"We can produce almost imperceptible and ample and deep sounds, prolonged, attenuated and acute. Sounds of a single piece in its origin, we make them tremulous or sibilant. We imitate the voices of the beasts and birds and all class of articulated sounds. We have certain instruments that, applied to the ear, remarkably increase the reach of the ear. Also diverse and singular artificial echoes that repeat the voice several times as if it bounced and other that return it louder than when they receive it."

(Francis Bacon, 1561-1626)
 
 

LEM AUTUMN FESTIVAL 2000
septembre - october - november
 

schedule:
 

ZULO BELTZA, Bera
 

Saturday September 30th, 8 pm.
Centre Cultural – Mediateca de la Fundació “la Caixa”, passeig Sant Joan, 108
 

Xabier Erkizia and Mikel Etxegarai form this multimedia project that includes both sound and visual elements, video-installation and live music. They have been working together for ten years in improvised rock projects such as Gutariko Bat or Exxon Valdez. They are also members of the mythical French postindustrial ensemble Voodoo Muzak, with whom they recorded and toured last year. Their extense discography has been published by Amanita since 1997. Zulo Beltza is possibly their most ambitious project, based essentially on audiovisuals but proposing a complete performance with a global, multidisciplinary message.

NEO KINOK, BCN
 

Saturday September 30th, 9 pm.
Centre Cultural – Mediateca de la Fundació “la Caixa”, passeig Sant Joan, 108
 

Daniel G. Miracle is responsible for the texts, the music and the images of this video-installation and performance presenting a new model of thematic TV channel called NK TV filMINDustries, based on neokinok filmtechnik audio-visual language. Live broadcasting of images and sounds, of metric rhythms and random sequences. A critical look at the assumed objective vision of reality that includes a DGM (Image Union) audiovisual concert with the soprano Olga California and the participation of the choreographer and ballet dancer Olga Mesa, with Rafael Pérez in the audiovisual section. A Neokinok TV and Fractal B. Institut production.
 

URBANO MISTICA AMPLITUDE + GINSENG, Berlin
 

Saturday September 30th, 10 pm.
Centre Cultural – Mediateca de la Fundació “la Caixa”, passeig Sant Joan, 108
 

A different concert proposal. The UMA duet, equipped with electronic instruments, investigates within an open and mobile compositional process, the possible mutations of reality that combine Ginseng’s visual work based on videosampling, to recycle in continuum its own musical moment and create extraordinarily intense and atmospheric moments that result in a strangely poetic creation of random loops, as if these were found objects. Mutating images based on found-footage that create new electric atmospheres. One of the most interesting projects produced in this last year in the Berlin audiovisual scene.
 

THE WALTER THOMPSON ORCHESTRA, New York
 

Saturday, October 7th, 9.30 pm.
Auditori del Centre Cívic de la Sedeta, c/ Sicília 321
 

Their presentation in Barcelona was one of the most intense moments of LEM 99 and a real surprise for all those attending. Known and awarded worldwide as one of the most important labels of today’s improvised music, Thompson has created an extraordinary language (of over 600 gestures) that allows musicians, dancers and poets … and even the audience ….to express themselves collectively. After his stay in Barcelona, this outstanding conductor decided that the ideal Walter Thompson Orchestra ensemble could be found in this city, and that band - improved and enlarged - has been waiting for a year for him to perform this concert that will undoubtedly be unique and unrepeatable.
Walter Thompson, conduction. Dani Figueres, spanish guitar. Anna Subirana, voice. Maddish Falçoni, accordion. Imma Udina, sax. Betel Martínez, drums. Jakob Draminsky, saxo and bass clarinet. Anuska Moratxo, sax. Mark Cunningham, trumpet. Ruth Barberan, trumpet. Eduard Escoffet, poetry. Oriol Vilella, guitar. Pau Torres, guitar. Manolo López, double bass. Josep Lluis Redondo, bass. Mireia Torrent, dance. Ina Dunkel, dance. Olga Tragant, dance. Oriol Rossell, turntables.
 

