Flame Keepers 128: Pablo Picco

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Pablo Picco

May 13th, 2024

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About the Artist

Pablo Picco records and makes music under the name of Bardo Todol. His music is a mix of various music concréte techniques that involves tapes, flutes, field recordings, noise and acoustic elements. Audio collages that are assembled through many years and many improvisations and put together on distant and lonely nights: all of them have this “natural” or “impressionistic” feeling. A new realm of sounds and colours that came out through the speakers with a ferric smell.

In all this distorted resonance, his children, Nico and Cina, have a strong presence making noises, shouting, singing and making non-child sounds.

He has released some tapes in different labels across U.S. and Europe such as Discrepant, Ikuisuus, Lal Lal Lal, Chocolate Monk, Magma Tones, Artsy Records, Dinzu Artefacts, Full Spectrum, Tsss Tapes, Falt, More Mars, Getrude Tapes and more.

He is also a visual artist that makes collage art that illustrates the front covers of his albums.

Currently Pablo is making an animation film grouping together all his music and these short stories. His filming process involves also various techniques such as stop motion, analog and digital collage, rotoscope, and more.

LINKS

MUSIC:
https://bardotodolmonofonia.bandcamp.com/

VISUAL ART:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl8xTEauL4a/
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch7UZ9Pu439/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CqvJnEwuc9E/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CkQrPt5uHoO/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTZw4rfriSq/
https://www.instagram.com/p/COna0nKA1vU/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2HPdxCgAiH/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxGRjVRAP-k/

ANIMATION VIDEOS:
https://youtu.be/uGZ_LRiArMw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnGpWCHld0Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v15BvxZ4Zds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK-MWPoKfbY

DOCUMENTAL FILM “Kalinga Utkal”:
https://youtu.be/Xc0sLYfpxTs

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Flame Keepers 127: Kelly Bray

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Kelly Bray

May 6th, 2024

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About the Artist

Kelly Bray is a trumpet player, improviser, and composer. Her original compositions and improvisations explore the extremes in trumpet technique, often drawing from her relationship to perceptions of gender and femininity in the communities and aesthetics of improvisation, creative music, and trumpet playing. Her recorded electroacoustic works intuitively combine her live improvisational techniques with harsh and glitchy sounding sound manipulation.

Bray is a sought after performer in the Northeast United States and Canada, frequenting venues in Boston, New Haven, New York City, Philadelphia, and Montreal. She regularly performs both solo and in groups, bringing an exciting, yet sensitive improvisational style to each performance.

An alumnus of the New England Conservatory of Music, Bray earned a Master of Music in Contemporary Improvisation, studying with Anthony Coleman and Joe Morris.

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Flame Keepers 126: Andrea Pensado

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Andrea Pensado

April 29th, 2024

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About the Artist

Based in the US since 2002, Pensado uses voice and electronics to make her music. She studied in Argentina and Poland where she graduated in Composition with honors at the Krakow Academy of Music. However, after extensive composition practice, her music started to gradually move away from conventional composition. Nowadays, she mainly uses digital media and live interactive systems to perform. Her voice is constantly interwoven in the performances.  The approach to both programming and performance is highly intuitive. The harsh cut up noise result, mixed with the strong emotional component of her music, generates a deeply personal sonic language. Occasionally, the combination of the performance situation, the often abrasive sounds, the irrational use of the voice and the inherent uncertainty of improvisations contributes to discoveries of unknown places in her mind. 

Pensado performs extensively in the US and abroad. She also produces Sonorium, a series of experimental music based in Salem, MA.

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Flame Keepers 125: Max Feldman

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Max Feldman

April 22nd, 2024

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About the Artist

Max Feldman is a Brooklyn musician and comedian. In 2021 he started his Spa Water project through which he has since released six albums, ranging in style from neoclassical compositions to vaporwave-metal remixes, on the online labels Slyme Records and Pedicure Records. In 2022, Max started performing live music at venues like Berlin, Pianos, Wonderville, and Trans-Pecos, where he uses his trusty SP-404 to turn sounds from his albums (and from elsewhere) into immersive and humorous collages. Also a visual artist, Max does all his own album artwork and often performs alongside his own live visuals.

Max does musical improv comedy, and has performed all around town with his indie team Hey, Handsome! which specializes in making up musical versions of popular TV shows. Max is also a company member of Eight is Never Enough, an interactive family comedy show at the Broadway Comedy Club. Often Max works as the piano accompanist for other musical improv comedy teams, which means he gets to make up the music while they make up the lyrics.

