Tone List
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Tone List is a Perth-based label dedicated to the nurturing of exploratory music practice in Western Australia. We publish recordings by Australian artists, and organise concerts, workshops and the annual Audible Edge festival, working towards strengthening community and offering outlets for experimental music to be heard by a wider public. Our sustained goal is to ensure that emerging artists interested in exploratory sound have an internationally-networked scene to grow into and a network of diverse and inspiring local practitioners interested in hearing and supporting them, for the benefit of the richness of the present and future scene. We challenge our own aesthetic ideals, striving for openness to all musics that display a curiosity for the not-yet-here. We have faith in the possibility of the emergence of a kind of music practice that is distinctly of its time and place in this unique part of the world if it can be collectively cared for by a sensitive, generous and critical community.
Check out our website, which has plenty of music & interviews you can listen to pertaining to the Perth experimental & exploratory music scene. |
Audible Edge
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Audible Edge is an annual festival for exploratory music, produced by Tone List. It takes place in Boorloo (Perth), Albany and Denmark in Western Australia. I've been the main initiator and curator of the project since its first edition in 2017. The project started as an incentive for the wave of touring artists present in Australia around January to visit & share their work in Perth and regional Western Australia, and has been steadily growing each year, collaborating with Tura New Music, Flock and PICA to bring artists such as France Jobin, Jim Denley, Isabelle Duthoit, Mette Rasmussen, Sofia Jernberg, Paal Nilssen-Love, Dharma Shan & many more to Perth. Since 2019, the project has been supported by the Western Australian Department of Local Government, Sports and Cultural Industries.
The 2020 edition of the project planned to shift gears a bit with a greater focus on interdisciplinary work and art from Australia and South East Asia, and more collaborations with local arts organisation. It also moved to April - which was a little tragic due to the situation around CoVid-19, forcing its cancellation. We're currently working through a program called "Not Not Music" of commissions and other activities organised in the wake of the festival. It'll be back as a performance event, eventually. A YouTube playlist of past Audible Edge festival performances is available here. I did all of the audio recordings from the 2018 and 2019 festivals, whereas 2017 was recorded by Dan O'Connor (who edits all of the videos). |
Sounding Together
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With few intensive workshop opportunities for improvisation and experimental sound practice in Australia, Sounding Together investigates the possibility of collective mentorship in this field, with the simultaneous goal of growing richness of practice in Boorloo/Perth and strengthening a sense of community in the field of improvised music at both a local and national level.
The first instance of Sounding Together was led by Jim Denley in Koorda on Kaprun and Ballardong Noongar country, and featured participants from Perth, Adelaide and Hobart. Over four days participants worked in the Wheatbelt region of WA, improvising outdoors, taking field recordings and making work to present to one another. The final showing involved a group sound installation and an orchestral performance by all twelve musicians. The second instance was led by Jim and Annette Krebs in Dunsborough on Wardandi Noongar boodja. Participants came from Perth, Canberra, Brisbane and Hobart. We spent five days working on the beaches, rock formations, Karri forests and freshwater pools of the region, as well as recording and experimenting at home. The final showing involved some small solo, duo and trio performances, and a large ensemble performance by everyone together. |
Malleefowl |
I'm currently putting house concerts on under the name "Malleefowl". More info about that here.
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Back in the day...
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I've previously organised shows and workshops for Tura New Music, including their iMprov workshop program and Club Zho series, and incidental shows in the Totally Huge New Music Festival..
iMprov was described by Eduardo Cossio in ADSR Zine in this way: "[iMprov] fostered exchange with local and visiting artists from different backgrounds. The safe environment of the workshops did much to enable the individual practice of its participants." My perspective is biased, but my personal understanding of iMprov - as a facilitator, but always also as a learning participant of the workshops - was that it created space for a small group of folks who had an interest in improvised music but no idea of a "scene" or "community" for it, to meet and form that exact scene. In the years the program was running, Perth went from a place with only a handful of ongoing groups or projects playing free improvisation, to one with dozens of them. Many of these collaborations, even if they have changed names or have in-flux lineups, are still going. I also put on a lot of one-off shows, including After / Before, which you can read a review of here. |