instigate meetings and place my interests alongside others by
sharing experiences and memories with others. Since 2004, I regurlaly
work with Emilie Borgo a choreographer (EBPBBEPPP Duet), and more
recently with the cello player Thomas Charmetant. I’ve met musicians
like : Louis-Michel Marion, Isabelle Duthoit, Jacques Di Donato, Xavier
Charles, Jérôme Jeanmart, Christine Senhaoui, Anne Pellier,
Jean-Philippe Gross, Eric La Cas. Danceres like Véronique Albert, Irena
Tomazin, Laure Terrier and Lulla Chourlin. And poets french poets like
Jean-Michel Espitallier Antoine Boutte, Charles Pennequin.
more informations and sounds
http://www.myspace.com/emmanuellepellegrini

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Philip Samartzis (www.microphonics.org)

Philip Samartzis (Melbourne, Australia) is coordinator and lecturer in Sound within the School of Art, RMIT where in 2004 he completed a doctorate into surround sound in installation art. Outcomes from his research have informed numerous exhibitions including; Dodg’em (2006), Grosser Wasserspeicher, Berlin; Unheard Spaces (2004), Candiani Cultural Centre, Mestre; Presence & Absence (2002), Statenlogement, Hoorn; and Transparency (2001), Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, Paris. As an independent curator he has organized four Immersion festivals focusing on the theory and practice of sound spatialisation, as well as Variable Resistance - a series of international sound art presentations for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2001/2). Samartzis has also curated an overview of Australian sound culture titled Variable Resistance: Ten hours of sound from Australia for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2002) and the Podewil Centre for Contemporary Art in Berlin (2003). As a solo artist he has performed widely in Australia, Japan, Russia, Europe and the United States including presentations at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, The DOM, Moscow, Museum of Modern Art, Strasbourg and Mori Arts Centre, Tokyo, and has published five solo compact discs, Residue (1998), Windmills Bordered By Nothingness (1999), Mort aux Vaches (2003), Soft and Loud (2004) & Unheard Spaces (2006). Samartzis has also performed and recorded with leading international improvisers and musicians including Sachiko M, Seiichi Yamamoto, Gunter Muller, Voice Crack, Keiji Haino, Oren Ambarchi, Reinhold Friedl, Michael Vorfeld, Eric La Casa and Jean-Luc Guionnet. Samartzis was the recent recipient of an Asialink Arts Management Scholarship in order to develop curatorial programs that promote Australian and Japanese sound culture.

Samartzis uses field recordings of natural and constructed environments as his primary material to render densities of space and discrete zones of aural experience, arranged and mixed to reflect the acoustic and spatial complexities of everyday sound fields.

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Marcia Jane - live visuals
Marcia Jane is a video artist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her interests in sound-image relationships and the theory and mechanics of editing are applied as a means to process and rethink material drawn from everyday life. Adapting recordings of environments from her past and present her works investigate social, sensory and psychological aspects of identity. Marcia is currently lecturing in Visual Art at Swinburne University where she completed studies in multimedia before going on to Media Arts at RMIT’s School of Art. She has organised and exhibited in a number of shows and screening programs; most recently exhibiting a generative, self-editing video installation ‘Intercept’ at First Site Gallery, Melbourne.
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The Splinter Orchestra
John Shand writing in the Sydney Morning Herald Jan 12th 2008 says…”The Splinter Orchestra’s music is like quicksand: it can suck you in, just as each of the 27 musicians relinquished his or her sense of self within this monumental improvising ensemble. Listening to it is like looking down on a jungle from above, with infinite layers of foilage making for an image without surface. Behind every sound lurks another sound, and then another. The result is eerie and weirdly beautiful; more diaphanous then dense, which is a tribute to both the subtlety of the interaction and the sophistication of the recording. Remarkable.”
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Monika Brooks (Sydney), accordion

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Sam Dobson - bass, sarangi, clock radio

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Simon Ferenci is a trumpet player from Sydney who was a finalist in the National Jazz Awards at the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz in 2003. His main project as a leader is the Simon Ferenci Quartet which also features Hugh Barrett on piano, Mike Majkowski on bass and James Waples on drums. He plays in other jazz/improvised groups including the Splinter Orchestra, Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra, Paul Derricott’s Arrow, and also in many latin/rock/funk/soul etc bands.

