Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

NeuzTec's SATURDAY features continuous back-to-back short durational performances (20-30 mins), best described as a series of sonic experiments. The day begins at 2:00pm and goes until just after 10:00pm. All ages welcome.

Float in, float out or stay for the full day!

$20 at the door (no one will be turned away for lack of funds).

FEATURING PERFORMANCES BY

RY MORAN (performing at 6:00pm) was the founding director for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NTRC). Among many significant projects, Ry launched the Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada, and contributed directly to the launch of Gord Downie’s “Secret Path”. All this work rests on a foundation of music. Ry is a dynamic multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer, and it was Ry’s love of music production that was deployed in recording residential school survivors from coast to coast. Despite a pause in public performances during his time with the NCTR, music remained a constant - not only as a place of emotional healing, but of active composition and recording. Ry’s music is now ready to re-emerge, and we are proud to present his work as part of the 8th edition of NEUZTEC. Ry currently serves as Canada’s inaugural Associate University Librarian of Reconciliation at the University of Victoria, and is a special guest on the Victoria Conservatory of Music’s faculty for the 2023-2024 academic year.

12TH PLANET ORCHESTRA (performing at 9:00pm) is a moniker for the machinic arrays of tobias c. van Veen, who performs live acoustic electronics to his surreal silent cinema. Suspended in slow time, expect a cut-up improvisational encounter with odd elektroniks by way of bow, circuit, and fingers to his Afrofuturist short film, LOST ALIEN (2018). Since the ‘90s tobias has exhibited with galleries and festivals worldwide as an award-winning media/sound artist and curator. He is the founding electronic music curator of New Forms Festival (Vancouver) and founder of UpgradeMTL at the Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT) in Montreal.  His most recent sound/video installations have been featured by Carnegie Hall, New York Live Arts, and the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM) in the exhibitions Curating the End of the World (2020), Altered-Worlds: Black Utopia and the Age of Acceleration (2021), and Democracy Project (2023). Tobias hosts the Other Planes: Afro/Futurism Podcast and is director of sound/radio-art label IOSOUND.ca, where he releases as s*. A veteran vinyl turntablist, he spins beats for the bardos as pandemixDJs on Twitch. Tobias holds doctorates in the (post)humanities, and once taught at a beautiful University that went bankrupt thanks to capitalism. He has few hopes for humans, and hopes the 12th planet denizens reclaim the planet soon enough.

SOUNDING THE DUSK MERIDIAN (performing at 5:00pm) started as a project that took the sculptural and lighting elements of Keith Langergraber’s installation, The Dusk Meridian (2022), as a polydimensional score, and created an ambient musical reading of the piece. They performed the response at the Vancouver Gallery Offsite in partnership with Vancouver New Music in April 2022. The band features interdisciplinary sound artists Matthew Ariaratnam, Ross Birdwise, Adrian Avendaño, Soressa Gardner, and prOphecy sun. Their album Fever Haze in a Broken Ecology is a set of recordings made on November 6th, 2022 in a home studio, playing with and extending the ideas explored in their original interpretation of The Dusk Meridian (2022). The album sonically creates lush ambient environments steeped in elements of spiritual jazz, experimental electronica, drone, and noise contending with the ever looming effects of climate change.

NO SPECTRUM (performing at 9:30pm)  This time with four hands plunged into the crackling frontier of everything to scrape at the edges of discarnate perpetual voices; twisting and snapping at thin air in chance compliance with this Obstinant Speaker insensibly bursting onto centre-stage come raving with syntax then wrenched stumbling back into the disintegrated field. NO SPECTRUM are auto-scanning for the echo of that ever-decaying impression.

HRDVSION (performing at 8:00pm) is Nathan Wairoa, an electronic music producer and composer who has been releasing music internationally for almost two decades as a solo act and as a part of numerous group projects. Live performance and DJ tours have taken them to the United States, all over the UK and Europe, Russia, and through Asia while teaching production masterclasses along the way. During their seven years living in Berlin, Germany they developed a close working relationship with and became an alpha tester for Ableton’s Live software, allowing them a view at the forefront of electronic music production and program development. Nathan Wairoa is on faculty with the Victoria Conservatory of Music’s School of Music Technology and Creativity.

FINAL AMBIENT EMERGENCY (performing at 8:30pm) is a hauntological broadcast system devised by Victoria artist Andrew Bourcet.  Bourcet has been active for over a decade under the moniker Looting and is a founding member of the Resonance Collective.  As Final Ambient Emergency, Bourcet purveys the noise of prophets, artists and spectres through a series of performative rituals and castings:  There is no one, there is no meaning, just the sound of the television, tuned to a dead channel. 

IFFER (performing at 4:30pm) is fashioning her distinctive niche in the sonic landscape with an unbridled passion for plants, improvised performance art, experimental music composition, and a love for comedic expression. Inspired by the genre bending of the 80's such as the hidden reverse and punk scenes, and influenced by the Hyper-pop music of the last few decades, Iffer crafts soundscapes that seamlessly(sometimes clumsily) blend found samples, software presets, and analog synthesizer sounds. Her compositions mirror her diverse taste, fusing elements of IDM, Ambient and NEW Music. Looking ahead to 2024, Iffer's focus will be on the intriguing interplay of sound and floral sculpture as a form of performance art.

OBLIQUE SYNCHRONICITY (performing at 7:00pm) is a nonfixed member project that explores the unknown aspects of sound to convey something unique. On this occasion, this group emerges again to explore extensive, unrepeatable, and enigmatic sound possibilities. Performers in Oblique Synchronicity are Deniz Pekmezci, Marco Neri, Rio Houle, and Sean Kiley.

