As a recce of artists doing cutting-edge things, Progress Bar has been an eagerly-supported winner for Lighthouse – rather than a single talk or event, this monthly night intensifies its focus on playful invention and adventures in contemporary culture.
This month, for the finale of the season, they’re going down the road and underground, chucking in extra goodies and a club night in the company of some of those best disposed to put one on. The shift to the marginally wider environs of the Basement is a well-advised one, given that the musicians partaking include Arnod Vorrzpkngrrr, a group who, to our uneducated ear, make sounds with ominous synths and slab-like beats, boding well for their designs on testing the cavern’s sonic sturdiness on this occasion.
Vessel – the vessel of Sebastian Gainsborough (pictured), signed to the highly reliable Tri Angle label – sent The Guardian‘s Paul Lester all aquiver, likening the Bristol electro producer to a noir-filtered 808 State with “spangly tribal polyrhythms” and “silver screen strings”, no less.
Then there is Lotic, a DJ more used to these kind of parties in Berlin, where his music has the capacity to set the grating creak of rusty cell doors against a menagerie of gentler, forest-like sounds.
Before then, with a certain sense of exclusivity in a space only seating 150, there’s a chat with Yemi Awosile, a young Royal College of Art graduate whose acoustic textiles appeared at the Southbank Centre, and Joseph Grima, a program director at New York’s New Museum who teaches at Genoa’s school of architecture.
Simone C Niquille, borrowed for the night from her work as the scientific sultan at the technology-themed White Hole exhibition space, is also likely to provide some timely insights into the specialisms of her art: facial recognition, data collection and identity politics.
WHAT: Progress Bar
WHEN: 6.30pm-11pm (Talks 7pm-8.30pm; Gig 9pm-11pm) Thursday 4th June 2015
WHERE: Otherplace at The Basement, 24 Kensington Street, Brighton BN1 4AJ
WEB: Facebook event , Progress Bar’s page
