~ basics

We now accept paypal orders for all releases.
Please write to sprawl@benfo.demon.co.uk for all your enquiries and orders

[1] Sprawl is the London based underground playground and test tube for current sound. Our events provide incubation periods for new and infectious ideas. For 6 years this has included everything from serious turntable abuse, global internet link ups, virtual parties, minidisc doctoring and live music all rolled into splendid parties with big screen visuals. Please check [listings] for details

[2] The Sprawl Imprint is structured around the same fault lines and features releases by artists such as Scanner, Freeform, Osymyso and conceptual compilations such as Hmm, an album of international hymns and anthems and other investigations of childhood influences featuring David Toop, Kreidler, Kit Clayton, Vladislav Delay, Antye Greie-Fuchs (of Laub), Freeform, Wang Inc, Shenton Engine [of Add N to (x)], Benge, Opiate (current Björk collaborator ), Wiggle (Ken Ishii collaborators), Farben, Matrix, Carl Stone, Kaffe Matthews and more. For information on all releases, audio and the shop

click here

[3] The vaults feature pre-2000 releases of Douglas Benford's Suburbs Of Hell label and Pantunes Music at ridiculously cheap clear-out-the stock-room prices. Your chance to get hold of some early Sarah Cracknell and - dare we say it - Momus ...

[join mailing list]

 


~ event listings

Sprawl, the experimental audio club, is back in action in London this autumn at its new venue, the Charterhouse bar. Presenting another selection of oddbeats, soundscapes & eclectic sounds - a packed night of groundbreaking guests, the un/usual sprawl sonic art buffet...

 

Wed 13th Oct:

Mike Cooper (live)
Greg Headley (live)
Didac P. Lagarriga (live)

Sprawl
Upstairs at The Charterhouse
38 Charterhouse St, London EC1

7.30pm - 11.30pm
admission: £4/£3 concs
tube: Farringdon / tel: 020 7608 0858

Mike Cooper (UK/ITALY) - live pictured
For the past 40 years Mike Cooper has been an international musical explorer, performing and recording solo and in a number of inspired groupings covering a variety of genres. Initially a folk- blues guitarist and singer-songwriter, his work has diversified to include improvised and electronic music, live music for silent films, radio art and sound installations. He also puts his vast knowledge to use as a music journalist, writing features for magazines such as Roots, concentrating on Pacific musicians. But mike does not leave it there. His artistic enthusiasm bursts through as a visual artist, film and video maker, and ardent collector of Hawaiian shirts. He appears on more than sixty records, most recently on his CD Rayon Hula, which is released on his own Hipshot label. The CD has been described as "....a masterpiece of contemporary exotica" by David Toop in the Wire.

http://hometown.aol.co.uk/cooparia/hipshot.html

Greg Headley (USA) - live
Los Angeles based composer and guitarist Greg Headley began in a relatively traditional vein of guitar experiments, but quickly mortgaged his musical roots to invest into electronics and noise. Each of his first three albums signalled a new stage on this process of personal de-contextualization: the solo tabletop guitar meditations a la Kevin Drumm of Adhesives (Bake, 2000), still rooted in his guitar techniques, the more abstract manipulation of guitar sounds of A Table of Opposites (28 Angles, 2001), and finally the noisy, frantic electronic soundscapes of Similis (28 Angles, 2002), which hardly related to the instrument anymore. The guitar is even less relevant on his fourth album, A Bulletin on Vertigo (28 Angles, 2003). Nine computer pieces that construct living sounds and then let them evolve in their artificial environment, this is actually a less abstract art than on the previous album. Night Blooming and The Water's Fall radiate very dynamic and organic textures. Headley briefly flirts with rhythmic effects in This Too Is Unknown, but stops short of entering the fray of post-techno music.

http://www.gregheadley.com

Didac P. Lagarriga (Brazil) - live
Didac P. Lagarriga aka UN CADDIE RENVERSÉ DANS L'HERBE was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He moved to Barcelona (Spain) when he was a child. Working with texts and sounds since 1994 resulted of hundreds of unknown influences, specific temporary places, some souvenirs sampling older souvenirs, garden practices, pastiches and observations on not fitting in. He has released the results of his worl through albums on Hamburg's

