The worlds of classical and electronic music will collide this December as Nik Void of Factory Floor and Daniel Brandt of Brandt Brauer Frick collaborate with André de Ridder’s orchestral collective s t a r g a z e, for the Spitalfields Music Festival.
Erased Tapes musician Brandt will be debuting an orchestral reworking of his solo album, Eternal Something at the Renegade New Classical Night held on Wednesday December 6 at Shoreditch Church.
Nik will be premiering an electroacoustic composition while Qasim Naqvi from Dawn of Midi will also be debuting new material which he has composed for s t a r g a z e.
We spoke to Nik recently about the upcoming performance.
Can you tell me a bit about your new composition for Renegade New Classical?
Nik Void: I’m drawing from my experiences living in East London, and the changes that happened while I was there. Gentrification started happening much earlier, but it seemed to go up a notch at that time. A lot of warehouses were made into spaces to have club nights, and of course Factory Floor did some improvised shows. There was a lot of excitement, and an undercurrent nervousness of not knowing if these places would still exist in a couple years time, or whether I would be able to carry on and afford being able to live there.
Eventually we all had to move to North London, but I’m drawing from that time. There will be some uncomfortable moments in this composition, which will be 45 minutes long. I’m working with oboe, cello, violin – basically an orchestra, which I’ve not done before. The plan is to meet a week before the actual performance and work together – this is how I usually work with other people. I’ll meet up with them a couple days beforehand. I find that’s the best way to go about it. At the moment, I’m writing for it – I’ve got ideas to go down there with, and I’m hoping I can talk the musicians into approaching their instruments slightly differently. Which I think they’re up for doing. The collective, s t a r g a z e, have done it in other pieces. That’s about as far as I’ve gotten, so far.
How do you feel about being challenged with the instrumentation and working in this new way?
NV: I’m really excited – I don’t come from an academic background. I can read music, but that’s quite limited. I think they’re aware of that, so hopefully we’ll all be a bit uncomfortable. I think that’s what’s really great about sound and music, in that it unites discomfort with comfort. You begin to work together and communicate together and become comfortable. It’ll be an interesting experience, I hope.
