Psh.live is PSH Gallery’s experimental music programme. psh.live consists of monthly performances by three artists working with unconventional sound or music.
Performances are followed by discussions between audience and artists covering topics of concern to contemporary experimental practices (and often much more). These performances are recorded, and the discussions transcribed, all of which is archived online for an extended audience.
psh.live is Curated by Romy Caen and Liam O’Donoghue
psh.live is supported by Leichhardt Council
In May, psh.live featured Ben Byrne, Scissor Lock and Aemon Webb. Following the performances, audience and artists discussed the performative practices, equipment use/misuse, recordings and the relevance of discourse for experimental musicians. Read More.
For June, psh.live performers were Lachlan Harper, Cleptoclectics and 48/4. Post performance discussion between artists and the audience covered sampling, live performance of electronic music, working with collectives and the state of electronic music in Sydney. Read More.
In July, psh.live featured Anomie (Jonathan Papert + Mark Hall), Defektro (Hirofumi Uchino) and Dale Gorfinkel with Mike Majkowski. Following the performances, audience and artists discussed experimenting in contemporary music, their practices, handmade and self designed instruments and music technology. Read More.
In August, psh.live focused on Experimental Turntablism and Sample based performances. Artists for August were Lucas Abela, Matt Curley and Jordan Dorjee. Following the performances the discussion spanned topics including Hunter S. Thompson, Hip Hop Sampling, Ancient Rome and their own Practices. Read More.
September’s psh.live featured Pimmon (Paul Gough), Oscillateur (Christian Moraga) and Jeremy Tatar. Using loops, delays and an array of hard and soft effect units, the three artists performed somewhere in the musical vicinity of drone and ambiance. Post performance artists and audience discussed the usefulness of musical terms such as ambience and experimental, how they as artists position themselves and their practices within contemporary music as well as the technical and conceptual aspects of their performances. Read More.
In October, psh.live saw three performances that engaged with the capabilities of the human voice, its relationship with technology, and how we comprehend the voice in and outside of language. The first act was a collaboration between Marcus Whale and Ivan Cheng, Whale & Cheng. Followed by Tony Osborne’s multi-microphone performance, and finally Gail Priest with singing, soft-synths and loops.
The discussion between artists and audience moved around topics of improvised performance, implications of equipment set-ups, criticisms of physical movement in sound based arts and much more. Regrettably, due to a technical glitch, the last quarter of the discussion was not recorded. Read More.
November was the last psh.live for 2011. The three performances included two duos; Rishin Singh with Jim Denley, and Monica Brooks and Laura Altman, as well as a solo performance by Sam Pettigrew. The discussion that followed the performances dealt critically with improvised music with attention paid to views from within and outside the improvisational milieu. Artists and audience also discussed the influence of festivals and organisations such as The Now Now, relationships between musical performance and performance art more broadly and the dynamics of improv ensembles. Read More.
