Serious Play Improv Lab (SPIL 025) is happy to host Korean/Japanese experimental music duo Tengger (synthesizer/vocals/toys), and Paul Timings (guitar/laptop) from New Zealand, playing alongside local musicians Ng Chor Guan (theremin), Ronnie Khoo (electronics), Sudarshan Chandra Kumar (vocals/electronics), Yong Yandsen (tenor sax) and Siew-Wai Kok (vocals). Come hang out and bring your friends!
Date & Time: Friday, 29 July 2016. Door opens @ 8pm
Venue: Findars Art Space, No. 8, 4th floor, Jalan Panggong, 50000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Admission by suggested donation: RM20
ABOUT THE MUSICIANS:
TENGGER formed in Korea in 2005, they are keen environmentalists and draw organic inspiration from anywhere they might be. They have toured Asia, Europe, and the USA extensively, which might help account for their wonderfully multifaceted sound. Onstage, they seem to work together, but in different ways. It balances the performance beautifully, the quiet, fevered intensity of Marqido,(Japanese noise creator who plays modular synthesizers) opposite him the impassioned vocals and swaying of Itta(Korean new wave avant-garde artist who plays her voice, Indian Harmonium, and toy instruments). The creativity of their work comes through in other media. The official video for <Hallgrimskirkja> is almost like a Bergman short. A series of stark images overlaid with a haunting refrain, becomes fragmented, the queer dissonance echoing aural entropy, into which you fall without question. The pace resumes, the purity of the vocals carries you through. Then the end which seems almost purposefully and powerfully ambiguous. They released 2nd album [TENGGER] on the June 29th, and do the 2nd South-east Asian tour in July and August, it’s been 10 years.
http://tengger.net/, https://youtu.be/sGQjmln2dIc, https://soundcloud.com/tengger, https://www.facebook.com/tenggerland
PAUL TIMINGS is a New Zealand artist who performs experimental music, and makes field recordings and electroacoustic recordings. He enjoys using hand-held portable devices to engage with roaming or dynamic environments. More recently Paul has been developing performances, compositions and installations via algorithmic soundscapes, using source material primarily derived from field recordings and audio samples. His work has been exhibited in New Zealand, Australia and Malaysia.
NG CHOR GUAN is a Malaysian composer, sound designer, active thereminist, improviser, educator, and co-founder of the singular contemporary arts collective, Toccata Studio. A familiar face in many international arts festivals across the continents, Guan is a prolific artist whose diverse body of work is rooted in the contemporaneous currents of technology and yet proves to transcend categories in the performing arts. An artist with a scientific bend, Ng Chor Guan’s work has always culminated in a contemporary blend of art and science. His most recent project with Toccata Studio, titled ‘2020’, is a project five years long: a multidisciplinary performance powered by the concepts of multiple futures and time travel, 2020 is both a meditation on the future and an active progression into the future. As an internationally acclaimed composer and artist, Guan’s film music was awarded the Grand Prize in both the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France (2009) and the Art Film Fest in Slovakia (2010).2015 proves to be a fairly rewarding year: in the first half of 2015, he was selected from 2000 participants hailing from around the world to participate in the Berlinale Talents, a program conducted in conjunction with the Berlin International Film Festival. In the second half of 2015, Ng Chor Guan was invited as musical director of Dancenorth Australia’s 30th anniversary production, Twilight, which was staged in Townsville, Australia. In the same year, Guan was selected and then participated in OneBeat, a program organized by the federal government of the United States, and is now officially a OneBeat fellow.
SUDARSHAN CHANDRA KUMAR is a musician. He has contributed vocals and live electronics to bands such as HKPT, T!T!T!, and Takdir. His live setup is comprised of loopers, synths and effects pedals that are used to create improvised soundscapes. https://soundcloud.com/sudar
YONG YANDSEN is an improvised saxophonist. He has played at the Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival, Asian Meeting Festival (Japan), Mosaic Festival Singapore, Choppa Eclectic Improvised Music Festival (Singapore), Turn Around Free Jazz & Improvisation Festival (Singapore), Music Matters Festival (Sri Lanka) amongst others. Yandsen, together with Darren Moore and Brian OíReily, form an improvised trio called Game of Patience. They have toured to Japan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand. They released debut CD ìTrial and Errorî on Herbal International and self released debut LP “The Bad Sleeps Well”.
KOK SIEW-WAI started out as a video artist, now more active as an improvised vocalist and independent artist-organizer from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She has performed in festivals such as Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival, SoundBridge Contemporary Music Festival, Choppa Experimental Music Festival (Singapore), Playfreely Festival (Singapore), Asian Meeting Festival (Japan), E-Poetry Festival (USA) and more. Kok is the co-founder, co-curator and festival director of the Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival (KLEX) since 2010.
RONNIE KHOO does not think of himself as a musician. He regards himself an explorer of the medium of music and sound, to varying degrees of artistic success, mass acceptance and infamy. People who have only known him recently might have no idea what he ever accomplished, which is fine. Also, he prefers if someone else wrote his bio.
