St John Sessions 07.11.13
Following on from a sell out audience in front of Tim Hecker, Pete Swanson and Vessel, St John Sessions continues it’s heralded programme of church-housed experimentalism with Biosphere.
From his early days as an unlikely player in the nascent bleep-house movement, Biosphere’s more than comfortably settled into a monolithic groove as one of the greatest ambient artists of all time. Sampling everything from Twin Peaks to abandoned silos, he’s a master of ‘arctic ambient’; sound that invokes an environment from the icy tundra (on the landmark Substrata) to Japanese nuclear silos (2011’s N-Plants) to St John’s Church in Hackney. Biosphere’s live sets are notorious; a towering testimonial to his enduring appeal – taking in the full breadth of his work from field recordings to plucked strings, ambient blips to jazz-inflected rhythms.
Perc, the man better known as Ali Wells, even better know as the standard-bearer for 4×4 brutalism, has garnering serious praise for his stunning string of solo releases and his imprint Perc Trax. But the keen eared will have noticed an experimental undercurrent bubbling through his work. St John Sessions will see Perc perform a rare improvised ambient live-set, only seen once before (at the Krake Festival in Berlin in 2012); a mixture of unreleased tracks, dub mixes and new compositions created on the fly. The tracks and performance will be influenced and informed by the St John church and will make the most of the extreme size and acoustics of the space.
EQLS are Milo Fitzpatrick (Portico Quartet) and Nick Siddall (Morviscous, Talk In Colour). An experimental collaboration that explores a sound world of analogue synths, looped sampling, found sounds and processed electric guitar. They’ll be presenting their rhythmic ambience to St John Sessions in a live piece especially composed for the event.