BOB OSTERTAG, Alburquerque
 

Tuesday October 10th, 10 pm.
Teatre de l’ACIDH, Milà i Fontanals, 49
 

Ostertag has toured both Americas, Europe, Africa, Japan and the ex Soviet Union with his creative palette, that ranges from electronic sound generation units to the use of recordings, dheli globes or manipulated recorders. He has composed music for groups such as Kronos Quartet. His heterodox use of sampling systems has made him a pioneer of that media and he is now considered one of the key pillars of today’s appropriation movement with a widespread influence. His eleven recordings published since he was an emerging figure of downtown New York working with Anthony Braxton can credit the artistic relevance of this creator, essential to understand the music of this end of century.
 

ORIOL ROSSELL, BCN
 

Tuesday October 10th, 11 pm.
Mi Bar, Guilleries, 6
 

Although a film script writer and director, Rossell is better known in our city for his tireless work in presenting “other” music to the specialist press and the radio… by being discjockey in sessions, by developing an improvisation project with the ballet dancer Constanza Brncic or by participating in Mark Cunningham’s latest record. He has just set up his own editing project, Hz, an ambitious publication that could well signify the first serious attempt in Barcelona to make known key texts in the scene of new musics. In all events, his session with undoubtedly be one of guaranteed quality.
 

ZANSTONES, Palo Alto
 

Thursday October 19th, 9 pm.
Pati de la Seu del Consell del Districte de Gràcia, plaça de Rius i Taulet, 2
 

The sound explorer Zan Hoffman had not been back to Spain since 1993, when he visited us on tour with Francisco López. He is a tireless experimentalist with over 500 recordings - a creative tour de force that came together in the Zidsic project, the diffussion of the material produced in his Louisville laboratory. His meticulous work with collage and sampler techniques develop from the 80’s and, although he started off influenced by Esplendor Geometrico and Einstruzende Neubauten as well as by John Cage and David Tudor, he has acquired an unique personality with a very special sense of humour.
 

NILO GALLEGO, OSCAR DE PAZ, IÑAKI RIOS, Leon - Bilbao
 

Thursday October 19th, 10 p.m.
La Sal de Gràcia, c/ Tordera, 42
 

Oscar De Paz constructs - and his action generates noise; Nilo Gallego acts on that construction and this action also generates noise; Iñaki Rios picks up the fragments of noise and generates sound. This is the basic idea of the project "plps/nbld te invita a un chino", a surprising concert-installation created by the inventor of the brilliant "Sheep Concert" (si?)  performed in 1999 and well-known throughout Spain. Gallego and De Paz started together in the La Danaus.  The former’s multidisciplinarity and the latter’s plastic work come together in this performance, aided by Rios’ (who studied with Elliot Sharp and dj Spooky this year) experience as musician and producer.
 

YVES CERF - CAROL OSSIPOW, Geneve
 

Friday October 20th, 9 pm.
Pati de la Seu del Consell del Districte de Gràcia, plaça de Rius i Taulet, 2
 

Saxophonist, discoverer of ready-made electronics and fascinated by the Andes cultures, Cerf is one of the creative pillars of Fanfare Du Loup. His meeting with the plastic artist Carol Ossipow resulted in yet another dimension named Ephemerides, a music performance withinan exhibition - or an exhibition within a concert, that uses items from the environment and manipulates them. Ossipow works with the press, Cerf with the radio, both re-interprete the day’s news and in doing so mark points where collective and personal memories come together.
 

XVM, Geneve
 

Friday October 20th, 10 pm.
Pati de la Seu del Consell del Districte de Gràcia, plaça de Rius i Taulet, 2
 

Strange soundscapes for objects and architectural monuments (Niemeyer,Prampolini,Hadid) - reminiscent from atypical works by early pioneers of electronic music, between nostalgia and fright.A music permeated with the emotions of its creator who rejects computer-aided composition because it reminds him of making train timetables.
 

