rare as a green dog events
Rare as a Green Dog was launched while I was in Berlin. Re-located to Manchester early 2007, RaGD has been warmly welcomed by UK with events already taken place in Newcastle (April 2007), Manchester’s Futuresonic festival (May 2007);an Arts Council sponsored event at Green Room, Manchester (Nov 2007); Manchester City Council funded our International Women’s Week event at Contact Theatre (March 2008); and a couple at RNCM (May and Nov 2008); St. Clement’s Church, Manchester mid-winter special (Dec 2008) and Chorlton Arts Festival invited us to inject some rarities (May 2009).
Someone once referred to me as “rarer than a green dog” (a Spanish phrase). I thought what a nice concept and felt the urge to create a network and platform to showcase unique and authentic electronic artists whose output is experimental and enjoyable as they challenge any tidy definitions of electronic genre and subgenre. RaGD is committed to raising profile for electronic ladies so at least 50% of performers are of the female species, therefore more realistically representing the population. A RaGD event is an evening of original fun entertainment and stimuli and a forum for networking, skills, knowledge, talent and positive sum power-sharing. Member of a number of international networks, RaGD will be amassing some of these unique partisans on a compilation at some stage. So, dare to be rare, enjoy the rarities if on offer near you and get in touch if u are an artist and u think u qualify…
BIG Appreciation to STNDFSH for RaGD logo number 1 and Kin for logo number 2: the electric dog
Post-event refractions:
What a wonderful Hazelnuts and Satsumas event 20 Dec 08 at St Clement Church, Chorlton! Thanks in abundance radiating to Sound Network, Daniel Barrett, all amazing artists, Tube for impeccable sound and the sterling catering, door and cleaning team.
A charming synopsis from the lovely attentive folk at Chorlton Radiophonic Workshop :
This quite remarkable night of electronic music and installations in Chorlton’s St Clements church had an atmosphere of an early 20th Century salon or chamber recital, the more so for the inclusion of high quality acoustic playing in some of the sessions.
Daniel Weaver’s looping guitar gradually spun order from chaos as pieces developed, with what seemed to be complex re-sampling of earlier loops as new material was laid down. Some tunes were more demanding whilst others were more melodic and we thought some made connections with Robert Fripp. One interesting thing about Daniel’s work is the physicality ñ he performs bends and twists his body into a form of dance as he manipulates the electronics with his feet.
Sarah Nicholls what an unexpected treat. Grand piano processed with granular synthesis and delay. Granulation was achieved with hardware which was gesture-controlled using a hat which Sarah swept and waved during performance. This was a single piece which began with conventional harmonic/melodic structures, disintegrated through manipulation into a “prepared piano” form (asked later, Sarah assured us that no pianos were harmed during the making of the piece) then re-assembled itself into the original form before finishing.
Caro Snatch delivered exactly what we have come to expect. Humorous, thoughtful lyrics flowing over a dynamic electronic score. These performances have an edgy atmosphere because you always have the impression that in juggling all that technology something is just about to go wrong. It never has and Caro has got here act into such a well-oiled format that the set list can be abandoned in favour of request from the audience. Jenny Kosmowsky made the trip up London to join one of the songs (more please!); Lisa B unfortunately was not able to participate with poems because of Flu (we believe). The thing we thought was a Kaossilator turns out to be an Alesis Air. Looking at the pictures one would guess the designer’s mum was frightened by HAL (2001 A Space Odyssey) while she was pregnant because the Alesis Air has a remarkable resemblance to HAL’s eye.
Seaming – we were in real chamber music territory here with 2 violins, cello and double bass supporting seaming herself on mechanical dulcitone and a classic electro-mechanical Wurly. A great sound but it is hard to describe. The main thing is that the songs mean a lot to her and sung with intense expressiveness. The final tune (solo grand piano) was very reminiscent of Philip Glass (see Galway Arts Blog earlier). Even though the lineup begs comparison with Penguin CafÈ Orchestra, the lyrical content differentiates ~ however the final tune did have elements of PCO along with the Philip Glass influence (maybe an experiment along the lines of Glass/Sutter combining piano and cello would work for Seaming).
Installations from Meat License Proposal and E. Birckbeck provided a stimulating way to spend the time between acts and Digital Donut provided her usual high standard of visuals for some of the acts.
Reviews of RaGD @ RNCM 2, Nov 08:
C. Cat/Radiophonic workshop:
First on Caro Snatch – new material, new guests and as always an interesting physical set as she juggles beatboxes, samplers, effects etc in real time whilst singing. Never mind the techie stuff – great songs full of interesting ideas. Pop Quiz – how did the opera singer (www.myspace.com/jennykosmowsky) get up form London for the gig? – My guess chauffered by Jeremy Clarkson in a Trabant turned out not be correct. Plus a music poetry crossover with Lisa B. Caro wanted us to dance, but missed the opportunity to make it happen by leaving out sacro illiak dysfunkshun – shame on you Caro!
