Approximately Infinite Universe Sheffield Sep 21st 2008

Each performance will be a unique and brand new collaboration, each of the Finnish acts inviting a US counterpart to collaborate on a performance, highlighting the parallels in strands of the recent evolving trend of ‘weird/avant folk/noise’ between the US under the layer communities and Finland’s northern circles.

The performances will be made of material composed in the months leading up to the tour and worked in 2 days rehearsal. The concerts will take the form of two acts with the 4 groupings rotating during each act.

NO-FI and [NO.SIGNAL] - in conjunction with the artists themselves - designed this approach as a way of taking the aforementioned trans-Atlantic influence exchange, trapping it in a vacuum and making it feedback on itself in order create a whole family of brand new musical beasts.

Selected dates on this tour will feature an exclusive screenings curated by FONAL-founder Sami Sanpakkila and a selection of commissioned work which will take place before live performances. The concerts will be recorded and later released as digital only compilations

ABOUT NO-FI and NO-SIGNAL
NO-FI is a Newcastle based music event producer and record label, which began operating in 2001. In that time, we’ve presented around 100 events, featuring a stunning array of international artists, including: Aphex Twin, Sunn O))), Sir Richard Bishop, Wolf Eyes, Otomo Yoshihide, Autechre, Faust, A Hawk And A Hacksaw, Pan Sonic, Jack Rose, Burning Star Core, Fennesz, Lightning Bolt, Sleeparchive, Chris Corsano, Evan Parker, Yellow Swans and many more.
NO-FI was born to bring the kind of artists to the area that wouldn’t otherwise play here. While continuing to do that, its activities have widened in recent years: co-producing the Version and INPUT festivals, producing the Free Noise tour for CMN, co-producing a showcase at Sonar 2007 in Barcelona, and working on events for 2008 for AV08 and much more.
http://www.no-fi.org.uk/

NO-SIGNAL is a London-based entity found in 2004 aimed at the proliferation and presentation of experimental, 'outsiders' music. Its objectives are knitted around the production of self-sustainable events to enable the finding of gaps and niches to expand upon by assuring a wide, diverse and enthusiastic audience within an appropriate social atmosphere. Through this process, [no.signal] has managed to work with artists such as Matmos, Oren Ambarchi, Tony Conrad, Leafcutter John, the Fonal roaster, Chris Corsano, Rothko, Jonathan Kane, and many UK improv artists. It has also collaborated with cultural institutions such as Pro Helvetia, the Swedish embassy and the Finnish Institute and worked with the Atlantic Waves festival 2006 (curating and producing one experimental evening at the Barbican), produced the one day acoustic/noise festival in London Sottovoce in 2007 and produced 2 of The Wire XXV festival events at the Bush Hall.
http://www.no-signal.net/

		ES (FI) ES is the solo recording name of Fonal boss Sami Sanpakkila - tagged as 'Experimental Songcycles' by The Wire's David Keenan - and one of the main figures in contemporary Finnish free folk mouvement. Sami is not only a musician but also a renowned filmaker. Sami has created 15 short films and music videos, which have been screened in various museums, art gallerys and film festivals around the world. The films and the music are 5-30 minute experimental moodscapes that explore the themes of melancholy, pathos and hope. Es has performed across North America and Europe at various festivals including Sonar 2005, Subcurrent and Itsen‰isyysyˆ at the famous B2 club in Moscow.

		FURSAXA (US) Tara Burke of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania employs voice, guitar, organ, dulcimer, accordion, Casio and more to create her home-recorded acid folk as Fursaxa. Her debut album Mandrake was produced, engineered, and released in Japan by none other than Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple. Since that release in 2000, and over a slew of subsequent releases for ATP and others, Burke has established herself as one of the few truly groundbreaking voices atop the current wave of revived folk interest in the US. Tara has very strong ties with Sami and the rest of the Fonal crew and has spent more than 6 months living in Tampere, Finland back in 2005.

		ISLAJA (FI) Islaja is Merja Kokkonen, a young visual artist and musician based in Helsinki, Finland. She has discretely become one of the few figures hiding behind the recent fad of "folk weirdness" whilst being part of a somehow communal move of a "Finnish psychedelia" that has spread its wings within the underground sounds over the last two years. Her latest album reflects a thorough mixture of accumulated musical backgrounds and influences. She has played twice in London invited by [no.signal] and played Venn festival 2007. Islaja is also a duo with Jukka Raisanen on bass, a member of Kiila and Avarus along with his own solo project Sala-Arhimo. Islaja's recent album 'Ulual Yyy' has received much acclaim, with a lead review in The Wire magazine and in Time Out New York. A live cd "Blaze Mountain Recordings" will follow on Thurston Moore’s label Ecstatic Peace in late 2007.