MOUSEDOWN, BCN
 

Friday October 20th, 11 pm.
Mi Bar, Guilleries, 6
 
 

Presented at the first Muted event, after appearing at Sonar 98 this performer became the first local turntablist to receive extremely positive critics in Wire. The following two years were spent performing in Barcelona with two exceptional partners - Jakob Draminski and Koji Asano - and a very stimulating improvisation project that he alternates with performances of his alter ego, Mouseup. As such, and as regular artist at La Sal of Mataro, he shared cabin with, among others, Mix Master Morris and Monolake.
 

The LEM moves for two days to the Convent of Saint Agustine to offer three ensembles, relatively new but magnificent exponents of what we could call new Mediterranean music: three different perspectives under the heading Utopies / Distopies that uninhibitedly open the doors connecting tomorrow’s popular music to today’s tendances within their own geographical contexts. (For more information, see programme "Visions of Future, Utopies/Distopies")
 

BABEL AGATHA, Valencia
 

Friday October 7th, 10 pm.
sala noble del Convent de Sant Agustí, c/ Comerç 36
 

In the way of a modern tribe of magicians, this numerous group of artists moves around with all the tools necessary to carry out their modern ritual: projected images, light effects, music and sound atmospheres all bombard the spectator with stimulants that gradually become cyclic shapes that penetrate the mind until creating the sensation that one is attending a ceremony, immersed in a eleusiac ritual from which one emerges, if not transformed, in any case never indifferent.
 

LE CIEL AFÒNIC, Mallorca
 

Saturday October 28th, 8.30 pm.
Cloisters,Convent de Sant Agustí c/ Comerç 36
 

This trio offers food for thought. Certainly more than three ideas and all apparently based on occult ratios, different scales applied both to sound and to the way the performers construct it. Music based as easily on improvisation as on sparks of an imaginary folklore that reminds us of unknown mythologies. Evolutive music coloured by mystery, an art whose creation at times we can account for but at others appears utterly impossible to have been manmade.
 

LE DIABLO MARIACHI, L'Hospitalet

Saturday October 28th, 10 pm.
Cloisters,Convent de Sant Agustí c/ Comerç 36
 

With this concert Le Diablo Mariachi takes leave of the residence at the LEM and little remains to be said on one of the most complete groups, on their boundless imagination, their surrealist situations and journeys through starry skies and cities burning under the moon, on their climatic sorrows and energetic overflows, on their stories of urban bravado played in market-places and on Sicilian beaches….
 

BIG HAIR, London

Friday, November 3rd, 8 pm.
Cloisters, Sant Felip Neri in Gràcia,  c/ Sol, 8
 

Harry Dawes with theremin, trombone and electronics, and Victor Nicholls with fretless, e-bow and electronics, create a music halfway between jazz, a very special form of lounge, funk and improvisation. They met in 1981 in the group Scarp which won the Gold Medal of the French Record Industry in 1994 for the best world music record of the year. In 1987 they created Big Hair. Their music, which eludes classification, suggests a surprisingly rich and multifaceted soundworld - the science fiction resonances of the theremin and an unhidden devotion to Burt Bacharach have the effect of transporting the listener to unexplored emotional territories.
 

VON MAGNET, Paris
 

Friday November 3rd, 9 pm.
Cloisters, Sant Felip Neri in Gràcia,  c/ Sol, 8
 

Electronic music, theatre, scenographic interaction between stage and audience, video installation, the art of human-fighting and a deep interest in Flamenco gathered a number of actors, plastic artists, composers, flamencos dancers and guitar players around Phil Von, in 1985 in London. Thus Von Magnet, a multinational group, and its first performance, Surrealist Sex, were born. It became a touring company and travels throughout Europe performing in factories and churches as well as in the rock or techno circuits, with continuously changing productions and their corresponding record backup: Computador, Flamenco Mutants, El Grito, Mezclador, Stalker, up to their current - and most far-reaching - project, El Planeta. Artists from all fields have performed in Von Magnet and far more space than that available here is needed to explain why it is a an unavoidable reference of what in currently called "total performance".
 

