KEY POINTS:
Consider how far we have come in terms of thinking about sound: these days the screaming of Yoko Ono and rock bands evoking industrial noise co-exist with string quartets and solo piano.
Musicians are as at home banging on cans as they are sitting down before a digital screen and using a cursor to create sound.
The boundaries of the sonic arts continue to be pushed, and the Alt.music Festival in Auckland during July will doubtless challenge audiences as much as entertain them.
Among the international guests will be the American composer Pauline Oliveros who was a pioneer in electronic music in the late 50s and whose work with tape delays redefined notions of composition and performance. She was part of the innovative group which included Terry Riley and Steve Reich.
For the Alt.music Festival she will perform a variant of her famous piece A Little Noise in the System, some more recent works with the poet and vocalist Ione, and with Auckland sonic artist Phil Dadson.
Professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York state, Oliveros has also advanced the concept of Deep Listening, an intense listening practice which connects the listener to all sounds from the environment as well as music and internal thoughts. As part of the festival Oliveros will offer a free Deep Listening workshop.
Also in the Alt.music Festival is the ensemble La Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine, a group of musicians and film-makers who research the interface between sound and image, and use live editing and projectors to create sounds and images.
At the cutting edge of avant-garde cinema and the sonic arts, Metamkine from France also have an affiliation with like-minded artists in New Zealand, among them Dunedin musician Michael Morley who was in the Flying Nun band Dead C and also performed as Gate.
The Auckland electronic group Plains, will perform live to images generated by Morley.
Metamkine's Jerome Noetinger will offer a workshop during the festival.
The programme also throws down the gauntlet for audiences with a performance by the Schimpfluch-Gruppe from Zurich: historical references will doubtless alert the casual or the curious to the nature of their work. They utilise Dadaist strategies of chance, attack and the unexpected, and were in the vanguard of the physicality of Industrial Noise movements in Europe.
A collective which was established 20 years ago, Schimpfluch-Gruppe have been challenging conceptions of sound through a changing line-up of musicians, among them Dave Phillips formerly of the Swiss hardcore-extremist band Fear of God. These days, working predominantly with voice, Phillips is part of the ensemble in Auckland for the festival. Also on the bill with Schimpfluch-Gruppe and Phillips is Aucklander Matt Middleton, a one-man noise festival in himself who performs under the title Crude.
Noise annoys as they say, but at the short Alt.music Festival it will also provoke and challenge, and doubtless delight.
Lowdown
What: Alt.Music Festival
Who: Pauline Oliveros, Ione, Phil Dadson; Herald Theatre, July 6, 8pm (workshop St Paul St Gallery, July 4, 6pm). La Cellule D'Intervention Metamkine, Plains, Michael Morley; Kenneth Myers Centre, Shortland St, July 14, 8pm (workshop Kenneth Myers Centre, July 14, 4pm). Schimpfluch-Gruppe, Rising Sun, K Rd July 28, 9pm (workshop to be confirmed)
