Seeking performance opportunities; particularly in Europe 2014: the cyborg ensemble of interactive, semi-autonomous, technological artifact and machine musician and improviser io 0.0.1 beta++ with human musicians Han-earl Park, Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder.
This quartet (or faux-quartet, if you prefer) performs demanding free improvisation calling on a range of extended techniques. Pieces of dismantled gestures, destabilizing timbres, and impressive synergy.
François Couture (Monsieur Délire)
An idea that would be pleasing to the Futurists of a century ago, a total hymn to modernity…. The completely improvised session requires a lot of attention from the listener, to be fully repaid by that which is a successful experiment.
Vittorio (MusicZoom)
We watch and listen carefully because we know we’re seeing a kind of manifesto in action. What is an automaton? A sketch, a material characterization of the ideas the inventor and the inventor’s culture have about some aspect of life, and how it could be. io and its kind are alternate beings born of ideas, decisions and choices. It is because io stands alone, an automaton, that the performance recorded on this CD not only is music, but is about music.
An extraordinary meeting between human and machine improvisers. Featuring the machine musician io 0.0.1 beta++ with guitarist Han-earl Park and saxophonists Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder, the performance is part critique and part playful exploration, both a boundary-breaking demonstration of socio-musical technologies and an ironic sci-fi parody.
Constructed by Han-earl Park, io 0.0.1 beta++ is a modern-day musical automaton. It is not an instrument to be played but a non-human artificial musician that performs alongside its human counterparts. io 0.0.1 beta++ representing a personal-political investigation of technology, interaction, improvisation and musicality. It whimsically evokes a 1950s B-movie robot—seemingly jerry-rigged, constructed from ad-hoc components including plumbing, kitchenware, speakers and missile switches—celebrating the material and corporeal.
The performances with this artificial musician highlights society’s entanglement with technology, demonstrates alternative modes of interfacing the musical and the technological, and illuminates the creative and improvisative processes in music. The performance is a radical and playful engagement with powerful and problematic dreams (and nightmares) of the artificial; a dream as old as the anthropology of robots.
The construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.
Special thanks to Randy McKean for organizing the tour, Ken Schumacher of Live Vibes Recording for the engineering, and to Corey Mwamba for feedback during the mastering process.
In front of a small but appreciative audience, the California-based Gargantius Effect, including [Han-earl] Park, Murray Campbell, Randy McKean, Scott Looney and Gino Robair, slip in and out of something approaching Webern-ian counterpoint on Nor Cal 8-2011. Looney and Robair join in later on this disc of various tour dates, leaving the other three to explore the outer limits of timbre, especially on the epic “Old Robots Never Rust”. Campbell’s violin slides are an excellent foil to the more vocal qualities in Park’s improvising, not to mention similar devices used by multi-reedist Randy McKean as the trio converge and diverge in pitch space. When Robair and Looney appear, electronics and hyperpiano are difficult to distinguish, but first-rate audio keeps everything in proper perspective and the improv is always edge-of-seat energetic.
“Han [Han-earl Park] is a very old friend of mine. We’ve done a lot of strange things in various parts of Europe. He’s somewhat responsible for me ending up in Nevada County. About ten years ago he was studying at CalArts, and I came over to play in his graduation show. Part of that trip was my first visit to Nevada County, where many things spinned out from that.
“Also finding this gentleman [Randy McKean] here in Grass Valley; finding not only a great improvising player, but one that plays bass clarinet, was a huge thing that helped me stay. It was a complete leap in the dark to move out here. I was raised in a rural area, I always known that that was the thing to do, but leaving a metropolitan zone [The Hague] and coming out here with nothing—no plan—was a shot in the dark, and finding that there were things like this [McKean] in the woods made it a lot easier to stay.
“So these are two of my favorite people to play music with.”
