Botborg is an international audio-visual performance group that fuses and rewires raw electronic signals to create intensely visceral experiences of sound-colour synaesthesia. Using a complex array of custom electronics, Botborg create totally live multi-sensory assaults of interdependent colour and rhythm, pushing the limits of technology to invoke the maximum possible stimulation of their audience’s mind and body. Botborg work with a level of experimentation and improvisation that places them in a territory outside traditional musical or cinematic formats, where the boundaries between art, science, and philosophy mutate until they are rendered meaningless.

Shearing Pinx

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This new project from drummer Kevin Romain draws inspiration from the mid 1960s post bop and free jazz movements. Romain is joined by longtime collaborator Domic Conway (We Just Stole A Car, Malleus Trio) on tenor saxophone and Nikko Whitworth (Expain, Big Evil) on 5ths-tuned double bass. Working in dozens of bands in Vancouver and internationally for the past six years, Romain (Sprïng, We Just Stole A Car, Wintermitts) has developed a reputation as a versitile and creative improviser and is excited to debut this aggressive new avant-garde improvising group. Expect fast cymbal beats and gratuitous shred.

Equal parts sonic exploration and performance art, rrkktttss is the electro-acoustic project of Bill John Batt (eschatons, fake jazz, softess, aerosol constellations). Utilizing a selection of semi-working yet mostly dying amplifiers rrkktttss demonstrates the aural interconnectedness of a room through placement, pushing and pulling of attached microphones and sound sculptures in search of satisfying tone. Through a culmination of nervous energy, dedicated listening and body positioning rrkktttss physically displays the sonic capabilities of a given space.

Waters is a solo project encompassing minimal guitar and vocal based pieces. The instruments act as a base for signal and texture, becoming, with process, only remnants and figures of their former selves. Melodies and arrangements fall into a veiled response from tactile measures. A set can be an examination of the guitar as a machine as much as a melodic  instrument. Waters is the solo endeavour of Lindsey Hampton. Begun in 2011 it and has taken on a number of different forms, including collaborative pieces, recordings and long format installations. Hampton is a multidisciplinary artist and designer who lives and works in Vancouver, Canada.

Joshua Stevenson, aka Magneticring, is a musician known for his creative use of vintage synthesizers such as the EMS Synthi AKS, custom-programmed FM tone generators, and modified tape effects. Joshua’s unique sound seamlessly blends improvisation with spontaneous composition. He has been a prominent figure in the western Canadian and international underground music scenes for over 30 years. His influences range from Gamelan music and 20th-century experimental music to noise and the underground music community he emerged from in the 1990s.