Our July club night is almost upon us, and we’re excited to present the launch of electronic musician and expert analogue tinkerer Tom Richards’ new LP PINK NOTHING. To celebrate the launch, Tom has curated an eclectic night of theremin solos, vocal drone poetry, performances on the Mini Oramics machine, plus our usual DJ sets and, of course, live performances from Tom himself.
To give you a taste of what you might expect on 31 July, here’s a bit about the performers involved.
Tom Richards
Tom Richards is an electronic musician, DJ and instrument designer, who featured on our first Outside the Lines EP. His work often walks the fine line between sonic art, sculpture and music to create slowly evolving and heavily textured polyrhythmic improvisations, generated from his own idiosyncratic modular system. One instrument of particular note is his Mini Oramics machine - a ‘drawn sound’ instrument first conceived by electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram, and finally realised by Tom in 2016 during his PhD at Goldsmiths. He’s given performer and composer Sarah Angliss full reign on his Mini Oramics machine, and she’ll be premiering a new work with soprano Sarah Angliss.
At the LP launch, Tom will perform some of the tracks from his album. He says: ‘There’s a lot of serendipity involved in wrestling grooves out of these awkward machines. A large part of the composition is making the machines and the patches. They define the limitations of the pieces coming together. Then the performances are happy accidents - found using intuition and practice.’
Sarah Angliss
©Agata Urbaniak
Similar to Tom, Sarah is an instrument builder and her unique creations are central to her performances. She’s also a renowned Theremin player and often combines analogue and modern electronic sounds to create a new, distinctive sound world. Her work has been heard at Royal Festival Hall, Café Oto, Moog Labs for Supersonic and The Old Vic theatre, amongst others.
As mentioned above, she’ll be performing a new work alongside acclaimed soprano Sarah Gabriel, which will explore the Mini Oramics machine as an ensemble instrument that interacts with the voice – something that is unique to this performance.
Steph Horak
Also featured during the launch is sound and video artist Steph Horak. Sitting in-between experimental electronica, conceptualism and traditional songwriting, Steph explores the voice through different musical systems, including self-programmed software or combinations of hardware and electronic instruments.
At the launch, Steph will perform vocal drone poetry, something she has previously explored with threehundredandsixtysix, a sound project in which Steph sings a note a day for a year and makes a mix from these sounds each month.
Graham Dunning
© Elyssa Iona
As well the performances above, Graham Dunning will be DJing in-between sets. A self-taught artist and musician, he is most known for Mechanical Techno - a technique that is visual as much as it is musical, in which Graham explores new ways of using the turntables, such as stacking vinyl and dubplates on a single turntable or using recycling found objects in a new context.
Tom Richards’ LP PINK NOTHING will launch on 31 July at The Victoria, Dalston. For more information and to book tickets, visit our event page. His new LP PINK NOTHING is also available to download and stream, and also buy on 12” vinyl via our nonclassical bandcamp.