Electronic pioneers take over the Bluecoat on Saturday with Antony Gormley’s Another Place providing the inspiration.
A one-off collaboration from two world renowned sonic innovators marks the latest culture year commission from Liverpool electronic music promoters The Hive Collective.
The Spectacular Suburb: Matthew Herbert (famed for his incredible Scale record from 2006) and Chris Watson create a Concert from Another Place, is the third of their Twilight City events and sees the artists working together on on a new musical composition constructed entirely from recordings from the site of Antony Gormley‘s Another Place on Crosby Beach.
Hive’s Matt Smith said: “We’re really excited to have Crosby Beach as a focus for this brand new work by award winning artists.
“The Gormley statues have brought a different focus to an already popular place, just like the Capital of Culture award has to Liverpool.
“Matthew Herbert and Chris Watson have worked with the likes of Bjork, REM Yoko Ono and even Sir David Attenborough, but their collaboration on this project is unique.”
The event on Saturday will be a true one-off. A specially prepared performance space in the Bluecoat will see Chris Watson explore Another Place and Crosby Beach through a series of recordings he made at the beach earlier in the summer, followed by Matthew Herbert’s presentation of his brand new musical composition based on those recordings.
The Spectacular Suburb is the penultimate in a series of four high profile audiovisual performances over the course of 2008.
Matt says: “We are paying tribute to a potentially overlooked part of Liverpool’s essence: its industrial and business buildings, its bricks, Liverpool the space – the iconic and mundane, the city centre and the suburb.
“Each event will work as a celebration of existing city structures as the city itself moves onwards, a snapshot prior to the city’s ongoing mutation into a premier 21st Century City.
“In each event familiar sounds are reworked, familiar sights distorted in a feast of the best in new electronic music and state of the art projected visuals.”
Tickets for Saturday night’s events are ã7/5 from the Bluecoat box office.
Matthew Herbert:
Restless innovator, sampling wizard, classically trained pianist and superstar collaborator, Matthew Herbert is one of electronic music’s most versatile and prolific figureheads. Herbert has produced and remixed artists as diverse as Björk, REM, John Cale, Roisin Murphy, Yoko Ono and Serge Gainsbourg. An alchemist of avant-garde sound in the tradition stretching from Stockhausen to the Aphex Twin, Herbert combines playful pop sensibility with a strictly imposed experimental agenda.
Chris Watson:
Chris Watson is a world renowned sound recordist and one of the pioneers of UK electronic music. Chris has travelled the world exploring the wildlife sounds of animals, habitats and atmospheres for some of the BBC’s most popular natural history programmes, such as Life in the Undergrowth, Talking with Animals, Big Cat Diary and The Life of Birds for which he won a BAFTA . Beginning his career as a musician in the Sheffield band Cabaret Voltaire, he has released three solo CDs through Touch.