ALDO ARANDA (Ciudad de México/Den Haag)
MARIMBA LANDSCAPES
OPENING CONCERT
Thursday 28th September, 13 h
Cinemes Texas
C/ Bailén, 205
Free entry
The skilled, versatile and multifaceted Aldo Aranda mixes techniques and disciplines (contemporary musical theater, improvisation, dance and technology) raising the percussion to a new and revolutionary level of expression. Master at the conservatories of Antwerp and The Hague, awarded at the International Chiapas Marimbists Festival (1999 and 2001), he has worked with prominent artists such as Jan Fabre, who described him as “wonderful Mexican percussionist”. At the opening concert of the LEM, Aranda will present Marimba Landscapes, a sound and image trip where electronics and video melt together with a re-discovering of the contemporary marimba. Marimba Landscapes is an exhibition of the evolution and sound possibilities of the marimba.
TRUNA Y SUS MONSTRUOS (València)
Wednesday 4th October, 20 h
GTS
C/ Igualada, 10
Donations at the end of the action
Andrés Blasco, better known as Truna, is the inventor of the magical suitcase: a device to which he connects the cello or different invented gadgets to produce a sequence of oniric sounds that becomes the live soundtrack for Super 8mm films. Halfway between dada, futurism and hypnotism, Truna and his Monsters, the show he will bring to the LEM, is a different approach to the monster movies of the 50s and 60s. ‘Auto-luthier’, musician and inventor, Valencian artist Truna had previously made a show with Super 8 entitled KingKongTruna. Throughout his artistic career, he has been a member of Fitzcarraldo, Carmina Burana and Antorcha Amable. He also worked with Pierre Bastien, Cabosanroque and El Otro Ilustre Colegio Oficial de Patafísica.
IYARI (Barcelona)
Thursday 5th October, 21 h
La Sonora de Gràcia
C/ Riera de Sant Miquel, 59
5€ (2 concerts)
Iyari is the instrumental project of guitarist Josep Mateo, component of Kartar Atma and Silveryarn, among other bands. Grounded in improvisation and processed sound (with infinite delays, eternal loops and esoteric reverbs), Mateo’s work explores new paths in search of the unknown. Iyari’s live performance links one theme with another and establishes minimalist structures, thus achieving a special atmosphere where the distinctive sound that flows from Mateo‘s guitar immerses us in an introspective, melancholic and extremely beautiful universe. Sura and Sons de Tardor are the first two discs of Iyari, recorded in 2016 in one single track. According to Mateo, when the sound flows, mistakes and hesitation are part of the magic of the moment and this allows us to perceive “the second music”.
MARTA SAINZ Y ANTONIA FUNES (Santander/Madrid)
Thursday 5th October, 22 h
La Sonora de Gràcia
C/ Riera de Sant Miquel, 59
5€ (2 concerts)
Marta Sainz (voice and self-amplified voice) and Antonia Funes (cello) have been carrying out a fundamental activity in the development of free improvisation in Spain for more than 10 years. Their wide art activism clears the diverse types of the riskiest improvisation paths through the collaboration with those artists and collectives who have defined the effervescence of improvisation during these recent years (Destruction Des Animaux Nuisibles, Trío Antimanierista, Rosalind Hall, Lali Barrière, Ferran Fages etc.). Sainz and Funes crossed their paths within the sound drift of the excited and communal Madrid and they decided to record a duo album in 2014 for Alina Records. The result, Discantus, is a celebrated recording that explores the exquisite hidden corners of the most demanding and engaged improvised interpretation. An unusually expressive voice and a burning and deaf cello for a roomy music that remind us that nothing is completely real.
