—__–___ (More Eaze & Seth Graham)
Sat 23 apr | + a performance from claire rousay + an opening from Cherif Hashizume
Folkestone Quarterhouse
Start time: 20.30
Tickets: £15 per night // £22 for weekend ticket // Under 23's go free
More Eaze
With compositions that touch upon myriad genres which often explore themes of gender, identity, perception, and the mundane, we introduce more eaze - the long running, always inspiring, and ever-evolving solo project of composer/multi instrumentalist mari maurice.
Based within Texas, her compositions have been widely released on a number of international labels including orange milk, astral spirits, phinery, and lillerne tapes among others. As a performer, maurice regularly collaborates with various composers and improvisers such as claire rousay, michael pisaro, richard kamerman, seth graham, and christina carter.
Seth Graham
Known for deftly creating barrages of beatific computer music and blue-collar musique concrète, Ohio-based Seth Graham is an experimental musician, composer, and co-owner of Orange Milk Records, with an academic background in Philosophy thrown in there too.
Graham focuses on compositions which highlight tropes across a broad range of musical genres using midi data, Max MSP and samples. His intention is to manifest intersections of classical avant garde and modern popular music, with compositions shaped from light hearted Creshevsky-style sample arrangements, to dense digital synthesis.
Graham’s work has been published by music imprints such as Noumenal Loom, Experimedia, Orange Milk, Phinery, Los Discos Enfantasmes and Tranquility Tapes. His co-found label Orange Milk too, is a beloved DIY imprint that has established itself as a pillar of contemporary underground music.
The Partnership
The two together released The Heart Pumps Kool-Aid in 2021 - an “expression of Midwestern sadness, the entrapment of class and inexpressible discontent” - that is a project composed of Mari & Seth, and accompanied with commissioned instrumentation from Karen Ng, Nick Storring, Rob Mcgill, Meteronori, spoken word from Proxy.exe, and guest vocals from Recovery girl and Meteronori.
The opener “When you're hot around the narcs” showcases shoegaze-like whisper vocals with simple classical arrangements weaving blips of free jazz sax; this track sets the mood for The Heart Pumps Kool-Aid: a near death experience from narcotics addiction (a common and personal story of Ohio). There is clear vulnerability with phrases barely holding on to minimal arrangements. Mari's falsetto voice floats above breathing woodwinds, atonal classical expression with a consistent melancholy mood of crotale melody throughout The Heart Pumps Kool-Aid. A swirl of frustration and hopelessness lead by crooner opera, akin to Harmony Korine’s works and Tilt by Scott Walker, or Blemish by David Sylvian.
“A body of work that is as numbing as it is touching, thanks to a unique combination of long pauses (too often forgotten in contemporary music), autotuned shards of vocals, reverberated explosions of metal screams, spaced out by electroacoustic and free-jazz manifestation. If you spent a considerable chunk of your life in the suburbs, this album will talk to you more than you can imagine.” - Michele Sinatti, Soul Feeder
