Tse Tse Fly Middle East LIVE at Fringe Arts Bath 2018
Tse Tse Fly Middle East started life as a sound art club night in the Al Barsha district of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 2015. The brainchild of artist Simon Coates, the night set out to break the commerciality that grips the UAE’s arts scene, and as a place to escape from the often-oppressive and censorious nature of life in the region. Coates moved back to London in the summer of 2017 and registered Tse Tse Fly Middle East as a non-profit organisation that works with human rights and freedom of speech NGOs to highlight the social and political work they carry out.
Now Tse Tse Fly Middle East can be found in venues around London, producing live experimental arts events that feature curated films, and live sonic and visual performances.
On June 2nd Tse Tse Fly Middle East will pitch camp at the Walcot Chapel in Bath for a one-off night in association with Amnesty International as part of the venue’s LIVE offering.
The event will start with an hour of short films curated by Tse Tse Fly’s Emir Nader featuring the likes of Joseph Adel and Saeed Taji Farouky. Emir is a journalist who’s worked in Egypt, Morocco, Cuba and Somalia, and is currently working for BBC Arabic and the BBC World Service. The films will be followed by three live performances. However, rather than performances from members of the Tse Tse Fly collective, for the LIVE event Tse Tse Fly have invited three locally-based experimental musicians to perform: Stereocilia, Ocean Floor and SALTINGS. Entry to the event is free.
The performers
Stereocilia is Bristol-based guitarist and composer John Scott who uses guitar and live looping techniques to create dense, rich layers of sound. John has performed all over the UK and Europe with various projects, and has presented work for live radio broadcasts and soundtracks to short films. John's debut album Mumurations is out now on his Echoic Memory imprint.
Stereocilia
Ocean Floor is the solo project of Aonghus Reidy, an ambient and experimental musician from Ireland. Based in Bristol, he has released three records of harmonium, piano and synthesizer compositions for the labels Zamzamrec, Aphelion Editions and Erstwhile. His live shows consist of extended improvisations for analogue and digital synthesizers, mixed with fragments of melody and chord progressions.
Ocean Floor
SALTINGS is a pastoral-horror-soundscape project, founded by Irish-born composer Andrew Cooke. Working by himself or collaborating with others, Andrew draws on the unsettling literary influences of authors like M.R. James and W.G. Sebald to tentatively create audio-worlds of controlled darkness; hushed plateaux of eerie tranquility and black horizons full of whispering, half-dreamed creatures... which are also liable to veer into cascading noise and unrepentant drone. Andrew uses a combination of live instruments, loops, pedals and processing, and has two solo albums under his belt with more to come later in 2018.
SALTINGS
Details:
Tse Tse Fly Middle East LIVE at Fringe Arts Bath 2018
Walcot Chapel
Bath BA1 5UG
June 2nd 7.30PM
Free entry
www.tsetseflymiddleeast.org