Lucas Melchior

This Wednesday, May 23rd, 2018 is Sound / Simulacra at Jazz Central Studios featuring Lucas Melchior. Lucas and I have worked together in many capacities over the last 6 or more years. Last summer at Northern Spark Lucas was an integral part of Un:heard Resonance along with Mike Hodnick, Chris LeBlanc, and myself. It will be a pleasure to host Lucas at Sound / Simulacra. This is a monthly series in collaboration with Cody McKinney which explores musical improvisation as a “faithful and intentionally distorted” representational process. Sound / Simulacra brings together some of the Twin Cities most unique voices to “recreate, distort, and create the hyperreal.”

Since 2006 MKR has been writing and performing electronic music in the Twin Cities. Winner of the Minnesota Emerging Composer Award in 2012, his music exists at the intersection of dance music and more ambient and experimental styles. Oscillating between extremes, lush downtempo break beats evolve and yield to breakneck rhythms, melodies, and bass. At times warm, simple, and human and at others cold, digital, and impenetrable the music of MKR revels in its influences and exposes a broad spectrum of timbres and moods.

Set 1: Lucas Melchior (electronics)
Set 2: Lucas Melchior (electronics) + Cody McKinney (bass, voice, electronics), John C.S. Keston (Rhodes, piano, synthesizers, electronics)

http://bit.ly/soundsimulacra

Holly Hansen Recordings

During last month’s Sound / Simulacra on March 28, 2018, we featured artist Holly Hansen. Among many other things Holly hosts t.e.e. (Tuesday Early Evenings), an excellent weekly concert series at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis. It was a pleasure performing with Holly Hansen and Cody McKinney during Sound / Simulacra. Here’s a bit more about Holly’s world, and afterward a couple of recordings from the show that you are likely to enjoy! Holly Hansen (Electronics), John C.S. Keston (Piano, Rhodes, Synthesizers), Cody McKinney (Bass, Voice, Electronics). Recorded by Dave Kunath.

After letting go of her rock band Zoo Animal in 2015, Holly Hansen has been floating around in the world between song and sound. This has lead her to create pieces using guitar pedals, samplers, sequencers and occasionally an instrument or 2. This 2017 recipient of the MECA (MN Emerging Composer Award) has self categorized her music as “weirdo electronic music for the beginning or discerning pallet.”

IOSIS Recordings

This performance of IOSIS & John C.S. Keston was artfully recorded by Dave Kunath on Wednesday April 26th, 2017 at Jazz Central Studios for the Sound / Simulacra monthly series that I have been doing with Cody McKinney.

IOSIS is ritual in the shape of gnarled dronescapes, wrestled from the back of a hardware beast made of diverse synthesizers, tangled patch cables and contact microphones snaked through space-making delay and reverb units. Sometimes verging on the edge of breaking noise, sometimes swimming in lush beauty, witnessing IOSIS is a fully enveloping ceremonial experience imbued with transmutational significance. IOSIS is the musical project and collaborative platform of artist Alex Bissen.

The series explores musical improvisation as a “faithful and intentionally distorted” representational process bringing together some of the Twin Cities most unique voices to “recreate, distort, and create the hyperreal”. Thank you for listening!