GERT-JAN PRINS, Ijmuiden
 

Friday, November 3rd 10 pm.
Galeria Metropolitana de BCN, c/ Torrijos, 44
 

Prin’s career starts at the time of what in the 80’s was called industrial free jazz, but this improviser soon grew out of the style. He investigates the possibilities of noise both as a personal polyrhythmic universe, coloured with etherloops, anagogic electronics based on radio waves, which he uses both live and in his sound installations. He works regularly at the OSTEIM (Studio for Electro Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam and performs in his own bands, as in the trio formed with Misha Mengelberg and Mats Gustafson, or United Noise Toys with Anne La Berge, all which are, together with other works of his, recorded in his extense discography.
 

ENRIC CERVERA, La Selva de Mar
 

Saturday November 4th 9 pm.
Auditori del Centre Cívic de la Sedeta, c/ Sicília, 321
 

Enric Cervera’s work has been as fruitful for Barcelona’s improvised music scene as it has been unjustly forgotten, but it would be a mistake to attempt to restrict his creative field to improvisation. CERVERA has developed a poetic world based on both composition and electronics, on the voice and on painting… and has constructed a personal universe which mwe see as unlimited to one generation or to one specific decade. For
this reason the Festival asked this unclassifiable artist to present a retrospective concert. Accompanied by some of the musicians who have travelled with him throughout these years (Eduard Altaba, Ramon Calduch, Jordi Carbó, Nèstor Munt, Oriol Perucho, Quicu Samsó, Ramon Solé, Joan Saura), he will offer the most important moments of his work, from Tropopausa to Naïf, including his music for ballet and his recent solo pieces, as well as an exhibition of his paintings.
 

CRISTIN WILDBOLZ - JOSEP MARIA BALANYÀCornwall, BCN
 

Saturday, November 4th, 11 pm.
Cafè del Sol, plaça del Sol, 16
 

Wildbolz’s first concert in Barcelona in September 1999 was a great success and now we can once again enjoy his subtle and vital music, the powerful and at the same time delicate beat he creates with the double bass tirelessly accompanied by the voice, its mood changing from inquiring to confidential… Music full of contrasts that this disciple of Misha Mengelberg carves in three dimensions. A result of his previous visit is the collaboration in this concert of the essential Catalan pianist Josep Maria Balanyà. Two richly resourceful sound artists together for the first time.
 

SHAKIRA, BCN
 

Saturday November 4th Midnight
Mi Bar, c/ Guilleries, 6
 

Last year Shakira captivated those attending her set during the LEM festival where she used lounge, lo-fi, drum’n’jazz and psicodelia as her charms. Converted into cultist dj a year later, she still forms part of Wah Wah and has a number of projects in hand. Once again we can count on her to offer us her particular combination of sensations in a new and magical performance.
 

EDUARDO POLONIO, Madrid
 

Wednesday November 8th, 9 pm.
L'Espai, Travessera de Gràcia, 63
 

Pioneer of electroacustic music in Spain and internationally known (more that a hundred works published and performed), Polonio started his career with the group Koan in 1967. He has been one of the key figures of experimentalism in Spain and formed part of Laboratorio Alea and later of Música Electrónica Libre, the first group of live electroacoustic music. He has also been influenced, like all his generation, by the sound structures of Eastern music. He has been awarded numerous international prizes and has composed electroacoustic operas (“Uno es el Cubo”, “Dulce Mal”) and explores musical territories that range from repetitive minimalism to multifaceted performances with plastic artists and multimedia. The programme includes 1969 to 1993 compositions and première of a tribute to George Peixinho, composed in 1999.
 

CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE, New York
 

Wednesday November 8th, 10 pm.
L'Espai, Travessera de Gràcia, 63
 

Together with PhillL Niblock and Tony Conrad, Charlemagne Palestine (born in 1947) was one of the most unjustly forgotten figures of minimalist music by authors on the repetitive movement in the US until John Cage himself called attention to him. To compensate, Palestine played abundant pieces by Cage and Messiaen. Although he is best known for his piano work, he has been researching technology since Morton Subotnik introduced him to Don Buchla and Serge Tcherepnin, who constructed a drone machine for him. He has collaborated with avantguard American legends such as Mark Rotkho, with musicians such as Pandit Pran Nath, Tony Conrad, Morton Feldman, Ingram Marshall or LaMonte Young, and recently with several from popular music, like Lee Ranaldo or Mika Vaino. His music proposes states similar to shamanic trances.
 

