CREAM TEST CENTRIFUGE
David Toop, Sarah Peebles, Darren Copeland and Nilan Perera
Spacialized pre-recorded and live improvised electroacoustics, spoken word and
altered electric guitar
featuring renown musician and writer David Toop ("Rap Attack", "Ocean of Sound",
"Exotica"), Toronto-based electroacoustic composer, Sarah Peebles, composer and
sound designer Darren Copeland, and guitarist and improviser, Nilan Perera. David
Toop performs on flutes, paraphernalia and effects, inserting surreal short stories,
sarcastic social observation, historical oddities, and thoughts on the impact of digital
music - all spacialized on the fly by Darren Copeland. Spacializing her own sonic
constructions, Peebles performs electroacoustics on laptop, drawing from CD
playback glitches of Toop's music, Japan Rail commuting adventures, Tokyo video
arcade and pachinko (electronic pinball) sound, hummingbirds, snow, fire and insects
-‹ augmented by acoustic shô performance (Japanese mouth organ) with real-time
digital signal processing. Nilan Perera utilizes preparations of assorted paraphernalia
such as swizzle sticks, paper clips, metal brushes and the like, as well as feedback and
a variety of electronic effects. His explorations of sound, which infuse timbre,
melodic gesture and cyclic contour with reminiscences of the blues, Hendrix, Partch,
Sri Lankan folk and other musics, will also be spacialized by Darren Copeland.
Celebrating the release of two new enhanced CDs (Insect Groove and 108‹Walking
throug Tokyo; see main press release) the performances incorporate works and
materials from both recordings, including multi-chanell versions previously
commissioned by New Adventures in Sound Art, "White Powder/The Spiders" (Toop/Peebles) and "where the Wild things Went".
A note on the spacialization
Both Copeland and Peebles will be using The Richmond Audio Box together with ABControl (Third Monk Software) to automate the diffusion of eight discreet chanels of sound in space (per diffuser). Peebles' work with ABControl programmer Chris Rolfe at the Banff Centre for the Arts, for a New Adventures in Sound commission, resulted in a new feature of ABControl which allows a performer to generate multiple discreet and stereo spacial movements ‹ such as counter-rotations, crossfades, and quasi-random movements ‹ in real time. Peebles uses this spacializing feature together with her own system of Max "patches" to both generate audio and spacialize audio on the fly; Cream Test concerts are her first in depth exploration of this process as an improvisor. Darren Copeland has had extensive experience spacializing his own works as well as audioworks by others, both in the realm of pre-recorded sound and real-time improvised performance (see soundtravels.ca/soundplay/bios.html#Copeland for details on his work).