An invitation to perform at Luxembourg’s premier new music festival rainy days gave us the possibility to put together a new group, adding Chris Cutler on drums and Børre Mølstad on toy tuba to our electronics.
We had played with Chris and Børre before in trios (documented here and here) but this quartet was a premiere. The giant stage of the Luxembourg Philharmonic grand auditorium also accommodated the audience which was seated on the racks usually occupied by large choirs. It made for a very special atmosphere. Lucky circumstances also allowed us to obtain a multitrack recording of the event, so we are thinking of turning it into a CD.
After the concert we invited the audience to celebrate the publication of Sarah’s book Radio Art Zone.
A second contribution to rainy days was a double installation that was displayed in the Philharmonie foyer. Sarah’s repurposed hair dryers had already been shown at SAVVY Contemporary during the documenta 14 radio project. Knut’s retelling of the early years of Resonance FM in central London via a single photo had been on display at Espace Multimédia Gantner in France. Here both of these installations came together for the first time.
Click to see the Mobile Radio installation excerpt.
Our third involvement in the festival was to be guest performers in Annea Lockwood’s composition Spirit Catchers which was performed as a quadrilingual version on this occasion.
Thanks to Christiane Böhnke-Geisse and the partial easing of pandemic restrictions we could play a Tonic Train concert at the old (soon to be replaced) Schwere Reiter hall during our residency stay at Villa Waldberta.
The performance also doubled up as a launch event for our first CD, published on the Antenna Non Grata label.
For the second part of the concert we invited our Munich friends Gunter Pretzel on viola and Gunnar Geisse on laptop guitar to join us for a quartet.
February 16, 2019 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on TRIER February 2019
Our first public concert as a trio with Chris Cutler happened as part of the Opening 19 festival in Trier and we enjoyed it so much that we decided to publish the entire set on Soundcloud (see above, including the option for a high res 24bit 96kHz audio download, file size 1.5GB). Before the gig we were interviewed for Luxembourg’s national public radio where we had to pretend that the concert had already happened due to the later broadcast date. You can listen to the subsequent podcast of this radio show here. Our photographer friend Susanne Schug took very nice images of the concert and the festival, some of which you can see below.
Mikroton label boss Kurt Liedwart presenting a Clear Spot on Resonance104.4fm
To celebrate the 120th anniversary of feedback music Resonance104.4fm and ORF Kunstradio linked up for a live performance by Mobile Radio who were joined in the studio by Xentos ‘Fray’ Bentos, Hans W. Koch and Daniel Wilson. The show which was also broadcast by Soundart Radio in Totnes and Kanal 103 in Skopje is archived below:
Preparation for the 120th anniversary transmission (photo by Sarah Nicol)
On the 8th December 2014, exactly 120 years after Alfred Graham’s patent was granted, a celebratory concert took place at Cafe Oto, featuring Lu Edmonds, Xentos ‘Fray’ Bentos, Moshi Honen, Hans W. Koch, Daniel Wilson, Dominic Stephens plus us two. Simon Lucas filmed the show and made this video of our rendition of the BLOCK piece:
And here is a recording of the duo by Lu and Knut:
Our trip was framed by two lectures for sound art students at the University of the Arts London.
November 29, 2012 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on CAMPINAS November 2012
Mobile Radio BSP contributor Tiago de Mello invited us to play a concert as part of the NMElindo concert series in Campinas, about an hour and a half north-west of São Paulo. We were last in the line-up and enjoyed the gusts of wind that were blowing through the outdoor amphitheater. It was a magical environment in which to play – in the open park of the university campus surrounded by a circle of mature trees. We also used the chance to visit one of our contributing radio partners Radio Muda on the campus, in their surprising studio housed in the bottom of a concrete tower.
Photo 3 and video by Carol Neumann, Marina Tavares and Lukas Corazzini, support by CAIA, Visarte, AAAIA.
February 8, 2012 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on MUNICH February 2012
The team at Lothringer13 invited us for a concert at their gallery as part of their Noisy13 series. On this visit, due to problems with residential neighbours, the audience was gathered together and escorted to a different space – a somewhat uninviting room in the basement of a huge art space behind the shopfront gallery. It was a small concrete box with the classic rock band rehearsal room fragrance. In the end, it turned out very well and we put the budget PA system through its paces. We positioned the audience all around us and a few of them were close friends, which produced an intimate atmosphere. Our most loyal supporter was there, and our sounds triggered a reverie in which she travelled off somewhere interesting in her mind. We were happy that we were able to open up such a space for her. Munich is always a special place for our music…
The after show discussions are intense
The recording you can hear above is a mix of our own mixer output recording and a binaural room recording by Michael Kurz.
May 23, 2010 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on LIESER May 2010
Vinosonic
Seeing as we live in the outstanding Riesling-producing region of the world we thought it was about time to create a live event combining wine and abstract music. We invited our regular collaborator Gunter Pretzel from the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra to join us for a wine tasting in which we played a short piece for each of the selected first-class wines. The extraordinary surroundings were provided by the painter and glass artist Mana Binz. The event was part of the Mosel WeinKulturZeit festival
The music… a trio without a name. ‘Goldwingert’ was suggested by the audience (the name of a 0.3 hectare top quality vineyard in our home village of Ürzig). Before each short improvisation, we sampled a wine. At the risk of the music becoming kitsch we did not try to translate the wines into sound, but simply to offer our impressions of them
The wine… helped along by the sparkling expressions of Rudolf Trossen, who told a story about each wine after the audience had savoured it during the music. The listeners were extremely knowledgeable, (as you would imagine for a crowd made up partly of vintners), and one person could not only name each vineyard and vintage tasted, but each individual wine estate. Impressive