LES MUTANTS MAHA (Avignon)
Friday 6th October, 22 h
Auditori Meyer / MACBA
Pl/ dels Àngels, 1
6 €
Zizeeria Maha is a butterfly native from the Fukushima region (Japan) which, following the nuclear accident in 2011, has suffered a number of severe mutations. This fact suggested to drummer and composer Guigou Chenevier the idea of mutant compositions where an initial score progressively drifts towards strange and monstrous forms. Chenevier encouraged two musicians from the collective Inouï Productions for the creation of Les Mutants Maha, Takumi Fukushima (curious homonymous name) on violin and voice (Volapük) and Lionel Malric (Collectif Grand Chahut) on keyboards. Chenevier is an historical musician of the French underground since he founded Etron Fou Leloublan (1973). He has been a fundamental part of bands such as Volapük, Les Batteries, Body Parts and Encore + Grande. He has collaborated with dozens of artists and released over 50 records, four of which as solo. Improvisation plays a limited role in Les Mutants Maha; writing and architecture prevail in their music in search of mutations. Post-atomic music as homage to Edgar Varese!
DERIVA ENSEMBLE (València – Barcelona)
Saturday 7th October, 21 h
FINAL CONCERT OF THE IMPROVISATION WORKSHOP
Centre Cívic La Sedeta
C/ Sicília, 321
6 € (2 concerts)
The Deriva Ensemble is an orchestra made of stage arts professionals for the purpose of the LEM 2017. Musicians, poets etc. will attend an intensive workshop on free improvisation by sax player Josep Lluís Galiana, an acknowledged musician in this field, in the live performance aspect as well as in both pedagogical and written essays aspects, with several titles published on this matter. Galiana is the author of over a hundred indexed compositions and over 30 recordings. We will attend to the creation of improvised sound situations as a result of the outcrop of emotions and intuition of these professionals, and their channelling in form of a unique piece by means of the mastering of attentive listening and the awareness of the value of silence.
NÚRIA ANDORRÀ & LÊ QUAN NINH (Barcelona/La Blanchette)
Saturday 7th October, 22 h
Centre Cívic La Sedeta
C/ Sicília, 321
6 € (2 concerts)
Núria Andorrà and Lê Quan Ninh were educated in classical percussion and they ended up embracing other styles, such as avant-garde jazz. Andorrà has worked along with artists as prominent as Carles Santos, Mats Gustafsson, Nat Wooley and Agustí Fernández. She is a regular performer at the improvisation sessions of the Barcelona underground. On the other hand, Lê Quan Ninh fell in Love with the “lyricism and violence” of the sax-player Daunik Lazro. Both percussionists have forged a solid reputation on the scene of free music and they subvert the role of drums and cymbals of traditional orchestras and they turn them into a box full of surprises. Drifting.
ÀGAPE
QUIM DIAZ + CABOSANROQUE + JOSEP PEDRALS (Balaguer/Barcelona)
Sunday 8th October, 13 h
Casa Almirall
C/ Joaquim Costa, 33
free entry
The Ágape (“feast”) is the LEM’s most synaesthetic moment. This year, Cabosanroque, Josep Pedrals and Quim Díaz the alchemists responsible for the synchronization of poetry, music and cuisine in the attendants’ senses. A sensory and unique experience. Díaz, cooker of delicacies and images (he is the responsible for that of the LEM 2017) coordinates the action. Cabosanroque are well known for the magic application of engineering to the production of sound beauty and Pedrals, powerful, playful and rascal reciter, explores the poetics cliffs of rhetoric. The 124th anniversary of ‘Pataphysics’ will coat the Ágape ceremony, in which the exception will be norm and reality will turn into a spiral of tastes, notes and words twisting forward to the unknown.
TOLV (Narbonne/Barcelona)
Wednesday 11th October, 21 h
Centre Cívic La Sedeta
C/ Sicília, 321
5 € (2 concerts)
Électrons Livres is the title of the album that Tolv will be presenting at the LEM 2017. This is not the first time Étienne Lecomte and Jaime L. Pantaleón, the members of this duo, work together. Pantaleón participated in the recording of the album Crossroads Project (2008) by Vrak’Trio, the free-jazz band in which Lecomte played. Tolv brings together two musicians from different backgrounds —Lecomte comes from avant-garde jazz; Pantaleón, from experimental rock—, but who share their desire for sound exploration without restrictions. This is a sublime encounter between the dreamlike landscapes of Pantaleón’s guitar and those that comes from Lecomte’s flute. Tolv’s music evokes both the inhospitable landscapes of northern Europe and the frantic pace of the most turbulent cities.
