BleeD are set to host a pair of the US’s more distinctive voices in electronic and dance music in London this weekend. Taking place at Basing House on Saturday March 23rd, the night will see Chicago house explorer Jamal Moss, aka Hieroglyphic Being, playing a three hour set.
He will be joined by Holly Herndon, whose Movement album was one of last year’s late gems, and found her exploring the interfaces between machine and body via intense digital processing of the human voice. Her live shows are equally impressive, finding her using her laptop to dice her voice to shreds in real-time, setting it in backdrops of unsettling silence or sinking it into percussive techno rhythms. She recently played a sold out show at Cafe Oto, and this one will find her music operating specifically in the context of a club night.
Moss, in some ways, is right at the opposite end of the spectrum. Where Herndon’s music is distinctly digital and crystalline, his Hieroglyphic Being music is abrasive, caked with static, grit and sweat, drawing from his love of Sun Ra and the rough DJing style of Chicago legend Ron Hardy. His sets are punishing, contradictory but hypnotic things, clashing disco into acid house, post-punk and segments of pure distortion.
"That was what my brain was tuned into, more than what you’d hear on popular radio, and that’s what I’ve always gravitated to since day one," said Moss of the rough approach he takes to his music. "So I really can’t get into the clean sound, because it’s a representation of what’s life’s supposed to be, and life’s not that clean! Life is muddy, life is dirty." Click here to read the full interview.
