VOIMA (Suzuki Yasufumi + Yasunaga Tetsuro)

An improvisational unit featuring Suzuki Yasufumi (aka AEN, Soundroom/Commune Disc) and Tetsuro Yasunaga (from helll, minamo, etc.), VOIMA creates evolving pieces using a number of electronic instruments to effect sampled sound loops. Guided by an organic pulse, the music seems to move through a multiple layers of ideas simultaneously. Although these ideas may not be premeditated at first, they are soon massaged into a something altogether majestic.

To quote their profile (from the 2010 Ftarri Festival): It could be said that within their expression they are continually asking the question of how to get away from the mental operation of creating context from a mass of information. But actually, they aren't thinking that much.

VOIMA

VOIMA on Bandcamp

U/N.a+NOEL-KIT (Hiroyuki Nakamura + Koichi Utsugi + NOEL-KIT)

Two fine musicians pushing their jazz backgrounds ever further, Hiroyuki Nakamura (keys/electronics and Max/MSP) and Koichi Utsugi (saxophone/electronics and laptop) make up U/N.a, a project meshing said jazz with wide ranging compositional ideas. Incorporating ambient, glitch and minimal influences, they take the listener through a treasure trove of sound, bringing to mind everything from Prefuse 73 and Marcus Popp's work with Oval to ECM jazz.

They will be joined by the laptop experimentation of NOEL-KIT, one half of electronic improv unit DUB-Russell. With an ever-growing legion of fans, Dub-Russell creates mind-twisting beat-driven textures using their self-programmed software. NOEL-KIT is sure to bring a taste of their kaleidoscopic rhythms along for this special collaboration.

U/N.a

NOEL-KIT (laptop, from DUB-Russell)

Kinetic (Hiroki Chiba + Masatsugu Hattori Duo)

With a firm grasp of jazz tradition, drummer and vibraphonist Masatsugu Hattori took his percussion work straight into the new millennium with a range of projects, such as electroacoustic unit Ryusenkei Body, jazz-electronica unit Zycos, and conceptual electronica with Aktion Directe.

These days he has taken a minimal musical approach to percussive forms, becoming a perfect foil for the dense double-bass textures of mercurial bass/electronics wizard Hiroki Chiba (Isolation Music Quartet, They Live, Hose II, etc.) The duo will explore some stark and challenging territory, but you might also find some new dance moves when the rhythm breaks into dangerous groove-like splinters.

Hiroki Chiba

Masatsugu Hattori

Evil Penguin

Master of disguises, Mexican top-hats, ambient rockabilly to minimal Hawaiian Kumulipo chants, the Evil Penguin poses the primordial question of evanescence against a backdrop of New Wave folk. Celebratory, subliminal, moment-to-moment. A Tasmanian treasure with a penchant for open spaces.