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Peter Farrar (Sydney), saxophone
Peter is a young musician from Sydney who performs on saxophone. He is currently exploring the many possibilities of sound production on the instrument, and the logics these possibilities may create between each other. Regarding improvisation Peter is greatly influenced by much jazz, and the music that is practiced here in Sydney.

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Alex Masso (Sydney), drums
Alex Masso, at 24, is one of Sydney’s emerging jazz drummers, having studied with a number of Australia’s leading musicians and recently completing a Bachelor of Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He is interested and involved in various types of music, with a particular interest in jazz and improvised music, but also African, New Music, Blues, Hindustani and various other styles. Current projects include Trio Apoplectic (which he co-leads and composes for), The Vampires, The Splinter Orchestra, Blue Nile/Asim Gorashi Trio, Daniel Rorke Quartet, Quarantine, Masso/Hannaford/Majkowski, a solo project, and others. On his second instrument, tabla, he studies with Bobby Singh and performs with Peter Schaeffer (sitar). In addition to these, Alex has performed with several leading musicians such as Bernie McGann, Dave Panichi and Judy Bailey, and with latin/jazz group Tigramuna.
Alex is also actively involved with regional touring with his groups and Sydney jazz organization The Jazzgroove Association.

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Yusuke Akai (Brisbane)

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Rosalind Hall (Melbourne)
Rosalind Hall crafts individual reeds for the saxophone from a variety of materials, transforming the reed into a sensitive and volatile sound source whose properties are ever changing. As each modification is made to the saxophone the vibrations and playing techniques are altered, creating a unique dialogue between the performer and the instrument.

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Mathieu Werchowski, Nomad musician, born in 1973
violinist improviser, playing alone all over the world and member of many different bands
 (duet with D.Chiesa, trio with J. Russell and U. Voelker, trio with J. Noetinger and L.Marchetti, quartet with B. Denzler, X.Charles and J.S Mariage, Archipel, Nodal…)
sound artist for living shows:
with Cirque Ici-Johan Le Guillerm since 2003 (circus company)
with Le club des 5 in 2006 (dance company)
with Le Cube in 2000-2001 (multimedia band)
with Ici meme-Grenoble from 94 to 99 (street performance)
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Daniel Whiting - laptop
Daniel Whiting is an electronic musician/sound artist from Sydney Australia.
Originally a Bass Player Daniel utilises Sampling/Production techniques and digital signal processing. His work deals with repetition and mutation of audio sources, and the transformation of simple ideas into expansive, complex and densely layered works.
Daniel performs regularly in a solo context, with other musicians and is an active member of the Splinter Orchestra.

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Xavier Charles (France) - clarinet
The work of clarinetist Xavier Charles ranges from noise to electro-acoustic via sound poetry. He has played in numerous new music fesivals in France and abroad. Charles collaborates with both Jacques Di Donato and Frederic Le Junter. In his work with groups and collectives, he has also collaborated with Martin Tetrault, The Ex, Peirre Berthet, Etage 34, Axel Dörner, Jérôme Jeanmart, John Butcher, Jean Pallandre, Marc Pichelin, Chris Cutler, Martine Altenburger, Camel Zékri, Emmanuelle Pellegrini, Michel Donédaand Frédéric Blondy.

Currently his musical research ranges from performance on the clarinet and bass to the installation of vibrating speakers, at the edge of improvised music, noisy rock and electro-acoustic sound. He’s deeply involved in the music world as an organizer of the fesival “Densités”.

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METALOG

Ben Byrne is a Sydney based musician, curator, radio producer and writer whose work traverses musical performance and improvisation, composition, installation, radiophonics and sound theory.

Natasha Anderson is a Melbourne musician and installation artist who creates works in which the source of sounds, images and gestures - whether electronic, instrumental or bodily - become tangled and confused. Variously using the contrabass recorder, electronics and mixed media she is interested in creating works that foreground the musician as a framed and gendered bodily presence.

