The Sonic Protest festival has been working since 2003 to disseminate the singularities that sound, and is already manifesting itself at Le Générateur for the 5th time.
Cutting to the quick through notions of style that reduce sound and musical practices to labels, this rendezvous dedicated to the great-arts-that-make-good also gives a chance to hear artists with a historical dimension as much as up-and-comers who are clearing the way… through a sum of attempts and first times.
This nomadic, joyful and generous event creates, with each edition, a listening itinerary with stages as distinct as each other, in Paris, all around and even elsewhere.
A temporary spatial and sonic space like no other, Sonic Protest draws its map of the tender between noise, sound and music and presents a mini-panorama all subjective of the musical vivacities of scenes here and elsewhere.
Event co-produced with Instants Chavirés
Sister Iodine – Release Party!
Franc-tireur and tête chercheuse of the French noise scene, the trio has developed a unique formula at the crossroads of genres and poisons, where with lacerated guitars and drums, the band seeks a kind of terminal confusion between rock and chaos.
Formed in 1992 (circa), we can guess that these three activists of the most extreme sonic margins, must have refined their ranges via bruitist shocks such as Keiji Haino or Borbetomagus, leading artists who were then performing at the EPE in Paris, mythical temple of experimental bangs (music, cinema…).
In 7 albums (soon to be 8), the band is widely recognized for its ever more acidic, savage darkness, deployed in a unique formula, between no-wave fury, raw noises, abrasive electronics, and poison from the original Black Metal.
8th album (still on Nashazphone), covered in a thin layer of this deliciously toxic varnish, which we celebrate tonight.
Photo © Zofie Taueber
Leïla Bordreuil
Leila Bordreuil is a French-American cellist, composer, improviser and sound artist.
She currently lives in Brooklyn. Her musical language borrows as many concepts from harsh noise as from contemporary classical, free jazz and other experimental traditions…
Driven by a fierce interest in pure sound and its inherent texture, Leila Bordreuil challenges conventional cello practice by relying on extended techniques and extreme amplification methods without effects pedals. “I’m looking for a magical sound, one that heals, kills, turns the brain upside down” she declared to Les Inrocks in September 2022.
Her compositions frequently incorporate psychoacoustic explorations and sonic spatialization through in situ pieces and multichannel installations. Numerous and diverse collaborations with, among others: Bill Nace(Body/Head), Tamio Shiraishi(Fushitutsa), Zach Rowden, Kali Malone, Susan Alcorn, Ingrid Laubrock, Lee Ranaldo(Sonic Youth)… In 2022, she was in residence at GRM in Paris, producing the piece Pulsion / Suspension. That same year, in December, she shares the stage withSunn O))) in New-York.
Cuntroaches
If we push the chaos cursor 666 feet underground, we come across Cuntroaches. Past the layers of blood-red light and smeared fury, the states of flabbergastedness and suffocation, you can fully and serenely appreciate the music of Berlin trio Cuntroaches.
A creature plucked from the underground in the year 2015 AD, the band has since liquefied numerous stages on the old continent and dissolved itself in ecstasy, in total osmosis with its audience.
But what exactly are we talking about? The music of Cuntroaches delivers in the form of over-electrified assaults, a heap of post-grindcore, ramshackle metal, ultra-noisy punk… the whole thing could be mixed in a rusty container in the middle of an industrial estate. So much for being clear.
Short discography counting a handful of cassettes and a split 45 with – conveniently – England’s Guttersnipe, Cuntroaches is signed to legendary American label Skin Graft Records for their debut album due out sometime in 2023.
Rump State – Mark Morgan and Gaute Granli feat. Pat Murano
Mark Morgan and Gaute Granli first met in Brooklyn in 2017.
The following year, Mark Morgan, on tour, shared a few dates in Norway with the aforementioned Gaute Granli.
Not having “bumped into each other”, they say, during these few days of promiscuity, they decide in 2019 to mount a 50-day tour, just that, across Europe, to present their respective solo.
There, it’s another experience… but still no fight to speak of; they then agree to create a band together.
“Fuck it, let’s see what happens.”
Successful attempt at living together by two misanthropes?
Rump State features Mark Morgan, who was the man behind the too little-known Sightings(Sonic Protest 2011) , the New York trio behind impressively inventive noise rock, a band difficult to tame and arguably too far ahead of its time.
A few standout records, notably on Load Records, Daïs… and then off they went; Mark Morgan has since officiated in Silk Purse with stints on To Live and Shave in LA and collaborations with Aaron Dilloway, among others.
Gaute Granli is a member of Firmaet Forvoksen. From his native Norway, he distills a solo corpus of sound that is, to say the least, puzzling and unidentified… perhaps a new music, a chopped-up, desolate pop… arisen from the next century.
The two musicians share a guitar playing and vocal approach that is seemingly unstructured but well and truly chiseled.
they produce a mass of sound that feels as if adrift or carried inexorably by shifting sands…
Warning: uncomfortable psychedelia and total avant-garde.
This concert marks the release of their first record on the No Lagos Musique label.
They are exceptionally accompanied by Pat Murano (Decimus), another New Yorker from the No Neck Blues Band collective… one more stone in the destabilization, in short.