In January 2023, Max joined the bands Jenny Alien and Kiddo Pro, which have given him the chance to rock out on keys and SP-404 respectively. With these bands he has performed at venues like The Knitting Factory, Gold Sounds, and The Living Gallery.

Perhaps of greatest note is that Max once saw Chris Rock in line at a movie theater.

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Flame Keepers 124: Qiujiang Levi Lu

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Qiujiang Levi Lu

April 15th, 2024

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About the Artist

Qiujiang Levi Lu/卢秋江 (they/them) is a Beijing-born, NYC-based performance artist, improviser, composer, and educator. For their solo performance art practice, Lu designs Max/MSP-based electroacoustic feedback systems with cyborg-like body augmentations inspired by Objectophilia/animism, which include special microphones and speakers placed within bodily orifices and a custom-mapped flight joystick controller. Their resulting performances consist of choreographed, ritualistic improvisations that build on ancient Chinese drumming traditions and explore body dysmorphia, sexuality, spirituality, and mortality, linking together sound, movement, and violence in divine ceremony.

As a composer, Lu writes instructed improvisation pieces for acoustic and electronic performers and improvisers. Lu’s commissioned works often take a meta, unorthodox approach to music technology, exploring human-machine relationships, audio-visual interactivity, mind-body connection, and the phenomenology of musical performance. Previous commissions have included Popebama, Luke Helker, and Ensemble Decipher.

Lu’s works have been performed and featured at festivals, conferences, and venues such as High Zero Festival, MATA Festival, IRCAM forum, DiMenna Center, Jazz Showcase, SEAMUS conference, Elastic Arts, Spencer Museum of Art, NIME conference, NYCEMF, Oberlin MMG, Rhizome DC, and NowNet Arts conference. Lu currently works as a lecturer and recording engineer in the Department of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Flame Keepers 123: Emiliano Lopez

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Emiliano Lopez

April 8th, 2024

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About the Artist

Emiliano López (Ciudad de México, 1994) es un guitarrista y artista de noise mexicano radicado en Boston. Se graduó en la carrera de Improvisación Contemporánea en New England Conservatory. Su música combina sonidos electrónicos con el uso de objetos y esculturas sonoras- creando un puente entre la instalación, el performance y la música. Ha presentado su música en diversos espacios de Boston, como el Jordan Hall, The Lilypad, The Firehouse, SomArt Space y la serie de conciertos Find Out, entre otros. También, se ha presentado en espacios de la Ciudad de México como el Centro Multimedia del Centro Nacional de las Artes, el Centro Cultural Árbol que Nace Torcido y el Vernacular Institute.

Emiliano López (Mexico City, 1994) is a Mexican guitarist and noise artist from currently based in Boston. He graduated with a degree in Contemporary Improvisation from the New England Conservatory. His music combines electronic sounds with the use of objects—sound sculptures—creating a fusion that bridges visual installation, performance art, and music. He has presented his music at various venues in the Boston area, including Jordan Hall, The Lilypad, The Firehouse, SomArt Space, and the concert series Find Out, among others. He has also performed at venues in Mexico City such as the Centro Multimedia del Centro Nacional de las Artes, Árbol que Nace Torcido, and Vernacular Institute.

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Flame Keepers 122: Max Branigan

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Max Branigan

April 1st, 2024

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About the Artist

Max Branigan is a stop motion animator, photographer, and musician from Brooklyn. He currently is interested in digital puppetry, the tarot, and active imagination. A book of his images of performances will be released this summer. He is interested in collaboration and can be reached at maxbranigan@gmail.com or 9735085497

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Flame Keepers 121: Alina Jacobs

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Alina Jacobs

March 25th, 2024

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About the Artist

Alina Jacobs is a writer, actor and sound enthusiast from NYC. Her favorite instruments to play are the saxophone and the no-input mixer; she has recorded and performed on guitar, synth and cassette machines as well. Alina has performed in various states, provinces, and countries. alina-jacobs.neocities.org

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Flame Keepers 120: Jazz Adam

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Jazz Adam

March 18th, 2024

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About the Artist

Jazz Adam is a musician and artist born and raised in NYC. Jazz fronted Old Maybe, a solo project turned punk band, and spent many years performing live, primarily in Philadelphia and NYC. After a hiatus, Jazz is now reviving Old Maybe as a solo project once again, this time relying heavily on electronic production and loop sequencing to create a new sound. Jazz has also spent years curating live events, and a lot of her writing is subconsciously tied to her experiences in the world of live music.