FASANI-MANCINI, Buenos Aires
 

Friday November 10th, 10 pm
La Sal, c/ Tordera, 42
 
 

Andrea FASANI - painter, potter and scenographer - and Jorge Mancini -ethnomusicologist, composer and performer - started working together in 1993, year of the first action painting experiences in Buenos Aires. Their performance, which values immediate experience above the final result, was presented in a tour organised by the Department of Culture of Bahia Blanca and has gradually evolved to the current proposal: the creation of sound and plastic objects in real time, incorporating video, photography, sound poetry and ready mades  in a multiple language intended to break into both the soundspace and the representational space. Intense and all absorbing ritual art.
 

RAS.AL.GHUL, Lisboa
 

Friday November 10th 11 pm
Heliogàbal, c/ Ramón y Cajal, 80
 

The new Portuguese music is generating some excellent performers, like this duet which apply a wise combination of passion and electronics, at times atmospheric, rhythmically free and full of depths. Fernando Cerqueira and Paulo Rodrigues are not new to the music scene; they will present their third cd and have collaborated with groups of quality such as Front Line Assembly, Clock DVA and Controlled Bleeding for their label SPH. An essential ensemble for understanding Portuguese underground of the 80’s, Ras.al.Ghul - visionaries and pioneers - is at its best moment and confirms where today’s music is heading…
 

AXENFELD, Paris
 

Friday November 10th 10 pm.
Mi Bar, c/ Guilleries, 6
 

Benoit Welter, alias Axenfeld, is one of the founder members of the Parisian group Dunkel Projeckt, a multi-art and multiaction project. Painter and event organiser, Welter often takes place behind the turntables to generate atmospheres with deep loops and sweet beats sprinkled other electronic surprises from an extremely complex sound palate. Special LEM session with vinyls.
 

MANUEL M. MOTA, Lisboa
 

Thursday November 16th, 9 pm
Centre Artesà Tradicionàrius, travessia de Sant Antoni 6-8
 

Mota´s music appears to emerge from nothingness and in a few minutes develops unexpected structures out of unknown references. With a fretless guitar, an e-bow, a violin bow and a few microphones, this young musician shines in his own light in the new Portuguese music scene. With spatial elements, a particular sense of humour and accidental sound pickup resources he constructs an apparently simple and yet rich and complex music, a metamorphosis of basic rock with references to trance music inspired by Morocco and by Cecil Taylor’s piano filtered through an Alvin Lucier-like minimalism. In Barcelona after performing at the Experimental Intermedia Festival of New York.
 

PETER CUSAK, London
 

Thursday November 16th 10 pm
Centre Artesà Tradicionàrius, travessia de Sant Antoni 6-8
 

Peter Cusak’s music has been compared to a William Morris wallpaper over industrial scaffolding, and it is certainly true that the most refined images emerge from his guitars which are unexpectedly modified with techniques ranging from ready made to the most sophisticated technology. His extensive discography includes excellent collaborations with musicians like Nicolas Collins or Thomas Koner. He was one of the promoters of the improvised music scene in London at the start of the 70’s and founder of the London Musicians Collective. Currently working in several large scale projects in London’s East End and his presence in our city can be considered a real oportunity.
 

PAOLO ANGELI, Sardinia
 

Thursday November 16th, 11 pm.
Centre Artesà Tradicionàrius, travessia de Sant Antoni 6-8
 

This young composer literally reinvented Sardinian guitar and presented it in society over the last years with undeniable success. As well as being a really exceptional instrumentalist, he has a deep knowledge of electronic resources, partly thanks to having worked with Jon Rose or Fred Frith. Angeli started his career in 1990 in the Laboratorio di Musica & Immagine of Bologna. He later returned to his interest in traditional Sardinian music and came to mechanically and electronically modify the island’s traditional guitar and to perform several solo concerts, both in traditional and contemporary music festivals.
 

