room40 european tour

LAWRENCE ENGLISH [aus]

Lawrence English head of the ROOM40 Label, is headed to Europe for a lengthy tour celebrating both 5 years of Room40 and the release of his latest solo recording Happiness Will Befall Collected across four countries over two months, the record bares the marks of shifting
surroundings, unfamiliar sound marks and echoed memories from New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and South India. The record was composed largely using guitar and computer with some additional live instrumentation (electronics, cassettes, turntables) layered into the compositions.
A carefully sculpted listening experience, the record drifts from single sparse notes sprawling out across the stereo field, into densely textured washes of sound. At times remote and coarse, much of Happiness Will Befall bares a reflective sensibility - due as much to the character of the environments in which it was recorded, as the qualities of the sounds themselves. A personal and engaging aural rite of passage across the Asia Pacific region.

Lawrence English is writer, composer and media artist based in Brisbane, Australia. Working across a broad range of art forms, English’s work is eclectic and characterises a long-term exploration of various themes – most recently audio/visual environments seen in his work Ghost Towns.
A sonic shape-shifter, English’s audio works have sprawled over a range of areas. Interested in the potential of seemingly unrelated music and sound elements – from experimental soundscapes and free improvisation to processed beat works and concréte-influenced compositions – his back catalogue spans a dynamic range of frameworks. London’s Time Out referred to his output as ‘ambient twisted soundscapes and challenging sonic scree’.
Lawrence English’s captures the simple sounds of life—insect buzzes, bird chirps, passing cars, alarms, and incidental vocal snippets—but with the help of a posse of like-minded sound artists, he transforms them into surreal transmissions from a dream plane. The world he interprets is normal (his sound sources will be familiar to any listener), but his interpretation of it is magical. The result is a vision of a foggy perma-night inhabited by solemn, torch-wielding prophets, living storm clouds, and somnambulant hordes of brooding wildlife.

STEINBRÜCHEL
Der Zürcher Musiker und Komponist steinbrüchel experimentiert an den Randbereichen gängiger Musikrepertoires. Seine innovative Arbeit am Sound selbst ist am ehesten dem Feld der experimentellen Elektronik zu zuschreiben. Die Ausgefeiltheit der Komposition und das gewissenhafte, konzeptionelle Arrangement aber, stehen der klassischen Sparte der Neuen Musik viel näher als dem Clubkontext, dem die Digitale Klangkunst sonst so gerne zugeschrieben wird. Der Schweizer Ralph Steinbrüchel, geb. 1969, erwarb den "Master of
Communication Design" an der Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design in London und lebt derzeit als Musiker und Grafikdesigner in Zürich. 2002 wurde seine Komposition «zwischen.raum» (Domizil15, Zürich, 2002) mit dem Max Brand Preis ausgezeichnet (phonoTAKTIK.02 Festival, New York). Im gleichen Jahr erhielt er ein Kompositionsstipendium der Schweizer Kulturstiftung "Pro Helvetia" für «circa» (Line_012, New York, 2003).