The Gargantius Effect is the brainchild of Murray Campbell (violins, oboe and cor anglais) and Randy McKean (saxophone, clarinets and flutes). Like the Stanislaw Lem story of the same name, in which armies of warring soldiers are linked together to form a peaceful, blissfully-aware omni-mind, so, too, these longtime collaborators and Nevada County natives transform the connections and crossfires of the various genres in which they usually find themselves—the Euro-café of Beacoup Chapeaux, Balkan swing of Chickenbonz, chamber jazz of Bristle—into scintillating bits of free improvisation, compositional constructs and mechanized mayhem.
This album documents Gargantius Effect’s August 2011 tour of Northern California with special guest and fellow Sonologist Han-earl Park (guitar), who had just returned to the States after years in Europe, teaching, and playing with the likes of Paul Dunmall, Charles Hayward and Franziska Schroeder. In addition to the recording of the performance at The Tin House (Grass Valley) on August 25, 2011, the August 30, 2011 session at Studio 1510 (Oakland) features Bay Area veteran improviser, composer and electronic artist Gino Robair (energized surfaces, voltage made audible), and hyperpianist Scott R. Looney (hyperpiano).
The Gargantius Effect is the brainchild of Murray Campbell (violin, oboe and electronics) and Randy McKean (reeds). Like the Stanislaw Lem story of the same name, in which armies of warring soldiers are linked together to form a peaceful, blissfully-aware omni-mind, so, too, these long-time collaborators channel their contrarian impulses into synchronized bouts of free improvisation, compositional constructs and mechanized mayhem.
Murray Campbell
Murray Campbell has described himself as a Sonologist ever since it was recommended to him as a more respectable occupation than “musician” for the purposes of immigration control. In this capacity he has worked with Alex Fiennes on an octaphonic spatialisation system un-muted at Dialogues Festival (Edinburgh).
He currently resides in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California where he is designing an off-grid solar-powered geodesic wavefront recreation system with the aim of upsetting the bears.
He finds writing about himself in the third person slightly disturbing.
Randy McKean
Randy McKean has burrowed into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada but still wants to blow your mind. Whether his mission is executed by his chamber jazz quartet Bristle, through sideman gigs with the likes of the Euro Café messabouts Beaucoup Chapeaux, or via performances of his pieces for orchestra or string quartet, matters not to him, as long as his objective is achieved. Perhaps one of his CDs—Bristle’s Bulletproof (Edgetone), So Dig This Big Crux (Rastascan), or the Great Circle Saxophone Quartet’s Child King Dictator Fool (New World)—will do the job.
Han-earl Park
Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park has been crossing borders and performing fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, always traditional, open improvised musics for over fifteen years. He has performed in clubs, theaters, art galleries, concert halls, and (ad-hoc) alternative spaces in Austria, Denmark, Germany, England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Scotland and the USA.
Park is part of Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith, Eris 136199 with Nick Didkovsky and Catherine Sikora, and Numbers with Richard Barrett. He is the constructor of the machine improviser io 0.0.1 beta++, a project performed in coalition with Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder. He has recently performed with Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Dunmall, Lol Coxhill, Mark Sanders, Gino Robair, Tim Perkis, Pat Thomas, Andrew Drury, Josh Sinton, Dominic Lash, and as part of ensembles led by Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, and Pauline Oliveros. Festival appearances include Freedom of the City (London), Sonorities (Belfast), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), dialogues festival (Edinburgh), and CEAIT (California). His recordings have been released by labels including Slam Productions and Creative Sources.
Park taught improvisation at the UCC Department of Music, and founded and curated Stet Lab, a space for improvised music in Cork.
Gino Robair
Gino Robair has created music for dance, theater, radio, television, silent film, and gamelan orchestra, and his works have been performed throughout North America, Europe, and Japan. He was composer in residence with the California Shakespeare Festival for five seasons and served as music director for the CBS animated series The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. His commercial work includes themes for the MTV and Comedy Central cable networks.