NAD SPIRO (Donosti)
Wednesday 11th October, 22 h
Centre Cívic La Sedeta
C/ Sicília, 321
5 € (2 concerts)
Rosa Arruti, aka Nad Spiro, is an acknowledged artist from Donosti with a long career within the universe of experimental electronics, with works released by renowned labels such as Silent Records (EEUU), Sloow Tapes (Belgium), Geometrik Records (Spain) and The Wire Tapper CD, The label of the British magazine The Wire. Arruti began her career in the underground Barcelona of the late 70s with projects such as Psicópatas del Norte and Mohochemie. During her fertile career, she has appeared in stages in London, Madrid, Brighton and Cork. The LEM will be the occasion for her to present her new album, Sirius Signals, a work that explores the ether of harbour areas by means of the evocation of imaginary radio-signals maybe equivalent to the radio experiments by scientist Guglielmo Marconi. Spectral, sequential and both dark and elegant music, full of subliminal codes and, above all, driven by unpredictability.
PRIMO GABBIANO + EMILIANO HERNÁNDEZ-SANTANA (Barcelona/Mérida)
Thursday 12th October, 20 h
ENCOUNTERS IN THE SPACE-TIME
GTS
C/ Igualada, 10
Donations at the end of the action
We can call it a fortunate meeting, that of these two restless artists, Emiliano Hernández-Santana (EHS, Venezuela) and Antonio Clavijo Victori, aka Primo Gabbiano (Barcelona). EHS is a plastic artist and an experimenter of both sound and video. After taking part in the New York electronic scene he came back to Venezuela and turned into a pioneer of the Netlabel scene by founding labels such as Microbio and Angustia. He has performed at festivals across America and Europe. Primo Gabbiano is a musician and visual artist. He explores the most experimental facet of music by means of drones, sound landscape, noise, ambient and primitive electronics. In 2012, he won the First Award of the Taula de les Arts Visuals de Manresa for Contradansa. He collaborates with the contemporary art group Fame Chimica. EHS and Gabbiano inhabit in a sound intersection Electronics, noise, textures. In a formal sense, it is the fragment that excites inspiration and gives chance to a dialectics of music, word, gesture and silence.
ALENKY (Sant Iscle de Vallalta)
Friday 13th October, 22 h
Auditori Meyer / MACBA
Pl/ dels Àngels, 1
7 € (dos concerts)
Jazz, folk, rock and free improvisation converge in Alenky, Marc Egea’s new musical project. Egea, (electro-acoustic hurdy-gurdy) is the cofounder of bands such as Maram Trio and Kaulakau and has released over 20 records. The name is taken from the film by the Czech film-maker J. Svankmajer, inspired by Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) as it is Carroll’s universe what inspires the brand new record of the band, Through the Looking Glass. Along with Egea, we find multi-instrumentalist Manu Sabaté (Spanish shawm and bass clarinet, founder of The New Catalan Ensemble), Cellist Joan Antoni Pich, soloist at the Orquestra de Cambra de Granollers, drummer Pep Mula, collaborator of a number of bands, both in the fields of pop/rock (Sanjosex, Paul Fuster, Maika Makovski) and jazz (M U L A) and poet Oriol Sauleda (member of the progressive rock band Eve) who, as a kind of an awaken and tender Lewis Carroll, will serve us songs and enigmas.
BIG OK (Calonge/Cardona/Vigo)
Friday 13th October, 23 h
Auditori Meyer / MACBA
Pl/ dels Àngels, 1
7 € (dos concerts)
Big OK’s history begins with the need by the unclassifiable guitar player and singer Paul Fuster of creating in community. Three intense days of improvisation in 2015, along with drummer Edi Pou (Za!, La Orquesta del Caballo Ganador) and prepared-violin player Sara Fontán (Manos de Topo, La Orquesta del Caballo Ganador) were enough for the consolidation of the project. A year later, they already had their first homonymous released record. It is a raw record with 11 songs never completely closed and full of energy, emotion and honesty, in which Fuster plays the batarra, a guitar designed and built by him-self. Big OK is full of echoes from post-rock and post-hardcore, but it would be more accurate to keep within the definitions made by its members: it sounds like free-grunge for crooners or like carving flowers, apples and carrots with a lawnmower or a fan. Anyway, its music breathes the celebration of joint, euphoric, sincere and grateful creation.
