10th Frakture Festival of Improvised & Electronic Music

Noise Club
S&M

Friday 26th October
Wolstenholme Gallery,
11 Wolstenholme Sq,
Liverpool L1 4JJ
8pm £5 /£3

Frakture 0151 709 6123

S&M Combo

Freely improvised structures tracing fragile lines between noise and tonality.

Simon Bradley - amplified cello;
Mark Webber - electronics.

S&M Combo (erstwhile S&M) started in 2004 as a development from a previous collaboration as interestfreetelevision. Discarding the use of samplers, loops, processing and computing, S&M Combo focused on their core instruments: oscillators and cello. The duo combines many extraordinarily unlikely sounds that lie poised over the visceral interface of harsh mechanical noise coupling with serene minimalist beauty. The initial simplicity and immediacy of their free improvisation gives rise to ever more complex and exotic, aleatory forms. By exploring both the delicacy and raw power of such simple systems they are musically part Jonathan Harvey and part Whitehouse, or like a physics lecture gone astray.

Simon and Mark have worked together over the past 7 years on a variety of projects and have played at events such as the Leeds International Film Festival as well as at the respected Klinker Club and Bohman Brothers’ nights in London. This performance is part of S&M Combo's first UK tour, sponsored by Jazz Services.

Emphasis is on fundamental principles. Our interest here, however, is not in the musical, but in mechanical and electrical systems. Sounds quarrel, fight, and when they are of equal strength destroy one another, and give place to silence. That then will be the basis of everything we do.

Simon Bradley - amplified cello;
Mark Webber - electronics.

The PRS Foundation for new music
support received from Community Foundation for Merseyside