Yet another Three Syllables gig, these guys have gone gig loopy.
KIRA KIRA
Is Kristín Björk Kristjánsdóttir on thumb piano, music boxes and all kinds of toys wired with contact mikes. She also plays guitar, glockenspiel and of course loud lady laptop.
Kristín is a founding member of Icelandic art collective KITCHEN MOTORS. She has composed music for theatre, dance and movies and performed / exhibited extensively in her home country, Iceland as well as around Europe.
She doesn’t have many instruments, only a few music boxes attached to a pink wooden stick and a nylon string guitar her mum gave her when she was 12. So she sneaks around with a pocket recorder collecting sounds to toy with. Friends’ garages tend to be full of noisemaking apparats and there’s never a town without a forgotten piano. Then she turns her found sounds or the melodies she’s played on any old forgotten thing she came across into songs on her laptop.
The relationship between adventurous music and primitive moving arts is of particular interest to KIRA KIRA. She creates performances where physical visuals such as remote controlled ghosts and blood driven cowboy hats floating in thin air with a bullet hole through the middle are set in context with electronic music, sometimes blending in theatrical elements, her home made 16 mm film or anything that serves the mood for each show.
She either plays solo, singing and toying with small acoustic events inside electronic landscapes or with a band that usually consists of random friends whispered on board for each show.
From Smekkleysa Records, the SUGARCUBES own label, members of her band come from MÚM (drummer SAMULI KOSMINEN – tonight’s support act), PARACHUTES and RICEBOY SLEEPS (Jónsi from SIGUR ROS’ side project).
SAMULI KOSMINEN (MÚM)
SAMULI KOSMINEN is one of Finland’s top drummers / percussionists. As a drummer, perussionist, composer, and producer, he has collaborated with a gargantuan array of Finnish and foreign rock, pop, jazz, electronic music artists like KRONOS QUARTET, VALGEIR SIGURDSSON, KIRA KIRA, KTU, EMILIANA TORRINI and many others.
For the past several years his main collaborators have been Icelandic band MÚM and Finnish accordionist KIMMO POHJONEN.
Since joining forces with Kimmo in KIMMO POHJONEN / SAMULI KOSMINEN KLUSTER in 2001, this adventurous duo has worked in numerous projects and formations, and performed worldwide. Notable of late is the Kosminen/Pohjonen composition UNIKO, a concert collaboration with KRONOS QUARTET, specially commissioned by Kronos.
Kosminen´s blind date in 2002 with Icelandic band MÚM lled to a long-term collaboration. After several records and world tours with the band, Kosminen has gained a reputation of an original drummer who’s style integrates acoustic drums with electronic beats as if he would be an organic drum machine.
Kosminen is currently working on his solo project, which he is debuting at this show. Originally a drummer, now as an explorer of flea-market percussions, beat apparatuses, melody making toys, clonky machines and tuneful data processors, Kosminen has discovered new and strange dimensions of rhythm and sound.
Ticket information: £5 (adv) / £6 (doors)
Online:
http://www.seetickets.com/s.asp?a=kira+kira&p=6806
http://shop.cardiffstudents.com/box-office/gigs/buy/kira-kira-m-m
In the flesh: First come, first served on the doors / Cardiff S.U. Box Office / Spillers.
IN ASSOCIATION WITH KRUGER MAGAZINE.