ADRIANA PETIT (Palma de Mallorca)
Saturday 14th October, 21 h
Almo2bar
C/ Bruniquer, 59-61
7€ (2 concerts)
Adriana Petit is one of these rare cases where an artist is unable to differentiate her work from her life, thus melting this pairing in an expanded insoluble hyper-reality. The way she works with sounds and words is as wild and deconstructive as when she works with images. Born in Palma de Mallorca, she has carried out a nomadic life, burning stages from metropolis to metropolis as a martyr of late capitalism. In subcultural terms, we would say that she is a true inheritor of the industrial post-punk music as well as of the extremisms that surround it: noise, cut-ups, magic, DIY, darkness. She began to play music with the group Muso Fantasma in 2007 and, after a long list of subsequent brief projects, she now presents her-self on stage without alias masks. Her arrival to the LEM was a prophecy that we all knew it would be accomplished someday.
THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS (Nijmegen/London)
Saturday 14th October, 22 h
Almo2bar
C/ Bruniquer, 59-61
7€ (2 concerts)
On June 15, 1980, in the framework of the Stonehenge Free Festival, was born one of the most influential experimental rock bands in Europe: The Legendary Pink Dots (LPD), a proposal to which infinity of tags could be assigned: ambient, post-punk, noise, gothic, neo-psychedelia, industrial, etc. All of them, however, should be preceded by the expression ‘avant la lettre’, since the band that nowadays famous Edward Ka-Spel and Phil Knight founded is, above all, an unclassifiable group, that stands at the forefront of rock and electronic music. Throughout their prolific career, LPD have recorded more than 50 albums, including some emblematic ones, have played in scenes like the Fillmore and have influenced bands from different generations. The LEM Festival will host this year the only one concert in Spain of LPD.
ESTER XARGAY & MIQUEL ÀNGEL MARÍN (Sant Feliu de Guíxols/ Deltebre)
Wednesday 18th October, 20 h
INFRA-MUSICALIZING THE INFINITIVE
ENCOUNTERS IN THE SPACE-TIME
GTS
C/ Igualada, 10
Donations at the end of the action
Wow! / Corporal music / even more, visual / by descriptive abstraction / and by the way from heart passion / to geometric thinking / racket of the calculus / like a whirlwind and tenacious environment / of a rushing mechanics / potential of never-ending / movement of a fantastic logic / and in the twinkling of an eye brain / shock indigestion of method /universal burp / with coup de fart / and nature breeze / to digest the reason. This is the way that Ester Xargai (voice) and Miquel Àngel Marín (clarinet and accordion) introduce their recital. Xargai, writer and videoartist, takes part in recitals, videorecitals and exhibitions. Marín, musician of an academic education, performs both classical music with national and international ensembles and free improvisation and music creation, performing across Europe, Korea and Israel. From 2001 onwards he shows his own creations in public: improvisation, musical actions, poetry, performance, modified clarinet, video. Don’t miss this polypoetry party!
JOSEP-MARIA BALANYÀ (Barcelona)
Thursday 19th October, 22 h
Nota 79
C/ Vallirana, 79
5 €
The career of the Brussels-based pianist from Barcelona Josep-Maria Balanyà, with 20 released recordings, has taken him from classical music and jazz up to specialising in improvisation, experimental acoustic art and performance, fields where he enjoys a high level of international acknowledgment. Balanyà is also an improviser, composer, conductor of improvisation orchestras and sound artist. He has developed his most imaginative actions at the boundary between music and performance, such as the recital in complete darkness at the Sendesaal of Bremen or the concert for the bells of Trier’s cathedral (Germany). His works as piano soloist mix the pure sound of the instrument with prepared piano techniques that allow the display of a wide range of non-conventional sounds. The concerts by Balanyà are forceful rituals —we would say that he plays the piano with his whole body— where we can perceive the presence of music changed into matter.