Robair is also one of the “25 innovative percussionists” included in the book Percussion Profiles (SoundWorld, 2001). He has recorded with Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, Terry Riley, Lou Harrison, John Butcher, Derek Bailey, Peter Kowald, Otomo Yoshihide, the ROVA Saxophone Quartet, and Eugene Chadbourne, among many others. In addition, Robair has performed with John Zorn, Nina Hagen, Fred Frith, Eddie Prevost, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Myra Melford, Wadada Leo Smith, and the Club Foot Orchestra.
Robair is a founding member of the Splatter Trio and the heavy-metal band, Pink Mountain. In addition, he runs Rastascan Records, a label devoted to creative music.
10–24–12: add recommended price. 05–20–13: updated the ‘also available for download’ list, and updated reviews. 11–01–15: add A Little Brittle Music to downloads list, and change currency from USD to EUR.
Seeking performance opportunities; particularly in North America during 2012–2013; and Europe, late-2013 and 2014 onwards (contact us for other locations and dates): composer, computer artist and guitarist Nick Didkovsky, guitarist, improviser and constructor Han-earl Park, and composer and saxophonist Catherine Sikora (saxophones).
Eris 136199 plays on the crossroads of noise, melody, rhythm, space, density, contrast, synchronicity, asymmetry, serendipity and contradiction. Eris 136199 is the noisy, unruly complexity of composer, computer artist and guitarist Nick Didkovsky, the corporeal, cyborg virtuosity of constructor and guitarist Han-earl Park, and the no-nonsense melodic logic of composer and saxophonist Catherine Sikora.
A composer who enjoys blurry boundaries, Nick Didkovsky founded the avant-rock big band Doctor Nerve, and is a member of Swim This with Gerry Hemingway and Michael Lytle. He is a pioneer of small-systems computer music, and has composed music for ensemble including Bang On A Can All-Stars and the California EAR Unit.
Described by Brian Morton as “a musical philosopher… a delightful shape-shifter”, Han-earl Park is drawn to real-time cyborg configurations in which artifacts and bodies collide. He has performed with some of the finest practitioners of improvised music, is part of Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith, and Numbers with Richard Barrett.
Catherine Sikora is “a free-blowing player’s player with a spectacular harmonic imagination and an evolved understanding of the tonal palette of the saxophone” (Chris Elliot, Seacoast Online). She has a long-standing duo project with Eric Mingus, and performs as part of ensembles led by Elliott Sharp, François Grillot and Matt Lavelle.
Together, Didkovsky, Park and Sikora forges an improvisative space where melody can be melody, noise can be noise, meter can be meter, metal becomes metal, bluegrass turns to bluegrass, jazz transforms into jazz, all there, all necessary without imploding under idiomatic pressures.
Nick Didkovsky, Han-earl Park and Catherine Sikora are also available for performance/improvisation/composition workshops and talks.
This Sunday (September 16, 2012), at 9:30pm: a performance by Jonathan Goldberger (guitar), Han-earl Park (guitar), Sean Ali (bass) and Will McEvoy (bass), plus Anna Webber (reeds), Ben Syversen (trumpet), TJ Huff (guitar), Dustin Carlson (guitar) and Mark Ziegler (bass), as part of Out Of Your Head curated by Josh Sinton. The event takes place at The Backroom @ Freddy’s Bar (627 5th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215) [map/directions…].
The Backroom @ Freddy’s Bar
627 5th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215
9:30pm
Performance by Jonathan Goldberger (guitar), Han-earl Park (guitar), Sean Ali (bass) and Will McEvoy (bass), plus Anna Webber (reeds), Ben Syversen (trumpet), TJ Huff (guitar), Dustin Carlson (guitar) and Mark Ziegler (bass), as part of Out Of Your Head.