Next Peterloo Massacre. More new material here too and as always an Angst-driven performance by Kin, nothing held back here. Glad to hear some favourites – warmed bodies with it’s lovely tinkling bell-like synth sounds and sandpits with its finger-picked intro. First outing with the tenori-on, it will beitneresting to see how this develops in contributing to the sound.
Top of the bill Barbara Morgenstern. Everyone who’s seen Forklift Truck Driver Klaus knows the Germans have a great sense of humour, but Barbara’s is particularly playful. A great combination of acoustic (grand piano) and laptop music – come to Berlin being most memorable – needs more listening to the bm CD before forming further opinions.
Also to be mentioned DJ Paizan for the warm up and keeping things going throughout the evening and Digital Donut for real-time improvisational visuals.
Technological highlights – Peterloo Massacre’s tenori-on, Barbara’s Kaoss Pad, Caro’s Kaossilator and her new looper.
Also – added bonus met up with Hypnotique from previous Rare as a Green Dog and of course The Importance of Being Analogue.
PS Well done to all concerned in coping with PA / monitoring probs
By Cath AubergineThe Up Down Escalator Myspace :
Saturday the temperature has plummeted and a night in would be quite nice, but if there’s one thing that’ll tempt me out of the house it’s the prospect of a German doing electronica..
Has it really been six months since the last Rare As A Green Dog (AKA RaGD) event? Seems so; the organisation’s very much living up to its name, but then these are not your average live music events. Founded by locally-based electronic artist Caro Snatch in Berlin a couple of years ago and continued when she relocated to Manchester with the curating assistance of Peterloo Massacre’s Paul Green, the events place electronic-based music with a minimum 50% female line-up in a theatrical context, accompanied by video artistry and innvoative DJing.
Caro Snatch herself is the first of tonight’s live performers, and from the start she is pushing back boundaries, speaking her elliptical poetry over ambient melodic drones whilst a female opera singer adds an eerie accompaniment; it’s all beautifully fragile. Then we’re into the realms of beat poetry as self-described “queer Canadian acupuncturist and spoken word poet” Lisa B performs a couple of works from the album she’s recently recorded with Caro’s Autechre-like analogue oscillations as a backdrop, before Caro herself takes centre stage (metaphorically that is), multi-tracking her own voice to create beats and instrumentation until it doesn’t even sound quite human. Even more than the most DIY of indie bands or abstract of glitchcore artists this is an outer fringe of music, an artist realising the sound of her own unconstrained imagination without the slightest consideration of commerce or popularity. The album will be limited to 108 copies, the irony being that her creations are anything but the inaccessible highbrow niche that might suggest. Her last track would fit well into any leftfield techno collection; she’d quite like us to dance, and we could have done too but it would have felt quite strange in here.
After which Peterloo Massacre seem almost conventional in their line-up of singer-guitarist, bassist, drummer and electronics man. Except that electronics man is Paul Green, controller of a synthetic orchestra of beautifully fluid keyboard sounds and laptop (as well as a rather excellent little tabletop LED display screen). And that singer is the remarkable KiN, a black stripe painted across her eyes and her voice a collision of cracked urban soul, atmospheric near-whispers and strange vibrations. As such, they’re reminiscent of the leading lights of the trip-hop movement inasmuch as they manage to sound both richly and pleasantly melodic and faintly menacing at the same time, sort of like being in a flotation tank with a stingray.
Barbara Morgenstern was, we’re told, a leading producer on a Berlin-based electronica label and her debut album was called “Vermona ET 6-1″ – so the last thing we’re expecting is a friendly smiling woman seated at a grand piano. “I used to play more on an organ” she tells us by way of introduction “but with my age…” (she’s in her mid thirties, but looks younger). Anyway how often do you see a grand piano with a laptop sat on top of it and a table full of plugs and cables at the side? At first they feature only peripherally as she accompanies herself with soft minor chords which sound ever-so-slighty sinister in the way only a real piano can, but gradually beats and flickers emerge, simmering up into full-blown glitchcore. Only for a minute, though. Mostly it’s somewhere in between – a lot of the material aired tonight is from Barbara’s latest album where the electronics are subtle, the melodies rich (she’s collaborated with Robert Wyatt recently and it’s not just the song she wrote with him which floats in a pastoral-progressive end-of-summer way) and the words switch between languages. Only at the end – smiling as she briefly questions and defies the 10.30pm curfew – does she switch to full-on electropop mode with “The Operator”, and it almost feels like we could have ended up in a techno rave had the lights not come on.
Review/photos of stormin Green Room event Nov 08 at RaGD MySpace and Camera Ged site
