02/05/2016

h.21 Auditorium San Fedele

R/S [Peter Rehberg + Marcus Schmikler]
Live

Oren Ambarchi + Thomas Brinkmann
Live

Sound engineer: Filippo Berbenni

In collaboration with S/V/N/ and Goethe-Insitut Mailand

R/S is the project of Peter Rehberg and Marcus Schmickler, two of the most important and influential figures in contemporary electronic experimentation. In 2011 they released USA (PAN), their second album after One (Snow Mud Rain), released by Erstwhile in 2007. Among the pioneers of computer music, Peter Rehberg continues his passionate research in the territories of experimental electronics: a process of visceral synthesis that explores the environmental depths of techno, obtaining a sound that combines abstract beats, glitched dross and electrical distortions. He has signed most of his works under the pseudonym of Pita, the name with which, on May 14th, he will publish for Editions Mego Get In, his first release from the 2004 album Get Out. Academic composer and pupil of Johannes Fritsch, one of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s main collaborators, Marcus Schmickler has worked in numerous fields of electronic experimentation using various pseudonyms, including Wabi Sabi, Sator Rotas, Param and Pluramon. In parallel he has started a series of stable collaborations with various artists including Thomas Lehn, Keith Rowe and John Tilbury. His latest album for Editions Mego, Palace Of Marvels (Queered Pitch) explores the relationships between sound, phenomenology and cognitive science and is considered one of the essential works of contemporary computer music.

The first recording collaboration between Thomas Brinkmann and Oren Ambarchi is The Mortimer Trap (2012), an epic 77-minute variation of Morton Feldman’s song For Bunita Marcus. The two returned to collaborate two years later for Ambarchi’s album Quixotism, which was included by The Wire in the top 50 of 2014 albums. The hesitant and dilated compositions by Oren Ambarchi range from various stylistic “schools”: contemporary electronics, improvisation, minimalism, the deceptive simplicity of the works of Morton Feldman and Alvin Lucier, the physicality of a slowed down and stripped-down rock. From the guitar abstractions of the early 1990s, a growing variety of techniques led him to develop a personal and unique sound language. Ambarchi has performed and collaborated with numerous artists, including: Fennesz, Charlemagne Palestine, Sunn 0)), Keiji Haino, Alvin Lucier, Jim O’Rourke. An ingenious and innovative artist, Thomas Brinkmann has been conducting an exciting research on the composition and use of sound for years. From the initial experiments on techno-house minimalism, the German musician has always shown a communicative strength and an uncommon capacity for involvement. Brinkmann’s music is a deeply emotional electronic, simple and direct, an exploration of the traditional rhythmic structures of techno on which he builds sound textures that oscillate between deep-minimal electronics and sudden forays into the more abstract environment. Brinkmann has performed in museums, galleries and clubs around the world. He has released more than fifty albums, including the acclaimed What You Hear (Is What You Hear) for Editions Mego in 2015.