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Flame Keepers 119: Omeed Goodarzi

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Omeed Goodarzi

March 11th, 2024

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About the Artist

Omeed Goodarzi is a musician and instrument builder living in Marlboro Vermont. For his day job he works as a musical accompanist for the dance and theatre department at Amherst College as well as a private music teacher. He’s played in groups The Intangible Shirt Co, Leaf Peepers, Omeed & the Natural Scene, Romantics (with Chris Weisman), and Donkey no no. He has also released three solo albums on FEEDING TUBE RECORDS, a record label based in Florence, Mass. Omeed’s work has lately focused on composing for two replica chromelodeons (an instrument designed by Harry Partch) which he built in 2022 out of two reed organs. 

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Flame Keepers 118: Andy Pitcher

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Andy Pitcher

March 4th, 2024

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About the Artist

‘Pitcher’s ears are always searching the sonic horizon for the sound of the future’ - Premier Guitar

Andy Pitcher is a brooklyn based improvising/composing acoustic/electronic guitarist. With a reactive electronic guitar style, Andy explores a duo between the instrument in hand and the electronic processing at foot. Andy has played with folks like The Armed, Ray Anderson, Motyka, & Gabriel Marin’s Social Assassins, and has lent improvised guitar sounds to producers like Joel Hamilton, Jake Alexander Miller, & Kurt Ballou.

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Flame Keepers 117: Ben Eidson

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Ben Eidson

February 26th, 2024

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About the Artist

Ben Eidson is a saxophonist, computer musician and improvisor currently living in Columbia, South Carolina, where he regularly performs and organizes concerts.

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Flame Keepers 116: Concepción Huerta

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Concepción Huerta

February 19th, 2024

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About the Artist

Concepción Huerta is a multidisciplinary artist with a strong background in audiovisual media and a deep focus on the sound spectrum. Her work is developed in different practices such as: sound design, installations, spatialized concerts, speculative narratives and immersive experiences. His approach to sound begins by reflecting on the relationship between silence-noise, political space, and the sound agent as a means of enunciation. She also investigates resonance, acoustic space and the physical and psychological impact of sound in relation to the listener.

Her sound exploration is through recordings of everyday objects (foleys) and instruments such as synthesizers, which when played and manipulated with tape recorders and processed tapes, create atmospheres based on elements of ambient and noise. She creates sound narratives, which rather than being inserted into a specific musical genre, are closer to the construction of an imagined story. Incorporating the study of synthesis, electricity, voltage, formats and materiality as part of their approach to sound. Exploring it from the most elemental level and how it can be translated by creating technological bridges between analogue and digital processes.

She is a member of the experimental ensemble Amor Muere with Gibrana Cervantes, Camille Mandoki and Mabe Fratti, with whom she has collaborated in several publications. Collaborating in sound with diverse artists such as: Fernado Vigueras, Rodrigo Ambriz, Martin Escalante, CNDSD, Resonancia, Reick Reed, Tommi Keränen, Camilo Angeles, Leslie Garcia, Daniela Huerta among others.

"The sacredness of all dimensions of life" is a project of speculative and immersive narratives with Anahy Cabrera a.k.a. ZETA who is a transmedia artist with an immersive approach. Developing different projects such as: "TRAVELERS", "The Earth Has Memory" and "GRIETAS" (this last project is also conformed by the sound artists: Lucia Hinojosa and Vania Fortuna). Publications on labels: "Cueva de Cristales" Vorágine in 2018, "Internal Capacity" with Mabe Fratti 2018, TANDEM : 4 CNDSD + Concepción Huerta on ETANG BRULANT, "Personal Territories" on Static Discos in 2019, "Lost Time"on Filiae 2020, "Estática" duo with Mabe Fratti on SA Recordings and Spitfire audio 2021, "Desciende" duo with Camilo Angeles TVL REC 2022, "Harmonies from Betelgeuse" at UMOR REX 2022, "A Time to Love, A Time to Die" with her ensemble Amor Muere at Scrawl 2023, "The Earth Has Memory" at Elevator Bath 2024.

Festivals and venues where she has performed in America, Europe and Asia: VOLTA, Meditatio Sonus, Desbordamientos, Traslaciones II, Articulaciones del Silencio, UMBRAL, Aural, REMANENCIA, Matik, Coaxial Arts, Center 4 New Music, Molten Plains, MUTEK 2019, 2022, NRMAL, No idea Festival, Bucarelli 69, EXT, AUDITUM, Audio Foundation, Laboratorios Sonoros UNAM, Poesía en Voz Alta, Rewire, Roter Salon, Cafe OTO, Beboerhuset, Volksbühne, Fylkingen among others.

