In June 1992 the first ‘gathering’ of Clan Analogue was held in an apartment in Randwick. From this initial mobilisation formed an Australian electronic arts collective that took on the musical establishment promoting gigs, pressing vinyl and putting on a (not so legal) 12 hour Bob Moog’s Birthday festival in Sydney Park, amongst other activities we can’t mention.
To celebrate this anniversary a lineup of 1st Generation Clan Analogue artists will perform across four rooms at 107 Projects in Redfern.
Acts are re-forming, equipment is being repaired, records are being dug out of dusty cupboards, old DJ names are being re-used, video code is being rebooted. Prepare to experience an early 90s electronic event like you never have before (even in the 90s).
Featuring
LIVE: Size, Telharmoneom, Nanotech (& sons), The Family, Mike the Moog, Swlabr… DJs: Lesa, Bass Bitch, Ommy Looper, Ding, Dot, Michael MD, Biz E, Lex Luthor, Black, Red Light Special… VIDEO: Spikey Balls, Vulvarts, Nanotech, Ed Bleepin, Nonaz Nomis.
These artists featured on the initial releases from Clan between 1992 and 1995 including the four 12 inch Vinyl EPs, the “live at the Goethe Institut” VHS video and the double CD compilation “Cog“.
Live sets from over 20 years ago are being reconstructed for this one-off event. DJs will drop tailored “early 90s” sets of classic electronic music… including trax from other Clan acts from this era.
ELECTRONIC [origins]
Clan Analogue 25th Anniversary LIVE event
presented by Electronic 20c
SATURDAY JULY 15 : 6PM – MIDNIGHT : 107 PROJECTS
107 Redfern Street Redfern, Sydney
TICKETS ON THE DOOR : ENTRY $20/$10 conc : FIRST IN BEST DRESSED
Numbers are tight and strictly limited! Come early to guarantee entry (that includes guest list).
FOR THOSE NOT IN SYDNEY, WE’RE STREAMING. MORE INFO SOON.
Check details at http://www.electronic20c.com
electronic 20C is a screen project gathering images, sounds and memories of this movement before the neurons fail. There will be cameras at this event and your image may be captured if you attend. Event produced by Brendan Palmer in collaboration with past and present Clan Analogue members.
107 is an all ages licensed venue, strictly no BYO alcohol
BIOS
TELHARMONEOM : A chance meeting at a railway station in 1991 spawned and eclectic collaboration that became to be known as Telharmoneom. Band members Brendan Palmer and Kazumichi Grime collaborated over the period 1991 to 1996 sharing combined studio spaces where they would house their eccentric synthesisers and assorted equipment. Their approach to audio creation was unplanned, without strict musical process or structure and often experimental in nature, always trying to stay outside the maelstrom of what was ‘cool’. Often no set agenda was formulated in making music, it was approached with a ‘live jam’ mentality which created odd structures, tones and tracks that ran up to 40 minutes in length. This approach was often influenced by the array of vintage synthesis at their disposal. Working outside the standard sounds of the ‘Roland TR audio universe’ that was popular at the time, they injected into their mixes a diverse palette of textures from boxes such as the Korg PS3200/3100, Syncussion, Casio FZ1, Prophet T8, Jupiter 8, RY30, Vesta Kaza delays and four 303s used as CV gate sequencers. They performed live at The Big Day Out 1994/1995, Goethe Institue, Clan Analogue’s Electronic nights and numerous outdoor ‘raves’ and chill out rooms over the period of collaboration.
It’s also worth mentioning that after starting Telharmoneom and meeting many like minded souls Brendan Palmer founded Clan Analogue and Toby Grime was the graphic designer of the collective providing it’s image. Many other people including Sharif, Todd, Simon, Thom, Chris and Bo were there at the start. Many more joined over the following months and years. This event’s lineup is populated by some of those people.
LEX LUTHOR is one half of Sub Bass Snarl, co-founder of ‘chill out events’ Cryogenesis and ‘interesting music night’ Frigid, and co-presnter of the ‘cutting edge electronic music radio show’ Paradigm Shift on 2SER… (all since defunct)
ED BLEEPIN is one half of electronic duo Bleepin’ J Squawkins.
With a penchant for wiggly sounds and wiggly lines, he is currently creating analogue visuals using a modular video synthesizer developed as a part of LZX Industries.
SIZE : High above the turgid morass that was the popular music of the early 90’s, there hovered a giant petrified pterodactyl egg, humming and shimmering in the void. Crack! SIZE was born! Rampaging like a couple of marauding benzedrine jackals, Jason Gee and Garry Bradbury, equipped with an array of precision electronic musical instruments in various states of repair, leapt head first into the unsuspecting musical milieu. Leaving behind a trail of shattered pa’s, perforated eardrums and broken hearts, they swept aside all who dared question their agenda, whatever it was. Their music was hypnotic and pleasurable beyond compare. After culminating in a cd, ACTUAL SIZE, released on Zonar Recordings, the project gradually morphed into various other modes of creativity and wound down in the early noughties.
