Recommendations for Sound Unbound

I’m massively excited about our gig at Sound Unbound this weekend. I’ve never been to the festival before, but I’m very impressed with the programme, which has a huge range and some really excellent new music. The fact that it’s all free and almost all unticketed is quite something.

That said, it’s all rather overwhelming, so I thought I’d put together a pick of the festival for those who want to really make a weekend of it. Please do come to see us on Sunday: there’s very little choral and electronic music around, so it’s a really unique chance to hear a sound that is like little else.

Elsewhere in the programme, I think I’m most interested in Amir Konjani’s new piece, Mira Calix’s set and the 12ensemble’s performance. But that’s because I’ve already heard Liam Byrne, Bartosz Glowacki and James McVinnie. If you haven’t, I’d make sure you take the chance! So here, at some length, are my picks for the weekend:
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Saturday
Full Listings

1.30pm: Genevieve Lacey’s recorder and electronics programme looks excellent, including pieces by Liza Lim and Brett Dean. If your only experience of recorders is nursery school horror then check out this tender and strange collection of pieces. 

2pm: Then I’d head to Fabric to catch modular synth goodness with Nonclassical and Tom Richards. Pink Something has been my housework track today, it’s great fun.

Hang around for ?corporel if you’re not likely to catch it on Sunday. It’s a damn good piece that involves a performer inflicting a surprising amount of physical violence upon themselves.

3pm: Definitely go to hear Amir Konjani’s To Be Someone Else Is A Battle. This has been firing around my social media and seems to involve a mutated harp and a colossal, beautiful graphic score. I’m very curious: I have no idea what the sound is like but the look is very cool indeed.

4pm: Mira Calix with Nonclassical! She’s amazing, her early 00s stuff was a big influence, it’s all lovely, crunchy lopsided beats.

5.15pm: James McVinnie in St. Bartholomew the Great! James McVinnie is an amazing organist, St. Bart’s is beautiful.

6pm: Shiva Feshariki with Nonclassical. OK, so that’s all three Nonclassical gigs I’ve recommended, but it’s the right call. Plus you get to see Fabric sober, which I guess is a plus? Feshariki writes varies electronic music, with an emphasis on turntable sounds and a kind of doom-y vibe.

8pm: I’d love to see The Artist with a live orchestra, but I’ll be watching Eurovision…
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Sunday
Full Listings

12pm: Beethoven’s Eroica, with Thomas Ades and the Britten Sinfonia. A nice, heavy brunch.

1pm: At LSO St. Luke's The Ragazze Quartet play Sofia Gubaidulina’s String Quartet No. 2 and new music by Mayke Nas. The Gubaidulina is lovely, I have no idea about Nas, but I’d be really interested to catch this if I weren’t setting up microphones.

2pm: Us! Come see SANSARA and I perform at St. Bartholomew the Great. It’s electronic and vocal music, from messed up medievals to a new work by me about death.

OR, if you want to see us later, I’d go catch Bartosz Glowacki at Piano Smithfield at 2.30 – he’s an astonishing accordionist.

3pm: Definitely go catch Liam Byrne’s Drum with the backe of your bow at Charterhouse Chapel. He’s an amazing viol player, taking an old instrument in superbly interesting new directions. You could also stay put: if you haven’t caught James McVinnie on Saturday, you can see him in the same venue as us on Sunday.

4pm: Us again! If you didn’t make the first one, come see us at St. Bartholomew the Great (or, you know, come again). If you caught us the first time, I’d go see Globokar’s ?corporel in the Barbican Conservatory. I produced a video of it once, so I’m biased, but if you missed it on Saturday you should definitely catch it now.

5pm: The Sackbut Ensemble at 5.30 would be cool for some really medieval vibes, or perhaps seeing electric guitars play Tudor music at 5 is good? Who knows, I don’t know any of these groups.

6pm: Go see the 12ensemble play string music. It’s got a new piece by Oliver Leith, who’s one of my favourites: he writes bendy music that’s often sad. They’re also playing Jonny Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood suite, which is an awesome Ligeti rip off that I’d love to see live, and an arrangement by Josephine Stevenson.

Josephine’s music is flinty and ingenious, with melody but also a lot of crunch and surprise. She also spends a lot of time performing in all kinds of diaphanous rock and folk music, so knows that stuff like the back of her hand. So I expect her arrangement of Ex:Re’s beautiful My Heart will be superb.
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8pm: Max Cooper + Bruce Brubaker doing Glassforms. I’m a Glass-sceptic, but I’d be interested to check this out, it’s an electronic re-working of Glass, which could be cool.