LIAM HOCKLEY (performing at 7:30pm) is a versatile musician for whom “alternative or avant-garde approaches to his instrument are only part of the everyday tool kit” (Georgia Straight).  Liam holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of British Columbia and maintains an active freelance schedule in both Victoria and Vancouver.  He joined the Victoria Consevatory of Music's Classical Music Winds and Brass Faculty in November 2019. As a dynamic performer of classical music and passionate advocate for new and experimental music, Liam's repertoire encompasses not only the standard clarinet repertoire from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, but also the results of numerous collaborations with Canadian and international composers on innovative new works. Liam has performed as a soloist or ensemble member on three continents, including appearances on Vancouver New Music’s concert series, Music on Main’s Modulus Festival (Vancouver), the SALT New Music Festival and Symposium (Victoria), KLANGRAUM (Düsseldorf), the Stockhausen-Konzert und -Kurse (Kürten), the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, NUNC! (Evanston), and the Kuandu Arts Festival (Taipei).

ROZEK (performing at 10:00pm) has been making music for three decades.  Coming from the era of Toronto's early rave scene, when you could find vintage analogue gear at thrift shops for a few dollars, his knowledge of and passion for electronics deepened, as he soon found himself looking under the hood to both modify and build his own instruments.  With the laptop revolution around the year 2000, that same passion extended to a mastery of Max For Live in the Ableton ecosystem, and more recently Chris has made forays into eurorack and DIY visuals. Rozek has released on Revolver and Switch Records, as a solo artist and alongside historic techno visionaries like Toronto's Jeff Milligan and Himadri (Teste).  By day, Chris is a pinball technician for Quazars Arcade and he is also involved with the building of the Deep West Sound System.

COUGHER (performing at 3:30pm) is a local synth artist who has spent the last several years recording and performing music in the Victoria music scene. Berlin School, ambient, electro, hauntology, and kosmische musik are all deep rooted influences on Cougher's musical explorations. DiN Records founder, Ian Boddy has identified Cougher’s sound “as reminiscent of John Carpenter’s classic releases”. Cougher’s music nods to the classics and traditions of synthesizer music across the decades while at the same time finding new and innovative applications to tried, tested, and true sound design methods. Ultimately, Cougher creates music that pays tribute to the synth legends that we all admire, while simultaneously exploring the possibilities of the music we might make in the future.

A PLACE TO LISTEN DUO (performing at 6:40pm) features Kristy Farkas and Daniel Brandes.  Kristy and Daniel are experimental music composers and performers who have been collaborating for over a decade.  Both were core members of the A Place to Listen Ensemble and concert series from 2012 to 2020.  Since 2021, they have been performing as the A Place to Listen Duo. Through this project, they have been working in longform, ambient electroacoustic improvisation. Their work often makes extensive use of dense blooms of sine tones, field recordings, melodic fragments, and live sampling to create expansive and immersive spaces.

ÞOKA + SEALION (performing at 2:00pm) features the last of a four piece cycle of work developed by Michael Benneyworth in collaboration with Sealion (Dr. Lorne Hammond). They will be accompanied by video manipulations by sLo (George Welsh). Michael, Lorne and George are part of the 3Phaze Collective, which was formed to explore the wide universe of electronic music genres, sounds and video manipulation.  A variety of projects with local artists are ongoing.

ISLES (performing at 2:30pm) peers into the physics around us to create a sonic journey deep into the nucleus of an atom. Explore the fabric of our world and how the vibrations of particles affect the Universe.

THE WANT MACHINE (performing at 3:00pm) I had always wanted a Want Machine. I had heard it could fulfil desires, complete dreams. All you had to do was plug it in, adjust the dials just so, and press the button. I had saved up for months, working extra shifts at the diner, selling my old clothes and books, and skipping meals. I had finally scraped enough money to buy a Want Machine and I was so excited when the package arrived, I tore it open and plugged it in right away. Oh, wonderous day! The Want Machine gleamed like a gun. It commanded the room, instantly dwarfing the big tv screen that had held my attention so previously. It twinkled in the daylight and scared the cats. I think it even killed my mom’s prized roses, but I have no proof. If anything, it certainly wanted. It wanted and so did I. I plugged it in, and the hum filled me. It filled everything. Everything that was missing or trying to be missed was full of the hum. It was so exciting, and I had yet to press the button. I closed my eyes. What did I want? Really? I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be loved. I wanted… But I forgot what that even meant. Did it even matter? Of course. That’s when I took a deep breath, and I pressed the button… I felt a surge of electricity run through my body. I gasped and opened my eyes. Everything had changed. Disappointment, anger, emptiness all replaced with contentment. Everything would be ok now, I thought. That’s when the real sounds began. Terrible, awful, dreadful sounds. A rhythmic gurgling, a metallic clang accompanied by an atonal moaning that I realized was coming from me. Is this what I wanted? The Want Machine groaned.

ISOLATED SHOWERS (performing at 4:00pm) is a new iterative project from two of the members of Jolly Pagoda.

ATOMIC CHOCOLATE (performing at 10:00pm) is a deliciously powerful quadraphonic PA, blending speech and static to generate a third harmonic engineered to reach the deep recesses of the primal mind.  Atomic Chocolate is instigated by Japan's Merzbow, Ikeda, Yoshide and Zbigniew, inspired by the culture-jamming politic of Carlin M, and infused with all the ethos and energy of Stoner/Sludge.  There is no room for subtlety until the Silence of it melts in your mouth like revenge.  Prepare to be radicalized. 

NeuzTec is presented by the Garden City Electronic Music Society and the Victoria Conservatory of Music.

Supported by the Government of Canada, the Province of BC, the Capital Regional District and the City of Victoria.