Dekorder label and on his own label oozebap. His music follows the rich tradition of Brazilian antropophagous concept, mixed with his own fictionidentity research, an amalgam of traditional instruments (mbira, balaphon, berimbau...) and digital processing. He also participates in numerous compilations on labels such as Audiodregs, k-raa-k, amanita, tu'm. The performing arm of his sound tkes him all over Europe, Argentina and USA. And "...who knew microsound could be so dreamy?" EI magazine, USA

 

residents/curators
si-cut.db

http://home.earthlink.net/~efrans/benford
Iris Garrelfs www.dfuse.com/BitTonic

venue details
Upstairs at The Charterhouse
38 Charterhouse St, London EC1
tube: Farringdon
venue contact: 020 7608 0858, info@charterhousebar.co.uk,

www.charterhousebar.co.uk

other details
time: 7.30pm - 11.30pm
admission: £4/£3 concs
sprawl contact: info@sprawl.org.uk

 

 

Wed 10th Nov:

FM3 (live)
Gavin Starks (live)
Iris Garrelfs (live)
Alex Czinczel (DJ)

Sprawl
Upstairs at The Charterhouse
38 Charterhouse St, London EC1

7.30pm - 11.30pm
admission: £4/£3 concs
tube: Farringdon / tel: 020 7608 0858

FM3 (BipHop, Staalplaat) - live
FM3 play quiet music. Very, very quiet music. The kind of music that turns up your ears and makes you sit. Very, very still... Some reviewers describe fm3's live act as "daring." Audience members often call it "cathartic." Others say listening to FM3 is painful...
FM3 is US-born but long-term China resident Christiaan Virant. Active in the Beijing music underground for nearly a decade, Virant founded FM3 in late 1999 as China's first-ever experiment in live, abstract electronica act. Working with lo-fi computer software and a host of home-built instruments, FM3 distills ancient Chinese folk tradition into a barely-there organic glow.

GAVIN STARKS - live
After being Experimental Officer at the radio telescope Jodrell bank (with a degree in Radio Astronomy), Gavin now produces rich provocative sounds from its processed data & cosmological radio recordings - he recently performed some pieces at the Virac telesope in Latvia. He is known also as a software developer, internet broadcaster, studio consultant, investigator of virtual reality audio & computer musics.

www.dgen.net/biog/gavinstarks.htm

IRIS GARRELFS (Bip Hop) - live pictured
Iris Garrelfs, musician and co-curator of Sprawl is best known for her emotive voice improvisations. She has recorded tracks for numerous compilation albums, and has also collaborated with Freeform, Robert Lippok (to rococo rot), Kaffe Matthews, Scanner and others. She has also played at the CCA, ICA, the Scala, Podewil (Berlin) The Batofar (Paris), Tonic (New York) plus has created installations for Glasgow's CCA Watermans Art Centre, Marseille's Arborescence festival, Earational in Holland and many more. Her debut album due out soon on Bip hop.

ALEX CZINCZEL - DJ
German born purveyor of fine obscurities (eg Moondog, Mapstation) and resident DJ and curator at the infamous Horse Hospital, Alex has impeccable taste. This makes it unavoidable that he DJs at Sprawl...

 

residents/curators
si-cut.db

http://home.earthlink.net/~efrans/benford
Iris Garrelfs www.dfuse.com/BitTonic

venue details
Upstairs at The Charterhouse
38 Charterhouse St, London EC1
tube: Farringdon
venue contact: 020 7608 0858, info@charterhousebar.co.uk,

www.charterhousebar.co.uk

other details
time: 7.30pm - 11.30pm
admission: £4/£3 concs
sprawl contact: info@sprawl.org.uk


~ label info [catalogue] [mailorder] [vaults] [quotes]

~ event info [who's played before] [quotes]

~ other stuff [join mailing list] [links] [e-mail us]

[audio: matt rogalsky live at sprawl]