Sound Anatomy XII: Thomas Ankersmit & Richard Scott
Doors: 19:30 / Start time: 20:00
Sound Anatomy present a sound art night with performances by:
- Thomas Ankersmit
- Richard Scott
Thomas Ankersmit (Netherlands, 1979) is a musician and composer based in Berlin and Amsterdam. Since 2006 his main instrument, both live and in the studio, has been the Serge Modular synthesizer. Ankersmit has long-term collaborations with New York minimalist Phill Niblock and Italian composer Valerio Tricoli. His music is released on the Touch and PAN labels. Acoustic phenomena such as sound reflections, infrasonic vibration, otoacoustic emissions, and highly directional projections of sound play a central role in his work. His music is also characterized by a deliberate misuse of the equipment, using feedback and disruptions to the signal, and the extremes of frequency and dynamics, to create visceral but finely detailed swarms of sound.
Ankersmit has performed throughout Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, and Asia. His work has been presented at venues such as Hamburger Bahnhof and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle, Basel; Serralves Museum, Porto; MoMA PS1, New York; and at festivals for experimental and contemporary music all over the world. He has been a guest lecturer at universities such as Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, CalArts, and the Universität der Künste in Berlin.
Current projects include commissioned works for CTM and Berghain (Berlin) based on infrasound and architectural resonance, and for GRM (Paris) based on the research of Pierre Schaeffer, as well as new work with Phill Niblock.
https://soundcloud.com/weerzin
"Sound has never felt so granular and tangible and all around you. A hair-raising and overwhelming experience."
→ Antoine Richard, Tokafi
“Nobody sets standards like Thomas Ankersmit. With his analogue synth he plays the space as well the ears of the people occupying that space. Phantom sounds penetrate the skull in disturbing ways, perform dances once inside, and disappear or transform with a slight movement of the head. Practically everything else that evening paled in comparison to the intensity and focus of his performance.”
→ René van Peer, Gonzo Circus
"Thomas Ankersmit casts inner-ear illusions reminiscent of Maryanne Amacher's otoacoustic emissions. Densely striated and mercilessly dominating, Ankersmit's set is one of the weekend's highlights."
→ Matt Evans, The Wire
“Razor-sharp and incredibly detailed sounds appear in high-definition … Ankersmit constructs a seductive and highly unpredictable sound-poem in which space, non-space, or the illusion of one or the other, play a key role. Uncompromising and revolutionary, with the equipment on the torturing rack … Outright genius.”
→ Sven Schlijper, KindaMuzik
Richard Scott is a free improvising sound artist and electroacoustic composer, working with electronics including modular synthesizers and controllers such as the Buchla Thunder and Lightning and his own self-designed WiGi infrared controller developed at STEIM. He has been composing and performing for over 25 years, recently working with Evan Parker, Jon Rose, Richard Barrett, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Shelley Hirsch, Ute Wasserman, Michael Vorfeld, Frank Gratkowski and his own Lightning Ensemble. He studied free improvisation in the 1980s with John Stevens, saxophone with Elton Dean and Steve Lacy, and electroacoustic composition with David Berezan and Ricardo Climent. He has released many albums, for example with Grutronic and Evan Parker for PSI records, The Magnificence of Stereo (sruti BOX) and has a solo double modular synthesizer LP, Several Circles, and an album with Sidsel Endreson, Debris in Lower Earth Orbit, released on CUSP Editions in 2016.