On April 4, Riga, Latvia’s Skaņu Mežs association for adventurous music continues its concert series “1 – 2 cauri!” with “Music for Portable Technologies” – a night of electro-acoustic and improvised music that will feature the trio of Regan Bowering, Li Song and Conal Blake, and the duo of Ecka Mordecai and Rory Salter.
IMPORTANT: The venue for this event has been changed to cultural space “Smilga” (Eduarda Smiļģa street 34A).
The concert starts at 19:00, and tickets can be purchased at www.ticketservice.lv for 10 EUR; they will cost 15 EUR at the entrance. Like all Skaņu Mežs concerts of “1 – 2 cauri!” in 2024, the event will be supported by the Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia.
First performance: Regan Bowering, Conal Blake & Li Song (Trio)
Li Song, Conal Blake, and Regan Bowering are a percussion and electronics trio based in London. Their work explores site-specificity and improvisation through the use of snare drums, microphones, portable speakers and found materials. In 2023, they released their debut cassette tape “Music for Snare Drums and Portable Speakers” on Infant Tree.
Regan Bowering is a percussionist, improviser and sound artist based in London. Her solo work explores various combinations of objects and materials, drums and percussion, amps, speakers, and feedback. Her debut tape was released in December 2023 on Bezirk Tapes.
Conal Blake is a musician from Glasgow. He currently plays solo and improvises with Li Song and Regan Bowering, using electronics and percussion. He also runs the Feedback Moves label.
Li Song is a London-based musician and computer programmer. He performs improvised music with his computer and composes music using electronics and acoustic instruments. He has a collaborative project with Zhu Wenbo, No Performance, and is also a member of computer network music ensemble and research group, [ _ _ _ ].
Daryl Worthington of The Quietus wrote thus of the trio’s first recording: “Taken as audio alone with no idea what the three players were doing, it has a supernatural edge, objects animating seemingly of their own accord through fields of resonance and feedback. Their music toys with cause and effect, action and response, visible and invisible motion with joyously eventful results.”
Second performance: Ecka Mordecai & Rory Salter (Duo)
Ecka Mordecai is a London-based artist. She has projects with Revox tape performer Valerio Tricoli in the duo Mordecoli, and in the trio Circæa with Andrew Chalk and Tom James Scott. Her album Promise & Illusion was released on Otoroku in 2022.
Rory Salter makes music under various monikers and has released albums with Alter, TakuRoku, Infant Tree, Teeth, Index Clean, Zoomin’ Night, Bison and more. He lives in London.
Together Ecka and Rory forge soundscapes using an assorted bag of tools – cello, voice, field recordings, cassette tape, feedback, and amplified objects – without giving precedence to any. While their performances are comprised of moments of subtlety and restraint, they are far from straightforward: sounds that had evoked feelings of tenderness and comfort can shift almost imperceptibly to summon a feeling of tense disquiet; incidental sounds of the performance space coalesce with the considered non-musical components of their soundscape to the extent that the two become confoundingly indistinguishable. Ecka and Rory’s adeptness in eliciting emotional dizziness through their muted yet entrancing collaboration allows their sounds to resound beyond the compelling immediacy of their performance.
Tickets: www.ticketservice.lv
