Norient is proud to present a new series of cutting-edge concerts and audiovisual performances. In collaboration with the Rewire festival (Den Haag, the Netherlands) and Schauspielhaus Zürich Norient presents exciting acts of today’s pop music on the theater stage in Zurich, Switzerland. In the first edition on April 21, 2018, the experimental sound worlds of Ben Frost have collided with the dark avant-garde pop of Jenny Hval. In the second edition on June 9, 2018, the spiritual vocal collages of Aïsha Devi met a «black out» show in total darkness by electronic and ambient producer Tim Hecker.

Exactly twenty years ago the journalist and writer Kodwo Eshun attempted in his influential book More Brilliant than the Sun – Adventures in Sonic Fiction to rethink the perception of music in general by finding a new language for music (rather than rely on words that leave the radical imaginary space of music untapped). He did this by describing and excavating the unacknowledged traditions of diasporic science fiction, by finding a «future shock» in music and sounds. Today, it is still obvious, how limiting traditional language is, especially attempts to describe current sonic phenomena; more than ever, pop music is crossing borders, is audiovisual, powerful and aesthetically challenging. Contemporary musicians debate political topics and appear provocative and virtuosic at the same time. With this new series of concerts and audiovisual performances, Norient and Rewire want to present the diversity of the current Sonic Fiction on the theater stage in Zurich to a wider audience.

Read a text by Adam Harper about the concept of «Sonic Fiction»: «Sound Creates Reality»

Media partner: zweikommasieben Magazin and Orange Peel

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Vol. 2. June 9, 2018: Aïsha Devi / Tim Hecker

19:30h at Schauspielhaus Zürich, Pfauen – [Facebook Event]

Tickets from CHF 30 to 70

Check out complete photo series on the event.

20h: Aïsha Devi

In the first part of the evening Swiss-based Aïsha Devi will present her new a/v show in collaboration with French visual artist Emile Barret and in support of her brand new debut album DNA Feelings (Houndstooth 2018). In her spiritual music she mines her Nepalese-Tibetan heritage, her live shows are transcendent experiences. Whether they are guttural or soprano, Devi’s warped pop mantras instruct us to find the unseen through a tense, visceral musical landscape that is often gnarled and industrial as it is danceable. Follow Aïsha Devi on Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, or Twitter.

Read a sonic fiction about her track «Cell Stems Spa» by Philipp Rhensius

21:20h: Tim Hecker

Tim Hecker is a Canadian electronic and ambient music producer and DJ who has previously performed under the moniker Jetone based out of Montréal, Canada. Within the past 15 years he has become one of the most consistent and exciting sound artists of our times, touching the sound world of drone, noise, and ambient. His live improvisations are of a ruminant character: piece by piece he manipulates recorded pipe organ sounds and quivering arpeggios and turns them into unheard textures. In Zurich he will present a «black out» show in total darkness, consisting of new and recent work. Follow Tim Hecker on Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, Twitter, or on his Website.

Read a sonic fiction about Tim Hecker by Deforrest Brown Jr.

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Vol. 1. April 21, 2018: Ben Frost / Jenny Hval

20h at Schauspielhaus Zürich, Pfauen – [Facebook Event]

Tickets from CHF 35 to 70

Check out complete photo series on the event.

20h: Jenny Hval

Jenny Hval has in recent years made a name for herself as a recording artist and writer both in her native Norway and abroad. Multidisciplinary and transgressive are words often employed to describe her art, but Jenny Hval’s polyphonic artistry is in fact seamlessly interwoven between musical, literary, visual and performative modes of expression. Her artistic voice is altogether present, accessible and obscurely complex at the same time. Follow Jenny Hval on Bandcamp, Facebook, SoundCloud, Twitter, or YouTube.

Read a sonic fiction about her song «That Battle is Over» by Luise Wolf

21.30h: Ben Frost

The music of Ben Frost is about contrast; influenced as much by Classical Minimalism as by Punk Rock and Metal, Frost's throbbing guitar-based textures emerge from nothing and slowly coalesce into huge, forbidding forms that often eschew conventional structures in favor of the inevitable unfoldings of vast mechanical systems. Follow Ben Frost on Bandcamp, Facebook, SoundCloud, Twitter, Website, or YouTube.

Read a sonic fiction about his album The Centre Cannot Hold by Maha El Nabawi

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