Rapidly shifting between such opposing forces as digital and acoustic sound, abject and processed gestures, and extreme frequencies she creates for the audience multiple and conflicting points of focus. Natasha regularly performs multimedia, improvised and classical contemporary music throughout Australasia, Europe and Japan.

credit:phil lenglet
Jim Denley wind instruments + electronics born Bulli, Australia 22/1/57
www.splitrec.com

An emphasis on spontaneity, site-specific work and collaboration has been central to his work. He sees no clear distinctions between his roles as instrumentalist, improviser and composer.
In the 1980’s he played in the Relative Band with the string player Jon Rose. With groups such as Lines, and Chris Burn Ensemble, he performed throughout Europe and Nth America recording for BBC Radio 3, Germany’s WDR and producing many CDs. In 1990 he was a member of Derek Bailey’s Company for a week of concerts in London. Since 1989 he has been working with the electro-acoustic text/music group Machine for Making Sense.
He has played throughout Australia, Europe, Japan and the US with musicians such as Chris Abrahams, Clare Cooper, Keith Rowe, Joel Stern, Robbie Avenaim, Jon Rose, John Butcher, Otomo Yoshide, Fred Frith, Phil Niblock, Trey Spruance, Annick Nozarti, Clayton Thomas, Tess de Quincy, Axel Doerner, Adam Sussman, Ami Yoshida, Oren Ambarchi, Tony Buck, Ingar Zach, Kim Myhr, Martin Klapper, Ikue Mori, Satchiko M and Annette Krebs.

Amanda Stewart (Sydney), voice
Since the late 1970’s Amanda Stewart has created a variety of poetic texts, performances, radio, film and multi-media works in Australia, Japan, the US and Europe. From 1983 - 1993 she was a radio producer at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and in 1990 co-wrote and directed the award winning film Eclipse of the Man-Made Sun.
Recently, Amanda has been exploring disjunctions between oral, graphic and electronic forms of inscription in her poetry and vocal works. In 2000 she was commissioned to produce two new pieces for the Bayerische Rundfunk which she performed in Munich in April 2001 and in solo concerts in France and Belgium.

Dale Gorfinkel (Sydney), vibes, inventions
Dale Gorfinkel is a revolutionary instrumentalist working with adapted vibraphone and hand built instruments. A long time member of The Splinter Orchestra, Dale is a key force in Sydney as an improviser, organiser and inspiration to those he works with. “file under: I didn’t used to like the vibraphone.”

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ORA(RA) (Blue Mountains)

Rory Brown, double-bass
Adam Sussman, guitar & electronics
Rivka Schembri, cello
Matt Earle - guitar, electronics

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Joyce Hinterding (Blue Mountains)

Born in Melbourne, Australia; lives and works in the Blue Mountains. Joyce Hinterding produces works that explore physical and virtual dynamics. Her practice is based on investigations into energetic forces, through custom built field recording and monitoring technologies. These explorations into acoustic and electromagnetic phenomena have produced large sculptural antenna works, video and sound-producing installations and experimental audio works for performance. She often collaborates with artist David Haines to produce large scale immersive video and sound works that explore the tension between the fictive and the phenomenal and plays in “Sunvalley” with Micheal Morley and David Haines. Joyce’s audio work is released by Antiopic and Sigmaeditions

www.antiopic.com
www.sigmaeditions.com
www.sunvalleyresearch.com

Most recently she has exhibited in (in)visible sounds, Montevideo, The Dutch Institute for Time based Art, Netherlands (2007), V2 Zone, Act interact, The Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Taiwan (2007). ReSearch, The Sendai MediaTech in Sendai, Japan (2006). Under the Radar, FACT, (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology) Liverpool England (2006), Waves (Electromagnetic Waves as medium for Art), Riga, Latvia (2006), recent live solo performances include, Sound and Electricity, The Performance Space (2006), Audiotheque, The night air, ABC radio national (2005), and Tonic, NYC, USA 2004

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TASTE OF TEETH (Brisbane)
Their brand new CD is an exuberant Bitches Brew of wayward grooves and feral melody.
yusuke akai - guitar
jo jo dogshit - bass
daiji igarashi - guitar
michael lynn - bass
nik mayer-miller - percussion
scott mcconnachie - dx7
tim mcconnachie - percussion
sam mitchell - percussion
jack richardson - guitar

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Ali Russell works as a Writer, Director, Producer, DOP and Editor, and has travelled, filmed and studied in Indonesia, Mexico, and remote regional Australia.
She mostly makes documentaries but other claims to fame include ridiculous children’s television programs, music videos, and being manhandled by one of John Howard’s minders whilst filming him on his last day as Prime Minister.