On this evening we throw open to the winds, we proffer to your hearts and minds our Haiku project, 37 haiku songs translated from the Japanese by poet Harry Gilonis, spoken in English by Tim Hodgkinson and sung in Japanese by Atsuko Kamura. Composed by Tim Hodgkinson.
The album is out on ReR in UK, and EM records, Osaka, on both CD and double vinyl. Available on the day at special price.
As Jim Kacian, at The Haiku Foundation says:
” It’s something we feel safe in saying you’ve never experienced before!”
During the evening Kamura and Tim will perform some brief moments from the haiku project and to glide you into the mood. We furthermore promise a never-yet-heard quartet of Atsuko Kamura on voice and electronics, Zheng Hao on electronics, Tim Hodgkinson on lap-steel guitar and clarinet, and Zhuyang Liu on guzheng and percussion.
Doors 7pm | music 8pm | £10 / £6 concession
RVSP due to limited seats: kamuraobscura@gmail.com
Music by
Zhuyang Liu
Guzheng musician, trans-media artist, producer who plays nylon- and steel-strung Guzheng, multi-tone Guzheng, and other plucked string instruments, including Xuan Qin, Duxian Qin, Koto, and more. Their multidisciplinary work spans sound, writing, spoken word, and cross-media performances. With a background rooted in diverse cultural and artistic fields,Zhuyang explores and fuses ethnic and contemporary soundscapes. They utilize found materials to create unconventional instruments and electronics, improvising with complex, fictional rhythms that evoke a broad, immersive sonic landscape. As a researcher, Zhuyang mainly focus on sound politics, forensics in sound ecology, musicology and instruments. Writing includes ‘The Sonic Arsenal of Alternative Instruments: An ‘Unconventional Warfare’ in Sound, Noise, and Conflict.’
Zheng Hao
Born in Wuhan; based in London. Mainly uses electronics or electro-acoustic instruments for solo and group improvisation – currently focused on exploring the amorphous in different sound spaces, and the dynamic balance between unpredictabilities and control.
atunnel.net
zhenghao.bandcamp.com
Atsuko Kamura
Atsuko Kamura, aka Kamura Obscura, is a Japanese agit-femme vocalist and electronic experimentalist. She is a former member of the seminal avant-pop ensemble Frank Chickens in UK, and a founder member of Mizutama Shobodan (Polka Dot Fire Brigade), the first Japanese all-feminist punk band in the 80s. She performed internationally including in Kazakhstan, Australia, the US, Canada and EU. Looped electronics, vocal improvisations through improbable effects, surreal Japanese chanson, the occasional punk yelling in her uncategorised genre music. Her latest solo album, 4AM Diary is depicted as “4am diary is a nightclub cabaret in occupied territory, inscrutable subversion discombobulating kirsch-quaffing commissars.” -Stewart Lee, Idler May June 2022
kamuraobscura.bandcamp.com/4-am-diary
Tim Hodgkinson
Tim Hodgkinson writes music and also plays lap steel guitar, clarinets, and saxophones. Whilst still a student he co-founded the politically and musically radical group HENRY COW with Fred Frith in 1968. He played in The Work, God, K-Space, and Ossatura. He has a long involvement in improvisation (notably with KONK PACK), and did research into music and shamanism in Siberia in the 1990’s. On bass clarinet he is a longterm member of Iancu Dumitrescu’s Hyperion Ensemble. Recent performances of his pieces include “Piano Concerto” for Daan Vandewalle, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège at Ars Musica in Jan 2023, and “Under the Void” for the Phoenix Ensemble, at the Gare du Nord, Basel, in April 2023.
www.timhodgkinson.co.uk
