WHERE: MONOM Studio - Funkhaus, Nalepastraße 18
WHEN: Saturday, May 25, 2024
WHAT: 4DSOUND Listening Experience and Live Performance
TICKETS: €25
DOORS OPEN: 18:30
Join us on Saturday, May 25, as French multidisciplinary artist Jeanne Briand and Franco-Italian instrumentalist, composer, and producer Romain Azzaro celebrate the launch of their second album, Gear(s). For this occasion, Azzaro will return to the studio to create a 4DSOUND installation: Gear(s) & Glass, crafted from the echoes of shattered glass. "Throw a glass onto the floor, and it breaks," Azzaro explains. "The sound lasts forever." This spatial sound experience, created in collaboration with MONOM, not only complements the album but deepens the exploration into an intriguing question that has often sparked debate between the two artists: What might machine music sound like if crafted from glass? Attendees will be enveloped by the glassy sounds, reimagined through instruments and processes that transform their distinctive sonic characteristics. Emphasizing its brittleness and fragility, the artists break the glass's calm, turning the shards into a composition of poetic, psychedelic electronic music. The glass may shatter, but it is reborn as glistening granules of sound.
To enhance the evening, we’ve invited two artists making their debut at MONOM. First, Romila will present her sound installation "Merkayangan: A Study of the Javanese Realms," created in Lobe, Vancouver’s 4DSOUND studio. "Merkayangan" is a 4DSOUND simulation of the seven kejawen realms using traditional Javanese instruments, natural sounds, and archival recordings. This project merges modern and spiritual technologies (kejawen mysticism and instruments like gamelan and angklung) to recreate a pre-colonial memory of these thresholds, redefining their portrayal through auditory storytelling. It employs slendro and pelog, Javanese pentatonic scales, for "realm building," simulating the realms and the experiences within them, including stretching time through tempo experimentation and creating auditory silhouettes of unseen beings, while ensuring the spiritual sanctity of these dimensions remains undisturbed. It is of importance to state that, in developing this project, the artist upholds the spiritual responsibility of keeping all and any dimensional gateways closed in recognition that — on our physical plane of existence — the territories this work occurs on was never surrendered and the territories — unseen and parallel to the ones we know and do not know today — are not to be disturbed.
Cinna Peyghamy will close the studio experiences, taking us on a mesmerizing journey with his live act that marries the traditional resonance of tombak with the avant-garde possibilities of a modular synthesizer. His improvised sequences unfold seamlessly, intertwining Persian percussion and electronic innovation. Peyghamy’s mastery of the tombak provides a rhythmic foundation that resonates with cultural depth, while the modular synthesizer adds an ethereal, futuristic layer, creating a harmonious blend that defies genre boundaries. This session will be a back-to-back with MONOM’s creative director and spatial artist, William Russell, enhancing the live performance with real-time spatialization. This session will be recorded, capturing an ephemeral moment in time, which will then become a permanent sound installation.
The live concert and listening sessions will take place in the 4DSOUND studio. The lounge will be open all night, serving both alcoholic and non-alcoholic elixirs crafted by the Magnetic Moon. After taking a break from after-show parties, this time we're dusting off our dancing shoes and the Nexus sound system in the lounge.
Program:
18:30 Open doors
19:00 Merkayangan: A Study of the Javanese Realms by Romila Barryman (Listening Session)
20:00 Gear(s) & Glass by Jeanne Briand & Romain Azzaro (Listening Session)
21:30 Cinna Peyghamy (Live)
22:00 Album Premiere Celebration
About the artists:
Jeanne Briand & Romain Azzaro - Gear(s)
Friends for over two decades, French multi-disciplinary artist Jeanne Briand and French-Italian instrumentalist, composer and producer Romain Azzaro have evolved musically in tandem, sharing ideas and sounds that have bolstered their bond. So it was a natural development when Briand tapped Azzaro to help turn her elaborate glass gamete sculptures into hypnotic soundscapes on their 2016 debut Album 'A Gamete Glass Tale'.
Azzaro, a guitarist, drummer and classical pianist who's worked extensively on audiovisual projects, scoring movies and developing installations, and even teaming up with Karl Lagerfeld on a 2017 campaign for Chanel. His last album, 2021's 'Colours of Now', released on his own Rouge Mécanique label, highlights his range as a producer, investigating the blurred lines between jazz, ambient, classical music and experimental sounds with a team of skilled cohorts.
