2008 Seattle Occultural Music Festival
We appreciate the gen- erous promotion from
Aphonia Recordings
Hollow Earth Radio
Organized & funded by the
Seattle Occultural Music Society, current- ly drawing up articles
for incorporation as a non-profit, to be com- pleted by June.
We run without grants & little corporate spon- sorship. So you are en- couraged to donate be- low in accordance with your means & interest.
A two-weekend, community-based festival of esoteric, mystical & psychoacoustic musics, spanning the region's breadth of generations & genres. Established to integrate Seattle's diverse experimental arts scene, introduce new local artists & import important outside influence.
SCHEDULE
All shows are all ages & start at 8pm, except the 24th which is 21+ w/ID & starts at 10:30pm. There is a suggested price of $5-15, all tickets available at the door. The vast majority of proceeds go toward curbing travel costs for performers not from the immediate Seattle area. The acts listed below are tentative participants & nothing is set in stone.
2008's SOMF featured artist is James Nielsen. His multilayered, transcendental paint, pen & collage creations are informed by extreme paranoia, isolation, drugs, violence, exertion, sleeping, wandering, alchemaic & qabbalistic diagrams... Dense, salon-style conglomerations of his work, as well as display books, will be assembled & featured for the month of May at Dearborn. We hope to introduce his work to a wide & appropriate audience by displaying it in this frequented stronghold of DIY art.
Friday, May 16th
8pm - All ages
Gallery 1412
1412 18th Ave
Phillip Arnautoff
"...based on an expansion of Partch's intonational system, but wedded to a very different & equally singular aesthetic."
-Nonsequitur
Robin Holcomb
Delicate & subtle, violent & overwhelming, a world of feeling past passed on through the whisper of a single note & the storm of the many.
Michal Szostalo
String Quartet No. 1
Reruns of the Final Battle with electonics performed again, after 5 years since its premiere.
Eric Ostrowski
Derek M. Johnson [Olympia]
Ian Ackerman [Olympia]
Gabe Will [Olympia]
Saturday, May 17th
8pm - All ages
Dearborn on Woodland
4131 Woodland Park Ave N
VIDEO & FILM
PRESENTERS
Work from established film-makers & first showings will be shown side-by-side. A collection of painted or bleached 16mm, VHS manipulations, algorithmic digital video & audio-driven works from Eric Ostrowski, Jake Sweeney-Samuelson, Patrick McMurchie & others.
Voodoo Israel [San Francisco]
Mother Earth speaking in tongues through the ageless, rattling & exagerated bone structure of each absorbed entity.
Tyler Potts
"...winsome, introspective compositions skillfully blend both digital and analog sound palettes."
-The Stranger
Eric Ostrowski
"...free-improv skree... colorful and manic... screechy drones... we're treated to some really good experimental noise."
-Smooth Assailing
Paintings for Animals
"...hypnotic and gorgeous collages from vocal snippets and field recordings."
-The Stranger
Friday, May 23rd
8pm - All ages
Underground Event Center
2407 1st Ave
Agnes Szelag [Oakland]
Composer, performer, & video/audio installation artist. Her work explores the cognitive & aesthetic relationship of sound & visual media.
Cult of Zir [Portland]
Accompanied by (acting as conduit for) various musickal aetheric entities and friends 'real' and 'imaginary.'
Matt Shoemaker"...imagine a space encrypted to the point of vanishing definition... patterns and systems free from willful intention..."
-23Five
Forrest Friends
...hide in the deepest of the woods, waiting to lull unsuspecting travelers to their doom with the Forrest Friends siren song.
Thunder Grey Pilgrim
A landscape and a person walking in that landscape. There are
daunting cliffs there, and plains glad in their way of brown
monotony.
KRGA
"Gorgeous, crisply textured beds of sound. KRGA does jar you once or twice with some noisier passages, but beauty prevails..."
-Wall of Sound
Tempered SteelFfej, Frank Junk, and Dennis Rea conjuring phantom harpsichords, as-yet-uninvented stringed instruments, musique concrete...
Ben L. Robertson
Aphonia Recordings cofounder's pathological obsession with the acoustic relationships between timbre & extended forms of tonality.
Arsenlives
Organic textures and rhythms syncopated below a field of electronic engines driven by singing and offset loops.
Saturday, May 24th
10:30pm - 21+ w/ID
Jewelbox Theatre
2232 2nd Ave
A Minority of One [Portland]
"...this instinctive and natural sound-craft... based on organic rhythmes and ritual-like deep and long fields."
-Tavarn Keben
Red Squirrels
"...rocket around in ways that are guaranteed to get many personal goats...the places it gets to are interestingly anarchic."
-The Wire
Mood Organ
vibration. interference patterns. recording & playback devices. altered states. violence. electricity. sex. mirrors. feedback.