Toshimaru Nakamura

Toshimaru Nakamura's instrument is the no-input mixing board, which describes a way of using a standard mixing board as an electronic music instrument, producing sound without any external audio input. The use of the mixing board in this manner is not only innovative in the the sounds it can create but, more importantly, in the approach this method of working with the mixer demands. The unpredictability of the instrument requires an attitude of obedience and resignation to the system and the sounds it produces, bringing a high level of indeterminacy and surprise to the music. Nakamura pioneered this approach to the use of the mixing board in the mid-1990's and has since then appeared on over one hundred audio publications, including nine solo CD's."Nakamura's instrument of choice - the no-input mixing board – may sound forbidding, as if its output would sound more machine than music. But for over a decade, Nakamura has cultivated a world of tones from this unlikely instrument, both harsh and mesmerizing, humanist and expansive – with something to lure in music fans of any stripe." - Samdhisound

Otto Willberg

Otto Willberg plays various bass instruments and lives in London. Live, Otto performs unashamedly melodic improvisational workouts created almost entirely with heavily filtered bass harmonica and electric bass. Strangely abstracted funk and fusion, a blend of the abstruse and immediate. silky smooth, luxurious, odd and compelling, "like listening to Eberhard Weber through a drainpipe”.

Otto is often heard on acoustic and electric bass with Laurie Tompkins (Yes Indeed) and Charles Hayward (Abstract Concrete//This Heat), as well as the fractured No Wave unit Historically Fucked. His previous solo releases have ranged from extended technique double bass to explorations of the acoustics of a 19th century artillery fort.

He has a solo record called ’The Leisure Principle’ out on Oren Ambarchi's the Black Truffle label. 6 unashamedly melodic & profoundly strange workouts for heavily filtered bass harmonica & electric bass!

David Birchall

Born in Leicester 1981. A musician living and working in Manchester in real time with sound and instruments. This performance practice as an improviser becomes a way to think more widely about how sound functions in space and the built environment. Improvising solo and with others using guitars, objects and non-fixed instrument structures. Performing with many Manchester based/related improvisors including Sam Andreae, Andrew Cheetham, Otto Willberg, Greta Buitkute, THF Drenching, Richard Scott, Philip Marks, Adam Fairhall, Luke Poot, London based Colin Webster and Amsterdam native Rogier Smal. One-offs and random stage/studio collaborations have involved working with figures such as Marshall Allen, Rhys Chatham, Mick Beck, Phil Minton and Mark Sanders.

https://davidmbirchall.com/

Sam Andreae

Sam Andreae has been active across Europe over the last decade as a saxophonist, composer and organiser. Through improvisation and composition he explores a music of colliding sound gestures and aural detritus, built up from an intentionally fractured instrumental language and playful spontaneity. His compositions place a focus on gestural processes which in their unraveling reveal a trail of sound artefacts to be picked through.

“what Sam Andreae does is liminal music, he shows you the clicks, the noises, the breaths, the rattle and hum” – John Doran, Quietus, 2017 on BBC 3 Late Junction