Well, this is taking the piss.  I turn my back for four days and the awesome gigs pop up all over the place; the aforementioned dronefest at CAI, Mogwai at the Uni, the Border Community do at the Thekla and now this frankly brilliant line-up which brings to a close the Arnolfini’s multi-strand exhibition of work by and inspired by sculptor/creative artist Cosima von Bonin.  More on the exhibition itself here, but whatever your cultural poison this Honest Jons-curated show headlined by the event’s soundtracker MORITZ VON OSWALD is frankly unmissable.  Um, unless you’re me.

Mr Oswald himself has a fine pedigree; outside of the current Trio, in which he collaborates with Vladislav Delay and Sun Electric’s Max Loderbauer, he’s co-founded minimal techno touchstone Basic Channel, performed as Maurizio and Rhythm & Sound and (seriously, I checked) been percussionist for New Romantic hauteurs The Associates.  Really.  The MVOT, on record, take the Basic Channel template and mess with it – minimal techno patterns spun with dub, krautrock, and jazzy improv into one dense kosmiche whole.  Live – as on the self explanatory Live In New York – they’re often a synth/drum/electronics trio flooring it into Can or Sun Ra territory.  Essential, whatever the form in which they appear here.

Joining them are Honest Jon’s labelmate ACTRESS, two albums and a welter of 12″s behind him and no closer to an easily pigeonholable style.  From a starting point of liquid, wobbly dubstep and futuristic R&B, he’s ventured into Detroit techno and robotic, snake-hipped bass music with dashing style.  Rounding off this stupidly good bill are DEMDIKE STARE, whose unquantifiable morass of drone, dubbed-out beats, curdled Arabic and African loops and gauzy, witchy FX has spewed out across numerous vinyl, CD and mixtapes of late and whose “record collectors gone weird” vibe, as I heard DJ/rupture describe it on WFMU the other week, is pretty damn captivating.  Any of these three would be a must-see; together, you’re being spoiled.  Get there.

Honest Jons & Arnolfini presents Moritz Von Oswald Trio, Actress (Live) & Demdike Stare (Live)

Sat 19 Feb, 7.30pm

£10 Adv (£12 On the door)

To celebrate the opening of the Cosima von Bonin exhibition we bring in the Moritz von Oswald Trio to top an amazing bill:

The Trio is Moritz von Oswald (Basic Channel, Maurizio, and Rhythm And Sound) alongside Vladislav Delay (whose early records were released on the Basic Channel imprint Chain Reaction) and Max Loderbauer (from NSI, on Sahko). At the heart of their epic excursions here is a dream crossing of classic Berlin techno, On-The-Corner Miles Davis, Larry Heard and Can, as at home with calypso as it is Stravinsky.

Actress has quickly and justly become one of the most respected names in the UK’s new dance music underground. Unconstrained by formal clichés, his is a shape‐shifting, richly textured, deconstruction of the inner lives of dance music. Enigmatic and playful Actress’ melodies and arrangements are enthralled by their own genies.

Demdike Stare is the Manchester-orbiting duo of Miles Whittaker (MLZ, Pendle Coven) and Sean Canty (Finders Keepers), combining their interests in techno, dub, drone, early electronics, astral jazz, off-kilter ethnic musics. Grounded in samples, it blurs the boundary between DJ and producer, collector and creator, and has yielding astonishing results, overlapping and synthesizing diverse textures.

www.honestjons.com

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