For the POST (Philadelphia Open Studios Tour) in October of 2007 I did a four hour long piano + electronics improvisations at Art@Sophi. Our friends and frequent collaborators Monica Turtle and Mike Murray invited me to create a living soundscape in the foyer of Art@Sophi. It was a fun and challenging night to play for four hours straight!
Don Brewer taped some of my performance and posted an 8:00 compilation which you can view below:
This was our first of many improvised performances as NEXUS Gallery in Kennington for the Paraphrase/NEXUS series. Bilwa became a member of NEXUS in 2007 and started a series Paraphrase where sound and movement artists would come and respond to artwork in the gallery with a performance of their work.
This performance is improvised music from Mikronesia (radios and fx) and Bilwa (balloons and fx) performing music while Emily Sweeney and Rebecca Patek perform dance in an installation by Jodi Sweitzer And Elaine M. Erne.
This was our first and only studio recording done as “Perpetual Mvmt<>Snd” (Bilwa and Mikronesia). We did the recording in one weekend using a variety of synthesizers, percussion and effects. The music was created with our movement partners in mind and also as a companion to our gasp show at Philly Fringe that fall. This also turned out to the the first release on the new label earSnake. The limited edition spray painted CDs were sold at the Philly Fringe show.
This was our first performance as a group for the Philly Fringe Festival. The piece took inspiration from light, moths and the breath. It was choreographed by Emily Sweeney. Bilwa and I did the sound for this piece using the audible breathing sounds from the dancers and processing that in real-time. The processed breath sounds were played back over four speakers in surround sound. We did six shows total of gasp and it was very well received. Below is are two clips from the show shot by Carl Franke
Iris or Comfortable Too was my second album for Gears of Sand. For this record I limited my sound source to a grand piano which I recorded late one night my brother’s restaurant. The sounds are glitchy and frigid, but there are points of warmth and stillness deep inside.
Available from bandcamp
Early in Perpetual Movement and Sound’s performance history we did a series of shows called The Rashomon Effect. This series was a reinterpretation of the Akira Korosawa film Rashomon where a crime is told from four different view points. For our “Rashomon effect”, we had four pairs of musicians and dancers respond to each other in a round-robin performance of improvised music, dance and video.
Below is an audio recording of the show.
Mikronesia – electronics
Helena Espvall – cello
Sean Mattio – percussion
Bilwa – electronics
For Bilwa’s photo show at 10th Street Laundromat we had a special debut performance from Perpetual Movement and Sound. The quartet for this show consisted of Bilwa and Mikronesia providing music and Emily Sweeney and Zornitsa Stoyanova providing movement. The improvised dance and sound score involved moving through the laundromat with lights and fabric. Below is a recording of the sound from that night.
During the mid-2000s I played Gate (or Gate to Moon Base Alpha) every year as so. Coming off our Canadian tour, Ben Fleury-Steiner, William Fields, Aidan Baker and myself did a show in Philadelphia at GATE. I was experimenting with live looping using Casio SK-1, flute, melodica, effects pedals and Ableton Live. I was very happy with the results from this show. One of the pieces of this show became the track “Gate” from 2009’s vxvii which was then featured in Nora Gibson’s 2010 dance piece VESTED SOULS. Photo by William Fields.
Below is a recording from the performance that night:
When my friend and collaborator Bilwa asked me to do a live set at his photo and media event, I thought it was a standard Mikronesia “cocktail hour” type set. During these set (of which I’ve done plenty) I do background ambient music and people mill around, drink, talk and (sometimes) listen, which is fine. For these events basically a DJ, but instead of playing other people’s music, I’m usually there with a keyboard and laptop looping sounds and creating a soundscape on the fly.
However when I got to Mascher Space Coop (a venue that would lead me into a whole new field of composing and improvising with dancers and choreographers) I found out I would be doing a live improvisation with dancers and local experimental musician City of Horns (Rick Henderson). The whole event was really fun and like I said opened me up to a whole new world of collaboration.
Below is a live recording of our improvised set:
In April of 2006 Gears of Sand label mates Ben Fleury-Steiner, William Fields and myself went on a mini-tour of Canada. It was a very fun trip. We made a stop at the legendary ambient music series “Ambient Ping” to do a show with the three of us, Pholde and Aidan Baker. Below is a recording of my set from The Ambient Ping. Mikronesia photo by William Fields, more photos from our trip can be found over at his page.