Goolugatup Sounds 14 – Soda Lite, Segal / Uemoto / Padmanabham

Friday 28 July 2023 / from 7pm

As frosty Makuru gives way to the slowly warming, brightening season of Djilba, GOOLUGATUP SOUNDS invites you to its fourteenth ‘Goolugatup Sounds’ – another double bill of unique and inquisitive music by the Derbal Yerrigan riverbend.

The soundscapes of Nipaluna/Hobart-based SODA LITE (aka Alex Last) are crafted in response to local environments, built on field recordings which serve as a ‘mulch’ for the growth of sympathetic timbres, moods and melodic patterns. In Alex’s words, each song is an “attempt to embody the slowly ventilating tempo and vibrant agency of earthly realms.” Keyboards cycle through sound-banks to form cascading phrases over pools of nectar-rich ambience, while deep swollen drones and slurred woodwinds disperse beneath airy, rain-replenished tones. Over the years, Soda Lite has released music with US ambient & experimental labels like Not Not Fun, Constellation Tatsu & Inner Islands. For Goolugatup Sounds, Soda Lite will be joined by June Last (keys) for a captivating set of live electronics and audiovisual immersion. Meanwhile, other facets of Alex’s expansive arts practice unfurl in their gallery show ‘Outside Inn’, opening alongside.

The new improvisatory collaboration between JEREMY SEGAL (electronics), NAOKO UEMOTO (saxophone) and JOSIAH PADMANABHAM (piano) explores live instruments interacting with generative digital sequencing. Picture tumbling, computer-generated rhythms with an uncanny half-likeness to human drumming, mingling with virtuosic piano and saxophone melodics. Between them, the three burrow deeply and patiently into wild sonic possibilities – the distinctive interplay of each instrument and player’s idiosyncrasies, strange and beautiful confluences of harmony, and incalculable arcs of form that might evoke Stockhausen one moment and Arca, Thelonious Monk or Pharaoh Sanders the next. Fossicking in the borderlands of heartfelt expression and austere musical sci-fi, this meeting of minds from three of Boorloo’s musical rising stars is not to be missed.

Join us at Goolugatup Heathcote, Applecross from 6pm, Friday July 28 (music starts at 7). Entry is free, with wood-fired pizza, full bar and two exhibitions opening alongside (‘Outside Inn’ by Alex Last, and ‘triple power of plants’ by Audrey Tan, Jess Tan and Sebastian Temple).

[www.goolugatup.com/exhibitions]

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We acknowledge the Bibbulmun as the Traditional Owners of the land on which we stand and pay respect to the Whadjuk people, and Elders past, present, future.

Image: Lyndon Blue