[Details…]
[Freddy’s page…]
[OOYH page…]
Seeking performances in Europe, 2014 for the cyborg ensemble of interactive, semi-autonomous, technological artifact and machine musician io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself) with human musicians Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (saxophones). Interested promoters, venues and sponsors, please get in touch! [Detailed proposal…]
And, as always, thanks to everyone who came to listen and witness real-time music in motion… including the one person in the audience who really did not dig what I was doing… at all %^}
Saturday, September 8, 2012, at 8:00pm (set: 9:00pm): a performance by Michael Evans (drums), Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen (saxophone) and Han-earl Park (guitar). Also performing are Brad Henkel (trumpet) at 8:00pm, and Angelika Niescer Quartet (Angelika Niescer: alto sax; Florian Weber: piano; Chris Tordini: bass; and Tommy Crane: drums) at 10:00pm. Presented as part of Save The Date #8, the event takes place at Douglass Street Music Collective (295 Douglass Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn, NY 11217) [map and directions…]. $10 suggested donation.
Cork 7-29-10, much of it solo, might be the best way into Park’s protean guitar syntax. The space is huge, which allows for exploration of resonance, but the recording is also fairly close, facilitating clarity of detail. The latter proves especially important as Park slams through blocks of sound and these deteriorate into shreds and scraps, punctuated with what can only be described as ululations, which become more prominent as things proceed. Park’s often-distorted fingerwork, much of it conjuring shades of the human voice, also references Derek Bailey’s rapid-fire volume shifts and Joe Morris’ fleet runs while sounding like neither. While violinist Marian Murray does not exactly speak Park’s language, there is certainly a shared interest in brief but pithy phrases and space that keeps communication at a high level.
A solo performance by guitarist-constructor Han-earl Park exploring, with feedback and resonant buzzes, the complex, cavernous acoustics of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, and the interactions between artifact (guitar) and the body (guitarist). For ‘Strokes and Screwballs,’ Park is joined by violinist-improviser Marian Murray for a conversational improvisation.
Recorded live July 29, 2010 at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork.
Performance presented by the Lewis Glucksman Gallery.
Recorded and mixed by Han-earl Park.
Artwork by Han-earl Park.
Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park has been working within/from/around traditions of fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, mostly open improvised musics for over fifteen years, sometimes engineering theater, sometimes inventing ritual. He feels the gravitational pull of collaborative, multi-authored contexts, and has performed in clubs, theaters, art galleries, concert halls, and (ad-hoc) alternative spaces in Austria, Denmark, Germany, England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Scotland and the USA.
He is part of Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith, and is involved in collaborations with Bruce Coates, Franziska Schroeder, Alex Fiennes and Murray Campbell. He has recently performed with Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Lol Coxhill, Pat Thomas, Paul Dunmall, Mark Sanders, Matana Roberts, Richard Barrett, Pauline Oliveros, Thomas Buckner and Kato Hideki. Festival appearances include Sonorities (Belfast), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), dialogues festival (Edinburgh), VAIN Live Art (Oxford), and the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology Festival (California). His recordings have been released by labels including Slam Productions and DUNS Limited Edition.
Park founded Stet Lab, a monthly improvised music space in Cork, Ireland, and taught improvisation at the UCC Department of Music.
“Guitarist Han-earl Park is a musical philosopher…. Expect unexpected things from Park, who is a delightful shape-shifter….”
Brian Morton (Point of Departure)
Marian Murray completed a degree in music at University College Cork. While there she became heavily involved in improvised music within the college and without. Mainly focusing on small group improvisations she has also collaborated with contemporary composers and multimedia artists. She has performed in a variety of settings from the Irish National Concert Hall, to the Cork Opera House, to art galleries, and with musicians such as Han-earl Park, Alexander Hawkins, Bruce Coates, Ian Smith, Murray Campbell and Charles Hayward.
10–24–12: add recommended price. 05–20–13: updated the ‘also available for download’ list, and updated reviews. 11–01–15: add A Little Brittle Music to downloads list, and change currency from USD to EUR.
