Join us on Saturday, May 25, as French multidisciplinary artist Jeanne Briand and Franco-Italian instrumentalist, composer, and producer Romain Azzaro celebrate the launch of their second album, Gear(s). For this occasion, Azzaro will return to the studio to create a 4DSOUND installation: Gear(s) & Glass, crafted from the echoes of shattered glass. “Throw a glass onto the floor, and it breaks,” Azzaro explains. “The sound lasts forever.” This spatial sound experience, created in collaboration with MONOM, not only complements the album but deepens the exploration into an intriguing question that has often sparked debate between the two artists: What might machine music sound like if crafted from glass? Attendees will be enveloped by the glassy sounds, reimagined through instruments and processes that transform their distinctive sonic characteristics. Emphasizing its brittleness and fragility, the artists break the glass’s calm, turning the shards into a composition of poetic, psychedelic electronic music. The glass may shatter, but it is reborn as glistening granules of sound.
To enhance the evening, we’ve invited two artists making their debut at MONOM. First, Romila will present her sound installation “Merkayangan: A Study of the Javanese Realms,” created in Lobe, Vancouver’s 4DSOUND studio. “Merkayangan” is a 4DSOUND simulation of the seven kejawen realms using traditional Javanese instruments, natural sounds, and archival recordings. This project merges modern and spiritual technologies (kejawen mysticism and instruments like gamelan and angklung) to recreate a pre-colonial memory of these thresholds, redefining their portrayal through auditory storytelling. It employs slendro and pelog, Javanese pentatonic scales, for “realm building,” simulating the realms and the experiences within them, including stretching time through tempo experimentation and creating auditory silhouettes of unseen beings, while ensuring the spiritual sanctity of these dimensions remains undisturbed. It is of importance to state that, in developing this project, the artist upholds the spiritual responsibility of keeping all and any dimensional gateways closed in recognition that — on our physical plane of existence — the territories this work occurs on was never surrendered and the territories — unseen and parallel to the ones we know and do not know today — are not to be disturbed.
Cinna Peyghamy will close the studio experiences, taking us on a mesmerizing journey with his live act that marries the traditional resonance of tombak with the avant-garde possibilities of a modular synthesizer. His improvised sequences unfold seamlessly, intertwining Persian percussion and electronic innovation. Peyghamy’s mastery of the tombak provides a rhythmic foundation that resonates with cultural depth, while the modular synthesizer adds an ethereal, futuristic layer, creating a harmonious blend that defies genre boundaries. This session will be a back-to-back with MONOM’s creative director and spatial artist, William Russell, enhancing the live performance with real-time spatialization. This session will be recorded, capturing an ephemeral moment in time, which will then become a permanent sound installation.
The live concert and listening sessions will take place in the 4DSOUND studio. The lounge will be open all night, serving both alcoholic and non-alcoholic elixirs crafted by the Magnetic Moon. After taking a break from after-show parties, this time we’re dusting off our dancing shoes and the Nexus sound system in the lounge.
Tickets: 25 eur
https://www.monomsound.com/
Program:
18:00 Open doors
19:00 Merkayangan: A Study of the Javanese Realms by Romila Barryman (Listening Session)
20:00 Gear(s) & Glass by Jeanne Briand & Romain Azzaro (Listening Session)
21:30 Cinna Peyghamy (Live)
22:00 Album Premiere Celebration