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Flame Keepers: Ghost Streams

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Ghost Streams

February 12th, 2024

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This week at Flame Keepers, the installation has been intentionally left “abandoned” with no composers maintaining the audio stems. When this happens, the system engages a fail-safe algorithm that replaces any one of the streams with one randomly selected from the historical archive of musical streams of all previous Flame Keepers. The results might be harmonious, cacophonous, anodyne, or expressive, yet always surprising. During this time, the composition will evolve continuously with unpredictable results until the next composer takes over in a following week.

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Flame Keepers 115: Joey Kinnan

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Joey Kinnan

February 5th, 2024

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About the Artist

Joey Machina is a musician, producer and sound engineer from Brooklyn, New York. He studied music performance at New York University. He is a member of Punchlove as a guitarist and sound designer. When Joey isn't playing guitar, he creates soundscapes with a variety of analog and digital tools.

You can find Joey on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/joeymachinaera/

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Flame Keepers 114: opperaddor

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opperaddor

January 29th, 2024

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About the Artist

opperaddor is a composer and producer from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He studied composition at the Conservatorio de Música de Morón, and electronic composition in UNA (Universidad Nacional de las Artes). He is a video game music composer, sound designer, and member of Truchotoys, where he is a music composer and programmer. He is also the founder of Canopus.EM where he teaches music production and composition.

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Flame Keepers 113: Molto Ohm

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Molto Ohm

January 22nd, 2024

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About the Artist

Matteo Liberatore’s new project Molto Ohm is a sonic and visual exploration of the interplay between digital life and social decay on an emotional level. In today's alluring digital world, we are merely users, to whom health, beauty, love, and connection are promised. But at what cost? In the end, we find ourselves alone, void of purpose yet still mindlessly scrolling, pulling furtively on a pane of glass, unable to break through.

Utilizing a mixed palette of sporadic dance beats, seductive voices, synthetic melodies and environmental sound, the music deftly distills these experiences into arresting aural scenes. Liberatore’s prior prolific work in the realms of improvised and creative music is combined with his experience working as a freelance sound recordist in the advertising industry, as well as memories of dancing in nightclubs as a teenager in Italy, to assemble a work that is at once profoundly alienating and deeply intimate.

For the live experience, Molto Ohm plays next to a vertical screen projection that is complementing (or not…) the ideas expressed in the music, creating an immersive world of screen recordings, 360 footage, iPhone footage, and stock footage, in which the audience can get lost, amused, bewildered.

A third absurdist club night, a third art experience, a third movie, you won’t be disappointed. Join the Molto Ohm world today sign up for the mailing list at https://www.moltoohm.com/

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Flame Keepers 112: Alejandro Vega

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Alejandro Vega

January 15th, 2024

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About the Artist

Alejandro Vega is a Nicaraguan born and Munich, Germany based musician, music producer, mixer and sound designer.

Vega is also one of the co-founders of the sample pack label nu.wav, where they are constantly releasing sample packs through Splice and on their site. Lastly, he has also worked with many independent artists as a producer/mixer and he’s done scoring and sound design for film.

Vega is currently working as a music producer and sound engineer at the sound branding agency amp GmbH.

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Flame Keepers 111: Randall Minick

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Randall Minick

January 8th, 2024

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About the Artist

Randall Minick is an artist working with synthesis & electronics in Denton, Texas and has been active in the vibrant North Texas DIY community for the last fifteen years. He performs in groups and as a solo artist, whether it be in crumbling house venues or the Dallas Contemporary.

Minick was inspired by his research of the experimental post-war sounds of kosmische & motorik music in Germany, seeing similarities in the DIY ethos and rejection of mainstream western culture decades later in his own local scene.

Having no formal education in music, he stumbled through his own path of murky drones and electronics. He founded several projects including Wave Swinger, Demandite, and Felt & Fur; the latter of which would eventually morph into his main project up until 2021, releasing a full length record in 2018 and opening for national / international acts like Dan Deacon, Mortiis, She Wants Revenge, SURVIVE & more.

Minick currently plays modular synth in the Texas hardcore punk band Laughing Matter, electronics and synths in his EBM duo Python Potions, & makes rhythmic techno & electro under the solo guise of Formless Ocean. He also hosts “Sound Creature” on Denton’s nonprofit LPFM station KUZU 92.9, and is employed at North Texas’ finest venue for loud experimental music, Rubber Gloves.

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