NANOTECH formed in the early 90’s in Sydney after James McParlane and Ant Banister met through an audition callout for the band Eidolon in the street press. They hit it off and decided to do their own thing. Shortly after they formed a collective called The Kollectiv and released a tape comp called This Tekno Fear with a bunch of Sydney electronic and industrial bands. They then decided to merge with Clan Analogue after attending the third ‘gathering’. Nanotech combined Ant’s music production skills with James’s advanced understanding of still fledgling computer graphics. Live visuals combined with high energy techno were an instant hit, with Nanotech featuring at many raves and eventually playing at The Big Day Out, supporting The On U Sound System and Bjork. Nanotech released a number of tracks on Clan Analogue comps, and a split tape with Terra 9.
RED LIGHT SPECIAL : Ben Askins has loved synths since he was a wee lad, and got turned on to dance music in the late eighties after picking up a copy of the House Sound of Chicago Vol III – Acid Tracks at Central Station when it was still in the basement on Pitt St. He met Jamie Stevens in the early nineties via Clan Analogue, formed Infusion, and started getting shows at raves around Sydney after sending demos to promoters met on the #ausrave irc channel and mailing list. Disillusioned with the late nineties happy-hard boom he quit the band, retreated to the central coast and produced the occasional track as Genlevel for Clan Analogue compilations. After a few gigs at Freaky Loops parties, and one memorable night at Kooky he retired and sold his entire studio to the lads from Telemetry Orchestra for an absolute steal. After hibernating for close to a decade he’s come out of retirement to release three albums, an EP, and has remixed tracks for new-school clan staples Loopsnake and Telefonica. His alter-ego Red Light Special plays other people’s records in sequence with the aim of encouraging people to dance.
MIKE THE MOOG wasn’t always Mike the Moog. He started life as a keyboard player, back when a ‘keyboard-player’ was an actual thing, and enjoyed some modest notoriety as a collaborater with the Aussie late-70’s and early-80’s outfits Flowers and later Icehouse. Following that, is a somewhat uneventful flatline, at least by outward appearances, until the siren call of late-80’s house music and the possibilities opened up by the Atari computer and the first MIDI workstations. But the pivotal moment in this story was his curious crossing with the maverick crew from Clan Analogue in 1992, an out-of-the-blue occurrence that remains inexplicable to this day. How did Mike find out about, and ultimately make his way to, the second ever meeting of Clan Analogue, in Glebe? Or Randwick. Or in a house somewhere.
Nobody actually knows. And neither does he, which lends the episode a kind of trans-dimensional quality that underwrites the close bond which grew between himself and the founding membership of the Clan. If something like that can just ..happen, then it must mean something. Right? At the time, Mike was simply surprised to discover that everyone around him had suddenly grown younger, by about 15 years. Normally this would be inauspicious. But somehow, having a history, while genuinely embracing the ouvre of a next generation, not to mention owning one of the oldest synths ever produced – the Minimoog ‘D’ – and a classic legacy drum machine – the Roland TR-909 – worked in its favour, and for Mike, was a turning point: an opportunity, for reinvention. And so we arrive at the present, or at least to the present as it was 25 years ago. The reinvention as Mike the Moog was steadily manifested in the assembly of a live rig: the 909 was synched to the Minimoog and programmed with bass riffs, and once the drums were kicked in, it was all about messing with the synth controls to generate organics, and the FX delays and overdrives for the head trip. It was spontaneous, out of its depth, and sometimes maybe a little half-assed, who knows. But it’s certainly the real-est thing he’s ever done, and he owes it to the people who were there and who got it, even if he was sometimes not sure himself. Anyway, it never mattered what he thought he was trying to do; it worked best when the music just did what it wanted to. He managed to carved out a niche in the ‘middle rooms’ of a nearly decade-long series of intermittent all-nighters – ’94 to ’04 – from the abandoned warehouses of Alexandria to the farther reaches of the Byron hinterlands. And beyond.
‘Middle Room: Someone, Someone Else, and .. Mike the Moog”. WTF is a Mike the Moog? The underground electronic scene had more than one face, and many of those events were hosted by other sisters. But it’s fair to say that as far as Mike the Moog is concerned, it all goes back to that one night in 1992, in Glebe. Randwick. Whatever. Nowadays, when asked what he was doing in the 90s, he answers, with some affection: “I was hanging out with a bunch of anarchist forest-pixie freaks at 2am in the morning playing spastic, ‘Mommy, It Go Boing Boing!’ electronica at clinical levels of wattage!!” And things were never the same again.