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March 17th 2012 @ Lanternhouse 7pm - 10pm - £3 on the door

Open Circuit is saddened to hear of the closure of Lanternhouse at the end of March - this really is sad news for the arts and community in our area. So we have our last gig there on March 17th featuring 4 brilliant solo artists from around the UK.

HOT HAIL:
Hot Hail is a solo vehicle of Simon Jones, a composer, multimedia artist and performer based in Liverpool. Simon is one of the founding members of sound-art group, Noise Club, and a leading organiser of Frakture, an organisation that promotes free improvisation in the North West of England.

Simon's compositional work deals with sound-colour as melody, microtonality, and notions of continuity. As an installation artist, his work explores interactivity, creating immersive and multisensory pieces, working not only with sound and vision, but smell and touch. Simon is also a regular performer of freely improvised music with a number of groups, including the Frakture Big Band, the Infinite Monkey Orchestra, i:Object, and Fraktal.

Hot Hail is a musical extension of Simon's work more generally, keeping the same concerns as in his compositional work, but fused with the techniques of free improvisation. In Hot Hail, Simon performs on an array of found objects, effects and laptop, creating dynamic soundscapes that range from the darkly disturbing to the strangely sublime.

The name Hot Hail comes from one of the disasters that the Emperor Ming sent down on Earth in Flash Gordon. Logically, the two components, heat and hail, are completely incompatible, but intuitively the human mind is able to construct this impossible phenomenon in fine detail, with a set of characteristics that describe it; a new creation from the expressive qualities of opposites.

Hot Hail on Facebook :: Simon Jones Blog

ALEX CHARLES:
"Alex Charles makes loops out of small sounds and short events, layering them on the fly. Formerly the prime mover behind the perpetually obscure Thee Moths, Alex has shared bills with Goodiepal, Lucky Dragons, Mount Eerie, Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sdes, and even The Legend!, amongst many many others. He is a prolific creator, spinning off many side projects, as well as working in visual arts and writing"

www.alexcharlesmusic.co.uk

SHENGI:
Hailing from the Lake District, artist cum sound engineer, Fern Oxley (Shengi) explores her place in the universe via sound generation, resonance, social consciousness and analogue representation of digital worlds.

Her specialisms include: sound synthesis, music production, sound engineering, DJing, creative workshop development, textiles, multimedia visual arts, and social and political discussion.

Strong collaborative projects have and are continuing to take place with Octopus Collective, Full Of Noises Festival, 44 Productions and other creation projects based both in the South Lake District and nationally within the UK

www.shengi.co.uk

CLUTTER:
Clutter is the solo musical project of Shaun Blezard.

Working in the fields of electro-acoustic improvisation, ambient, music concrete and many things between, Clutter has toured extensively and released music with Sonic Oyster Records, Apollolaan, Earth Monkey Productions, Electronic Musik, Clinical Archives and many others.

The current Clutter set up includes laptop, iPhone, Korg Monotron, Mintendo DS, Bass guitar and host of effects pedals, used in different combinations.

‘A kind of dark, swirling chamber kosmiche/ambient tangent, Clutter has created something organic & cerebral from contributed noises & sounds which he has re-arranged & processed to create something quite wonderful. I don’t particularly want to rattle on too much about this as the music is of a rich, fascinating quality, ‘Live at the Bombed Out Church‘ takes you right off on a dream-like astral plain. Does this church exist? If so, I want to go.’ 5/5 Norman Records

‘the music on this EP (Yellow Light Discarded) reminds me more of Max Richters most out there experiments or Nurse With Wound at their most ethereal. Field recordings, strings and dubbed out noises all crop up filling this 3” CD with more ideas than some full length albums. A bold, innovative release that leaves me hungry for more. It’s a pleasurable 22 minutes.’ — Was Ist Das?

shaunblezard.net

The gig will also be streamed live on the internet - details to follow