Alt.Music 2007

Tim Hecker - Thursday 20th September 2007

Tectonic colour plates from Canada!
The Audio Foundation presents Alt.Music 2007

Tim Hecker (Canada)
Antony Milton (Wellington)
Nigel Wright (AK)
Thursday 20th September 2007, doors 8pm starts 9pm
Whammy Bar, St Kevins Arcade, Auckland - $5.00


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After the sell-out success of July's triple-whammy of concerts, The Audio Foundation's Alt.music Festival concludes its 2007 series with a performance of experimental ambient compositions from Canadian artist Tim Hecker. Performing with him at K' Rd venue Whammy Bar is Wellington sound artist Antony Milton and Aucklander Nigel Wright.

Since 1996, Tim Hecker has produced a range of audio works for such luminary labels as Mille Plateaux, Kranky, Alien8, Force Inc, Staalplaat, and Fat Cat. His works have been described as "structured ambient", "tectonic color plates" and "cathedral electronic music". More to the point, he has focused on exploring the intersection of noise, dissonance and melody, fostering an approach to song-craft which is both physical and emotive. He is also an acclaimed producer of techno, having toured and produced under the name Jetone.

Wellington-based sound artist Antony Milton has been making records, exhibiting sound installations and performing live locally and internationally under various nom de plumes (A.M, The Nether Dawn, Paintings of Windows, Mrtyu etc) since the early 1990s. Milton's work is situated at some weird junction between electroacoustic composition, folk music, and the more psychedelic end of the 'noise' spectrum. Using predominantly analogue sources (tape loops, field recordings, amplified resonant objects, voice and guitar) Milton's performances have a high degree of intimacy and commonly range from the gestural and nuanced through to the visceral and ecstatic. He is also the curator of the PseudoArcana record label.

Nigel Wright has been creating audio for over 5 years and is known for his spacious, expansive sound pieces. Dense layers of tonal drones underpin the field recordings, guitar, and tape loops that Wright uses as source material for his laptop-based live performances. Wright has recently started investigating audio/visual pieces with his first work premiering at the 2006 Auckland International Film Festival. "Wright works with big, weighty chunks of sound… He uses laptop to weather and rust his guitars strings, ricocheting hefty down-strummed chords through cavernous banks of effects and then watching the overtones drift in the distance, like trailing headlights captured on polaroids." (Jon Dale – The Wire October 2006)

Tim Hecker: www.sunblind.net
Antony Milton: www.pseudoarcana.com
Nigel Wright: www.myspace.com/nigelwright

Alt.music is an ongoing series of events, regularly bringing a vital injection of contemporary sound art from around the world to New Zealand. Organised by the Audio Foundation, Alt.music began as an international festival of experimental music and sound art in 2001, followed by successive festivals in 2002 and 2004. Previous Alt.Music artists include Pauline Oliveros, Metamkine, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Peter Rehberg, David Toop, Pan Sonic, Tetuzi Akiyama, Jon Rose, Voice Crack, Sachiko M, Francisco Lopez, Pierre Bastien, Oren Ambarchi, Alan Licht, Richard Nunns and the Dead C.

Alt.music is supported by Creative New Zealand, Room40 and The Whammy Bar. Thanks to Richard Francis for design.

www.myspace.com/altmusicfestival
www.audiofoundation.org.nz