London promoters BleeD, who’ve been responsible for some great gigs and nights in the capital in recent years – including October’s Blackest Ever Black party and November’s Plex/Colony/BleeD showdown, where they hosted ear-and-body-shredding sets from Metasplice, D’Marc Cantu and DJ Spider – have announced their first set of shows for 2014. They draw together artists from the US and the UK toeing the lines between exploratory synthesiser music, club music and noise.
The first, which takes place on 27th January at Corsica Studios, is headlined by Chris Madak, aka Bee Mask, who has been attracting increasing attention over the past couple of years for his detailed and often noise-scorched compositions. He’s also become involved in a subtle exchange of ideas with the dance music world, with daring DJs dropping his tracks in club sets, Italian techno hypnotist Donato Dozzy releasing an album this year composed entirely of his own Bee Mask remixes (Donato Dozzy Plays Bee Mask) and Madak himself releasing a 12" last week featuring remixes of his tracks by Surgeon and Abdullah Rashim.
"There’s a rhythmic axis that beats – often near imperceptibly – beneath the vast floodplains and wandering paths of his music, ensuring that Bee Mask tracks tend to throb and seethe rather than aimlessly drifting," said tQ’s Rory Gibb in a review of his last album When We Were Eating Unripe Pears. "That kinetic energy also percolates upwards and bubbles out at the music’s surface, where everything is in state of harried and erratic motion, like a still body of water shaken by a heavy shower of rain." This’ll be Bee Mask’s first London show since his Cafe Oto gig in 2013. You can grab tickets from here, which also includes entry to BleeD’s Spectrum Spools showcase on February 5th – more information on that below.
On Thursday 30th January, BleeD host a second showcase for the Opal Tapes label, which over 2013 released a series of grubby techno, noise and electronica cassettes and LPs that have included WANDA GROUP’s excellent Piss Fell Out Like Sunlight (included in the Quietus’ albums of 2013). The night takes place at Cafe Oto, and features Karen Gwyer, Opal Tapes boss Basic House and Dwellings & Druss. Full information and tickets here.
Finally, BleeD are bringing Spectrum Spools label boss and former Emeralds man John Elliott to London in February, with his project Outer Space alongside Andrew Veres. That gig again takes place at Cafe Oto, on February 5th, with the promise of a sound that "fuses classic Berlin school synthesiser music, musique concrète and minimal techno, birthing a fresh and unique approach to sound and structure." Information and tickets – again with joint entry to Bee Mask on the 27th January – can be picked up here.