Briand, a visual artist, trained at Paris's prestigious Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and California Institute of The Arts, where she refined her artistic signature, using glass and hijacking mechanical parts and props. Exhibiting in galeries and across the world at places such as Miami's NADA, La Panacée Arts Center in Montpellier, the South Dublin Arts Centre, Mumbai's Clark House, MONO in Lisbon and Centro Textura in Bogotà, Briand has received a slew of awards and grants for her work, winning the Palais de Beaux-Arts' New Technology Prize in 2016 and collaborating with prestigious houses such as Margiela Fragrences and Cartier.Briand and Azzaro's first album evolved from ideas Briand had formulated when she was experimenting with glass while developing an exhibition at CalArts in 2015. She wanted to turn her sculptures into sound generators or resonators, so the pair set about figuring out the exact sound of the glass. Piping Briand's voice and various acoustic instruments through the curves and crevices, they slowly developed a musical language.
Cinna Peyghamy
Cinna Peyghamy is a Paris-based composer and sound artist. His debut album ‘Gamut’ released in 2017 under the moniker Cikkun, followed by the EP ‘Injonctions’ both showcased a unique turn on IDM and bass music’s standard as the young producer started to implement what would define his sound: fragmented rhythms, severe pattern seizure, abrasive melodies and abyssal mood swings that truly are Cikkun’s own.
True to his scientific and programming studies, Cinna Peyghamy also creates and designs unique instruments, from DIY synthesizers and soundboxes to motor-based mechanical structures that serves as tools for his compositions, performances and sound installations.
His latest work ’AVAZ’ is a sound performance blending the boundaries between acoustic and electronic instruments as the tombak, a traditional Persian percussion, is enhanced by the sonic possibilities of the modular synthesizer. His work has been shown at numerous festivals such as Nuits Sonores (FR), Archipel (SW), Tehran Contemporary Sound (GER), Draaimolen (NLD), C2C (IT) Ladridos (CL), Sled Island (CAN)
Romila
Romila is a writer, facilitator and cyber-mystic of kejawen and Zoroastrian ancestry based on the never surrendered, ancestral Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) village site of Sen̓áḵw.
Using storytelling as a portal and liminality as a venue, Romila’s work explores futures we can remember and pasts we can reimagine. Through jam karet, an Indonesian incantation to bend time, Romila curates explorations of liminality including language as a portal for time travel, grief as a venue for timelessness and non-linearities of queerness.
Child of a dream interpreter, great-grandchild of birthing doulas, Romila carries the gifts of intuition, groundedness and future-telling to hold spaces to gather in community through literature, spellmaking and ritual.
About MONOM:
MONOM is a pioneering experimental performance space and studio that uses 4DSOUND technology to create deeply moving spatial sound experiences. From sound art to music, theatre, opera, dance, and beyond, Monom Studios empowers artists, activists, and society to push the boundaries of what's possible with sound and drive innovation and creativity in the field of spatial sound.
FAQ
Is this a live performance?
The first two sessions will be presented as playbacks. For that profound listening experience, all lights will be turned off and the piece will be experienced in darkness. The last session will be a live performance. All sessions will be presented in 4DSOUND.
What will happen in the MONOM lounge?
Beverages will be served in the lounge before, during and after the listening experience.
Music compilation curated by the artists in between sessions. Romain Azzaro will perform live for the after-show celebration.
Which payment method is accepted in the lounge?
Cash only.
Can I bring my dog?
Dogs are not allowed in the space.
Can minors join the experience?
This session is for visitors over 15 years of age.
Tickets:
If not sold out, tickets will be available for purchase at the door using a QR code, up to the venue's capacity limit. If you wish to pay with cash, please bring the exact amount.
Tickets are non-refundable, but they are transferable.
If you are experiencing financial scarcity and need help to afford the ticket, please reach out to us.
PLEASE NOTE
We recommend arriving 30 minutes before the start of the listening session.
Cell phone use is not permitted during the sessions.
Photos are allowed before and after the experience.
Silence is required during the listening experience, if you neeed to talk you are welcome to do it in the lounge area.
MONOM has a zero-tolerance policy for any form of abuse, harassment, or discrimination.
Ramps will be available in the studio for wheelchair users. While the lounge isn't directly wheelchair accessible, if you need assistance entering, the MONOM team is here to help and ensure a comfortable experience.
HOW TO FIND US