ORCHESTRA FIRELUCHE (La Cellera de Ter)
Friday 20th October, 21 h
Centre Cívic Convent de Sant Agustí
C/ Comerç, 36
6 €
Pascal Comelade and Pau Riba are some of the musicians that have played with the Orchestra Fireluche, a collective founded in 2002 in La Cellera de Ter (Girona). The Orchestra Fireluche is made of 10 musicians playing all kinds of instruments: toys, strange, classical, world instruments … The name comes from a text by Eduardo Galeano. Their world is that of fair music and ethereal and reverberating sounds; that of machine gears and pocket rock’n roll; the world of voice melodies. “Epics in lower case”, they say. Since 2004 they have released 7 albums, the last of which is Colibrí en flames (2017) and it supposes a return to their origins through the sieve of producer Morgan Chaney. The Fireluche reaches the LEM at last!
LINALAB (Barcelona)
Saturday 21st October, 22 h
Soda Acústic
C/ Guilleries, 6
5 € (dos concerts)
Colombian artist Lina Bautista returns to the LEM to present her experimental electronic music proposal: Linalab. Bautista has participated in several festivals (Sirga, Live Coding Festival, Eufònic, Sonar 2014 …). She currently combines his musical activity with sound research (Orquesta del caos, Familiar, Sons de Barcelona and Mediaestruch) and teaching (SAE Institute, Academy 303 and the Master in Sound Art of the UB). Linalab’s development, which begun more than six years ago, has been impelled by the search for new sonorities and the interest in new technologies applied to sound experimentation, from the start. With an ambient, glitch and drone sound, Linalab walks amongst noise and music, developing a musical speech made with textures and atmospheres based on the treatment of the guitar in real time.
ANISOTROPIC PERTURBATIONS (Barcelona)
Saturday 21st October, 23 h
Soda Acústic
C/ Guilleries, 6
5 € (dos concerts)
A scientific concept such as “anisotropy” —the ability of some substances to change their properties according to the direction in which it is observed-, is part of the name of this project which brings together three excellent musicians of free kinds of music of Barcelona. They are: Ivo Sans (drums) and Tom Chant (sax), two of the best exponents of the very lively local avant-garde-jazz scene, and Ferran Fages (guitar), an international reference in the field of electro-acoustic improvisation. Together, they form a trio with influences such as free-jazz, contemporary music and free improvisation. Libertarian music, both wild and unpredictable, created with “the swindler glance of that fireman that feels pyromaniac at the same time,” they say.
FLOY KROUCHI + RAYO-60 (Paris/Barcelona)
Wednesday 25th October, 20 h
GTS
C/ Igualada, 10
ENCOUNTERS IN THE SPACE-TIME
Donations at the end of the action
Floy Krouchi, the LEM 2017 resident artist, opened the LEM 2016 with her superb Bass Holograms: a series of motifs based upon the bass lower sounds and inaudible frequencies. Krouchi has presented her proposals in countries such as France, Germany, Holland, China and EEUU. The French bassist returns to the LEM along with Rayo-60, the alter ego of the sound explorer Ánder Agudo. The artist from Donosti works on the evocation of songs by means of manipulation, repetition and sampling. His aim is to create music close to the ambient and drone, a precious music wrapped in multiple textures. Krouchi and Rayo-60, two masters of sound abstraction, will unite their forces in a high-flying encounter.
