STEIM Concert
Concern, Freida Abtan, Byungjun Kwon

Featuring:
Concern - cassette loops
Freida Abtan - audio visual performance
Byungjun Kwon - handmade electronic instruments

Thursday, Nov 4 2010
Venue: STEIM, Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Time: 20.30 hrs. (door open 20.00 hrs.)
Charge: 5 euros

New instruments don't necessarily make new music, and we've all seen cool instruments make bad music. So for musicians who decide to use unconventional or hand-made instruments, the real challenge is to develop an unique voice beyond the gadgetry, which usually takes longer than the time it took to make the instrument itself.
Gordon Ashworth's solo project Concern builds beautiful drones based on cassette tape loop system and STEIM's Byungjun Kwon has a whole new set of handmade instruments based on familar objects doing unfamiliar things. Frieda Abtan from Canada will join in with an illusionary and seductive audio visual set.

Artist Biographies-----------

Concern

Established in 2004, Concern is a sound art project of Gordon Ashworth (also known for the solo project Oscillating Innards). As Concern, Gordon Ashworth strives to create beautiful, evocative music using acoustic instruments, tape manipulation, and field recordings.

The 2009 album “Truth & Distance” is entirely comprised of manipulated acoustic instruments. Strings and woodwinds are transformed into tonally rich, ethereal drones that layer and grow into organic, sublime structures and disintegrate into melancholic and nostalgic tape decay. By utilizing several means of sound capturing, Concern creates an intricately detailed palette of harmonic and spatial sound that is often inexplicably and subconsciously melodic.

“Truth & Distance” was released by the Digitalis and Iatrogenesis labels and has been described as “nothing short of immense” (Boomkat) and “essential listening for the drone inclined” (Aquarius). The 2010 album “Caesarean” delves deeper into vestigial melodies, degenerated tapes and acoustic drones, and will be released by the Arbor and Slow Flow labels on LP and CD. In 2008, Gordon collaborated with his brother Owen (aka Casiotone for the Painfully Alone) on two Bruce Springsteen covers, which was released on vinyl by People In A Position To Know.

The mediums used for Concern performances have varied from live manipulation of such objects as a lap steel guitar, an antique zither, an African thumb piano and a three-foot long, open air cassette loop. Since his first live set in 2008, Ashworth has toured rigorously as Concern, performing in over 60 cities throughout the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and in 2010 will be performing in several cities in Japan, Europe and the United States.

Gordon Ashworth lives in Portland, Oregon USA.

http://forcedbloom.com/concern.html

http://myspace.com/nostophilia

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Freida Abtan
Freida Abtan is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist and composer. Her music falls somewhere in between musique concrete and more modern noise and experimental audio and both genres are influential to her sound. Her work has been compared to bands such as Coil, and Zoviet France, and to that of performers such as Andrew Liles because of her use of spectral manipulation and collage.

Freida primarily works with samples of both musical and non-musical objects that she records herself and then manipulates, often beyond recognition, through techniques derived from musique concrète and through successive layers of digital signal processing. She uses structures reminiscent of popular music and more abstract compositional variants to sequence these sounds into melodic songs before incorporating her own treated voice.

As well as having created visual shows for and performed with the internationally renown group Nurse with Wound, Freida has presented her own sound and visual work at festivals across North America and Europe. Her first album "subtle movements" is available on United Dairies / Jnana Records. Her upcoming release "the hands of the dancer" will be available on Robot Records.

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Byunjun Kwon

Byungjun Kwon(1971 South Korea) started his musical career in early 90`s as a singer/songwriter and has released 7 albums ranging from alternative rock to minimal house. He creates music for records, soundtracks, fashion collections, contemporary dance, theatre plays and interdisciplinary events developing his own musical instruments and performance tools.  Now he lives and works in Amsterdam.