		SAMARA LUBELSKI (US) Samara is a native New Yorker who grew up in the haze of artist infestation of Soho. Through the time of playing in various groups she has compiled an impressive resume that covers myriad of genres such as her work with the avant/psych/folk outfit of Hall Of Fame into the lair of those bohemian German musos Metabolismus and onto the indie rock interpretations of The Sonora Pine with some serious treks into the world of The Tower Recordings and off world with Jackie O Motherfucker, to name just a few.

		BLEVIN BLECTUM (US) Blevin Blectum is an electronic musician. Recently relocated from the industrial armpit of Oakland, California, to the humid lovecraftian greenery of Providence, Rhode Island, Blevin releases her fourth solo album, GULAR FLUTTER, on an unsuspecting public via the AAGOO label (New York). Blevin is one half of the recently reformed and reunited groundbreaking digital duo Blectum From Blechdom, recipients of the 2001 Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in Digital Musics. Blevin moonlights with audio/video band SAGAN alongside her husband and fellow e-musician Lesser, keyboardist Wobbly, and video artiste Ryan Junell. Blevin produces continued electronics "with a more oblique slant on the basic BFB sensation of things-not-quite-right-here, clanking, creaking grooves and anti-grooves as a coal-powered spacecraft from some steampunk parallel universe potentiality.

		KEMIALLISET YSTAVAT (FI) The name of a recording project of musician Jan AnderzÈn of Tampere, Finland. AnderzÈn began recording under the name in 1995 and although he has enlisted numerous musicians over the years, most Kemialliset Ystavat recordings are solo productions. Often labeled as psych folk, his recordings have included such diverse instruments as detuned guitars, mandolins, balalaikas, toys, hand percussion, and samples from recordings by Sun Ra, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Vibracathedral Orchestra.

		AXOLOTL (US) Axolotl is Karl Bauer, classically-trained violinist and a dedicated student of gnosticism, alchemy, astrology, and certain other materialist tendencies in psychology and philosophy. Bauer belongs to a small but potent association of young musicians, who draw upon the gestural economy and textural range of minimalism, and the visceral force of noise, while eschewing fashionable prohibitions against musicality, raw beauty, and thematic complexity. A certain postmodern timidity (offered up as boldness itself) compromises the rhetoric and methods of contemporary experimentalism. Noise, in both its reductionist and maximalist variants, too often provides the easy cover of superficial extremity to gloss over bankrupt ideas about aesthetics, ideas that essentially encourage the abandonment of extra-sonic ambitions and overtly expressive forms. Axolotl has shared the stage with the likes of Cluster, Animal Collective, Black Dice, Blues Control, Chris Corsano, Excepter, and Boris and collaborated with Mouthus, Yellow Swans, Neil Campbell, Sunroof!, both members of the Magik Markers and many more.

		TOMUTONTTU (FI) The visual artist and musician Jan AnderzÈn (1978) is one of the central figures of the Finnish underground, and his band Kemialliset Ystavat has gained international popularity among fans of experimental and psychedelic music. As Tomutonttu, AnderzÈn constructs surreal noise bursting with colour. Tomutonttu’s music has been released both domestically and internationally on audiocassette and vinyl by specialist labels such as Huutomerkki, Pohjoisten kukkasten Aanet, Ultra Eczema and Imvated.

		SKATERS (US) “Staggering low-grade psychedelic murk and splintered free jazz soul” says David Keenan (The Wire). The skaters are from southern California and consist of Spencer Clark and James Ferraro who met in 2002. The duo say that the substance of their music is defined by “the interplay of ideas and the transformation of themselves into characters while playing and while living and using the inner dialogue that comes with cognizing the symbols of the outside world as a ground for the music to stand”. The music for them becomes deeply psychological because they experience “hallucinogenic sensations” while playing. The "thing" they think is a phenomenon can only be experienced through playing.


	Freenoise is proud to present in Sheffield the 2008 CMN Tour curated and produced by NO-FI and [NO.SIGNAL] supported by The Wire magazine.. Sun Sep 21st 2008. Doors 8pm. Show starts 8.30pm TICKETS ON SALE NOW £10 CLICK HERE TO ORDER