Rashad Becker rashad becker plays traditional music of notional species
sound performance, italian premiére
rashad becker plays traditional music of notional species is the clearest title Rashad Becker could chose for his live performance at Live Arts Week: no capital letters for a stream of sound played from the backstage. Rashad's solo output is exemplified in his exceptional and widely acclaimed debut album Traditional Music of Notional Species (PAN Records, 2013). Becker’s name will be known to a lot of people – indeed it appears on many, many records – but his music won’t be. His day job is as the mastering and cutting engineer in Berlin’s world-famous Dubplates and Mastering, where his role involves entering into a creative dialogue with the music of others, helping them to achieve what they set out to with their compositions in the final product. Before, he was originally a musician in his own right, and he continues with this as an irregular sideline, making and manipulating loops and electronic sounds. His live performances are extremely precise in producing sequences of very crisp and discrete tones, sparse and improvisational, but unexpectedly it all sounds conversational. Most of the frequencies used in this new work are within the range of the human voice. It could sound like a long stream-of-consciousness sentence made up short syllables, electronic oohs and wahs, sections of muttering, and occasionally bickering. Whatever he does, it seems Becker has the knack of giving sound its voice.
sunday 13 april > 9.30 pm > MAMbo
sound performance, italian premiére
rashad becker plays traditional music of notional species is the clearest title Rashad Becker could chose for his live performance at Live Arts Week: no capital letters for a stream of sound played from the backstage. Rashad's solo output is exemplified in his exceptional and widely acclaimed debut album Traditional Music of Notional Species (PAN Records, 2013). Becker’s name will be known to a lot of people – indeed it appears on many, many records – but his music won’t be. His day job is as the mastering and cutting engineer in Berlin’s world-famous Dubplates and Mastering, where his role involves entering into a creative dialogue with the music of others, helping them to achieve what they set out to with their compositions in the final product. Before, he was originally a musician in his own right, and he continues with this as an irregular sideline, making and manipulating loops and electronic sounds. His live performances are extremely precise in producing sequences of very crisp and discrete tones, sparse and improvisational, but unexpectedly it all sounds conversational. Most of the frequencies used in this new work are within the range of the human voice. It could sound like a long stream-of-consciousness sentence made up short syllables, electronic oohs and wahs, sections of muttering, and occasionally bickering. Whatever he does, it seems Becker has the knack of giving sound its voice.
sunday 13 april > 9.30 pm > MAMbo