CACTUS, Oporto - BCN
 

Friday, November 17th, 10 pm.
Cafè del Sol, plaça del Sol, 16
 

In 1999 Alfredo Costa-Monteiro, Eduard Altaba and Liba Villavecchia created this “supergroup” that has brought together three very different personalities with equal doses of creative energy. The combination of Costa-Monteiro’s inspiration, halfway between contemporary music and street accordionist music, the intense activity Villavecchia as saxo improviser at IBA, and the impeccable career of the excellent doublebass Altaba, who has tirelessly collaborated in all kinds of sound experiments in the city, has given birth to Cactus, an experiment in the best of each worlds - a performance certainly not to be missed.
 

1 = 0, BCN
 

Friday November 17th, 11 pm
Heliogàbal, Ramón y Cajal, 80
 

In spite of its short history this ensemble symbolises many of the dreams of the Barcelona music scene. La Más Fina was a cult group between 1996 and 2000. After the group broke up, one of its members, Gerard Roma, concentrated on this solo project into which he invested all his talent as multi-instrumentalist as well as investigating in digital technology. Success shortly followed: 1 = 0 won the Terrassa Freestyle competition and, as a result, offered a magnificent concert at Sonar 2000. This performance is therefore a good opportunity to attend a new project in the last phase of it.
 

Festival closing concert

BARCELONA MUNICIPAL BAND

Saturday November 18th from 9 pm
Rius i Taulet square (open air concert)
 

In 1997 the Barcelona city band participated in a special way in the II European Symposium of Experimental Music, organised by Gràcia Territori Sonor: they premiered three pieces composed by three young European artists. The success of that event has lead to this second performance. With master Josep Mut conducting, the city Band will again play experimental music composed especially for the occasion.
 

specially commissioned releases by:
 

KASPER T. TOEPLITZ, Varsaw
 

Toeplitz’s interest in the oscillations and vibrations of sound materials has lead him to develop a catalogue of creations that range from chamber to orchestra music, and include compositions for electric guitars orchestras, martinet wave quartets, sound sculptures (understood not as a sculpture that “sounds” but as a sound that propagates in three dimensions) or pure electronics through his work with artificial intelligence. In recent years he has received numerous commissions and awards and is now one of France’s most courted musician, which has not prevented him performing concerts throughout the world, solo and with musicians such as Atau Tanaka, Tetsuo Furudate, Daniel Kientzy, Zbigniew Karkowski or Rhys Chatham.

ZBIGNIEW KARKOWSKI, Kracow
 

A tireless traveller, Karkowski - one of the artists most in demand in the international electronic scene, has turned nomadism into his way of life. he studied with different composers in several countries, it is currently considered that, in perspective, Iannis Xenakis is the only one to have really influenced his career. Based in Tokyo since 1994, he is in close contact with the new Japanese electronic scene, without abandoning composition. His latest score - a reflection on the ephemerality of musical theories - was based of the structures of architectural ruins.

MARKUS BREUSS, Alstatten
 

Innovative electro composer, trumpet player and researcher into electro, Breuss is an emblematic figure of creative freedom. He combines his annual visits to Spain with long stays in India and his music contains exotic influences likewise combined with a drastic reinterpretation of popular music based on electro, collage and chamber compositions. His contemporary background and continuous interest in Eastern music have converted him into one of the most unusual composers and multi-instrumentalists in today’s European music scene. He has worked with Luis De Pablo, Fátima Miranda, Günter Müller, among others, and is the founder of one of the most interesting groups in Spain: Clónicos.
 

Closing celebration

BLUE, BCN
 

Saturday November 18th, midnight
Mi Bar, c/ Guilleries, 6
 

During this year 2000, Blue has worked in different LEM events, so his versatile and widely documented style is familiar to the Festival public. His extraordinary performance at the cymbals is really worth the experience. He is an exceptional vinylist, with a very wide range of possibilities, capable of developing sessions that cross frontiers of experimental music in all directions.
 
 
 
 

  ...and may Saint Lucy conserve our eyesight...