“ORIOL PERUCHO IN MEMORIAM”
Projection of the documentary by MARTÍ SANS (Barcelona)
Thursday 26th October, 17 h
Filmoteca de Catalunya (Sala Chomón)
Plaça de Salvador Seguí, 1-9
4 € /3 € (reduïda)
Drummer and composer Oriol Perucho (Barcelona 1955 – 2016) was one of the most relevant leading figures of avant-garde music in Catalonia. He was one of the introducers of free jazz in Barcelona with bands such as Perucho’s, Baf, Tropopausa and Koniec. Committed with sound innovation and experimentation, Perucho put his extraordinary talent at the service of projects such as Moisés Moisés, Les Anciens or Pascal Comelade’s Bel Canto Orchestra in addition to his own solo works. Directed by Martí Sans, Oriol Perucho, in Memoriam is a moving homage to the figure of this unique musician with appearances by Oriol Pons de Vall (Ginger), Cabo San Roque, Enric Cervera, Eduard Altaba and Pep Pascual, among others.
FEDERICO FENU (Oristano)
SOCIOPATIE
EXCHANGE WITH THE FESTIVAL SIGNAL
Friday 27th October, 21 h
Centre Cívic Convent de Sant Agustí
C/ Comerç, 36
5€ (2 concerts)
Federico Fenu comes from the Oristano province (Sardinia). Multi-instrumentalist, this musician defines his education as “academic —degree in trombone— and anti-academic —he tempered as a blues guitar player—. Fenu amasses a long career in fields such as jazz, classical music, blues, swing and electronics. At the LEM, we will discover his experimental side. Lover of minimalism, free improvisation and drone, Fenu will offer a series of trombone solos with electronic effects and keyboards. Sociopatie is an evocation of the island of Sardinia, of its abrupt nature, of the lysergic character of its winds. “The trombone turns into a waterbird and it sinks its long legs into the smooth mud of sound” he says.
INIRE (Legnica)
TRANSCAPE DISTURBANCES
EXCHANGE WITH THE FESTIVAL INTERMEDIALE
Friday 27th October, 22 h
Centre Cívic Convent de Sant Agustí
C/ Comerç, 36
5€ (2 concerts)
INIRE is a duo formed by Krzysztof Pawlik and Małgorzata Dancewicz, whose performances are based on dynamic interactions between sound and image. They blend the traditional way of composing with improvisation, recording, mastering and music reproduction. INIRES’s works, once focused on the ways of contextual composing, is now more focused on exploring the formal boundaries of sound art, field recordings, musical collage and broadly understood electroacoustics. Transcape Disturbances is the project that INIRE will bring to the LEM, in which the main instruments they use are modular, voltage-controlled, audio and video systems. Pictures and sounds develop here intense structures, while interacting and permeating each other in an active way.
WARP TRIO (New York City)
Saturday 28th October, 22 h
Barcelona Pipa Club
C/ Santa Eulàlia, 21
7 €
Mikael Darmanie (piano), Ju Young Lee (cello) and Josh Henderson (violin) form this trio moving between styles such as chamber music and rock —“not your average piano trio” they warn—. Warp Trio searches the limits of formal structures by playing with eclecticism, rhythm, energy, improvisation, occasional use of electronics and the re-interpretation of standard tunes. And as if that weren’t enough, at the occasion of the European tour that will bring them to the LEM, they will come along with the 4th member of the band: the brilliant drummer Rick Martínez. All of these shapes a sound stew that American critics have defined as “a talented group that exemplifies the overcoming of contemporary music”. Brilliant closing of the LEM.
DJ DE LA MUERTE (Santiago de Compostela / Tron)
Saturday 28th October, 0:30 h
Grog
Torrent de l’Olla 134
CLOSING FEST
free entry
“This is not dancing, is to be danced” says Javi Álvarez, aka Dj de la Muerte, in a recording of a performance at the LEM 2009 under the name of Néboa. Craftsman of circuit-bending, that is, of the transformation of low-voltage electronic devices in musical instruments, or at least in noisy instruments, Álvarez has triggered a number of projects such as the Dúo Cobra, Fluzo or La Follable. At this occasion, like many other times in the contra-cultural nights of Barcelona, Dj de la Muerte will be the DJ master/monster of ceremonies at the closing party of the LEM and who knows along what nooks of a dimension hidden to everybody except himself he will carry us. Many things will dance, feet, whole bodies or fluorescent drinks.
LEM FESTIVAL 