This weekend i am pleased to perform in my duo with Oren Ambarchi at the Borderline Festival in Athens. This 5-day event is presented this year in partnership with the Onassis Cultural Centre and events take place at several venues throughout the centre of Athens. Oren and i will perform at the OCC Upper Stage on Sunday, April 22 as part of the closing events. Full details here.
I am back in Tokyo this week to work on a few things and to perform with two incredible musicians! On Saturday April 7 i will perform two duos – one with Tetuzi Akiyama and the one with Toshimaru Nakamura. This event marks an ongoing collaboration with Akiyama and my first time collaborating with Nakamura. I am feeling very grateful and really looking forward to this night.
The event takes place in Shimokitazawa at OTOOTO and it is a nice earlier show, beginning at 19:00.
Tetuzi Akiyama
Toshimaru Nakamura
I am absolutely blissed out to be part of the upcoming Inland (18.3) concert this coming Sunday, March 11. The event, titled There Are Many Shades Of Blue, And It Is Difficult To Say Which They Are, will feature a new solo work from me alongside a new work by Francis Plagne and two works by historic composers that i greatly admire – Criss-Cross (2013) by Alvin Lucier and Motore Immobile (1979) by Giusto Pio. The latter works will be performed by incredible musicians and dear friends Oren Ambarchi, Alex Garsden, Francis Plagne, Lizzy Welsh and Rohan Drape. Best of all, it’s a later afternoon show! i don’t think this could be any better. Full details here.
Last week I had a lovely conversation with David Perron from Free Form Freakout which led to this very nice 2-hour feature on my work – FFFoxy Podcast #114. It’s a great overview of my recordings with some bits & bobs about me in between.
http://www.freeformfreakout.com/fffoxy-podcast-114-crys-cole-feature/
I will be in Singapore next week as a guest of the Playfreely festival. On December 9th i will give a talk/workshop at Black Axis – discussing my practice and leading exercises and discussions about listening and how our perceptions and personal experiences impact our creative decisions and work.
I will then join a fabulous roster of artists for the main festival on Dec 13 + 14 for two days of performances and collaborations. Featuring: Alice Hui-Sheng Chang (TA), Sachiko M (JP), Yoshimio (JP), Mette Rasmussen (DK) and more!
Coming up over the next 3 weeks my duo Ora Clementi with James Rushford will have a series of performances across Canada! This is our first time performing in Canada together and we are so pleased to share our work in four very special contexts.
Nov 10 • SASKATOON (CA) • Sounds Like… festival
After many months of anticipation i am very pleased to announce that my new duo 2LP on Black Truffle Records with Oren Ambarchi – Hotel Record – is officially out and available worldwide! The music on this double LP was created over a few years while travelling in Melbourne Australia, Ko Pha Ngan Thailand, Oakland USA and Stockholm Sweden (EMS). Here is the press release from Black Truffle:
Hotel Record is the second release from the duo/couple of crys cole and oren ambarchi, following on from Sonja Henies vei 31 (PLANAM 031LP, 2014). Where their debut recording presented a disquieting portrait of the erotic dimension of romantic intimacy, the follow-up continues to explore the pair’s simultaneously musical and romantic relationship in a more subtle fashion, presenting four long-form pieces that touch on the variety of forms the life of this couple takes: as a musical duo, as a pair of travelers to exotic locations, as opponents in a game of cards…
Each of the double LP’s four sides presents a distinct sound-world, yet each manages to attain the same suspended, half-sleeping feeling, outlining a space where improbable combinations of the electronic and the acoustic, of extreme closeness and amorphous distance, occurring with the gentle insistence of a dream. The opening Call Myself calmly unfolds a fabric of long tones from electronic organ and guitar, combining the sliding, aleatoric effects of classic David Behrman with a more hands-on feel. Over the top of this slowly shifting tonal bed, cole’s voice mutters unintelligibly into a Buchla synth, teasing the listener by suggesting a meaning that remains always out of the ear’s reach. Francis Debacle (Uno) builds on the foundations of a heavily amplified session of the titular card game, overlaying vocal murmurs and exhalations and mysterious room-sounds to create an impossible aural environment. On Burrata, a palette of vintage 1980s digital synthesizer sounds combined with guitars create an irregular texture of lush chords and bubbling melodic details, into which cole’s voice processed by a vocoder, is interwoven, reading fragments of romantic correspondence. Finally, on Pad Phet Gob, field recordings made in Thailand become an ambiguously acoustic/electronic rainforest, eventually giving way to a mysterious, wavering electronic tone-field punctuated by sibilant, popping mouth-sounds.
Carving out an intimate and human sonic space across a diverse array of compositional approaches, sound sources, fidelities, and textures, Hotel Record is the latest dispatch from the continuing explorations of a unique duo. Ambarchi and cole reimagine electro-acoustic music, not simply as “abstract” sound, but as a diary, a love poem, a dream.
Comes in deluxe gatefold sleeve with photography by crys cole and LP design via Stephen O’Malley; Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering.
– Francis Plagne
This is a very special release for us, something that encapsulates many aspects of our lives and loves. Available by mailorder at Kompakt (DE), SoundOhm (IT), Boomkat (UK), Forced Exposure (US) and Experimedia and many more!
