Bird’s Nest, ft. Amatorski, Sarah Neutkens x Adam Quartet, Lisel, Strange Boy, No Plexus, Waakhond and DOMNIQ x WERC
Sat 16. March 8:30pm @ Cloud Nine, Club Nine, Pit
Bird’s Nest is the place where you are the very first to discover new music, exciting artists and unique collaborations. The Birds of Paradise Festival presents 7 artists who are about to break through on 3 stages. But before they fly out of the Bird’s Nest, you will discover them for the first time with never-before-heard work.
After a 10-year break, Belgian Amatorski released a new album on Friday March 1 entitled Curves and Bends, Things Veer. The band’s music is still difficult to capture in one word. Inspired by acts such as Sigur Ros and Radiohead, the foursome makes dreamy whisper pop. They call it a ‘strangely beautiful universe of songs’. The natural habitat for a real Bird of Paradise.
Composer, pianist, writer and fashion model Sarah Neutkens wrote the new string quartet entitled Fil Mishmish in Marrakesh. Loosely translated: “at the time when the apricots bloom”. An expression that says there is a very small chance of something happening, also known as wishful thinking. Especially for this evening, Sarah Neutkens, together with the ADAM Quartet, will perform this string quartet live for the first time. She also plays her own solo piano compositions, with which she entered the Classical Top 400 this year.
Lisel (Eliza Bagg), from L.A., knows how to combine the best of different worlds as an opera singer and ‘electro-pop alien’. In her words: “I am going for a maximalist sound, but my sources of inspiration also include minimalists. From Philip Glass to Charli XCX, Carl Stone to Grimes”. Just listen to her single ‘One At A Time’ from the recently released and critically acclaimed Patterns For Auto-tuned Voices And Delay. From just four simple words, Lisel manages to create an enchantingly beautiful, Escher-like sound cathedral, as only she can.
Singer/violinist Kieran Brunt and keyboardist Matt Huxley are Strange Boy. A London band with its own unique sound: somewhere between orchestral and electronic. The duo describes their sound as a mix between club vibe and morning mass. In addition to their own work, they were also asked to co-write with well-known artists such as Nils Frahm, Terry Riley and Nico Muhly. In return, Muhly provided the beautiful string arrangements for Strange Boy’s debut album Love Remains, which will be released in March. Just in time for Bird’s Nest!
No Plexus is an electronic collaboration between singer/composer Bec Plexus and producer No Compliments. This year, as Rewire’s Young Artist in Residence, the duo had the opportunity to build a spectacular, multimedia show around their long-awaited debut album Rite of Passage. The live set of this album is about the ‘millennial experience’ and developed to operatic proportions with light effects and visuals that will resonate for a long time. For fans of A.G. Cook, Oneohtrix Point Never and Björk.
After the film academy, Casper Buijtendijk, alias Waakhond, devoted himself completely to music. Or rather, on the release of his debut album Godsdrift. Godsdrift should develop into a unique, multimedia performance work, in which he uses his background as a filmmaker to bring the story of the music to life. For Birds of Paradise he presents a first solo performance of the album, in order to experience the entire arc of the album with the audience.
DOMNIQ x WERC is a collaboration between audiovisual collective WERC and the Netherlands’ most versatile percussionist DOMNIQ. In this work in progress, they investigate the interfaces between human creativity and artificial intelligence. Can AI provide more creativity? Can it challenge and expand artists’ physical boundaries? You will experience the first results during Bird’s Nest in an interactive performance and symbiosis between man and machine.
5 tracks that had a major influence on Amatorski’s music.
The iconic track ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ originally by David Bowie, famously covered by Nirvana, recently came to my attention through a rendition by Emel. A few people gathered, not all of us knowing each other – we met because of the ongoing war and violence in Palestine. This song takes me back to that place of important collective care.
Inne Eysermans (Amatorski)
5 tracks that had a major influence on Sarah Neutkens’ music.
J.S. Bach – Andante from: Sonata No. 4 in E minor BWV 528
“The austerity of this sonata: it is so bare, so stripped down, so direct. The clarity of the piece has always fascinated me and at the same time there is something very intimate and vulnerable, but also something incredibly ruthless.”
Sarah Neutkens
5 tracks that had a major influence on ADAM Quartet’s music.
5 tracks that had a major influence on No Plexus’ music.
SOPHIE – Ponyboy
When SOPHIE’s music entered our lives, it entered with a seismic-shifting, paradigm-switching, explosive force. We had never heard music that sounded like this. She completely redefined form and function for us, and introduced a completely new palette of sound design which has been so incredibly influential on us, as well as in mainstream pop music. Sounds could now be elastic, plastic, metallic… completely visceral, yet still playful. Devastatingly, she passed away a few years ago. Far too soon. But we cherish the sizeable body of work she left behind that will remain timelessly futuristic.
5 tracks that had a major influence on Lisel’s music.
Meredith Monk – Travel Dream Song
This was one of the first pieces by Meredith Monk I ever heard, and years later I had the tremendous luck to work with her in a production of her opera Atlas with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, so this song is very meaningful to me. It is ephemerally evocative of a dream state, and the feeling of endless possibility that characterizes the beginning of the opera, when a young woman imagines the possible worlds stretched out before her. In a classic Meredith way, the repetitive patterns of the synth are always surprisingly mercurial and evasive, and the voice enters and exits as if floating, buoyed by the unpredictable nature of synth arpeggio waves. It becomes impossible to predict exactly which permutation of the pattern will happen next, and one submits to the journey of the music — Meredith’s semi- minimalist relationship to reworking patterns makes them, to me, quite magical — sometimes playful, sometimes even funny — and the way they mutate over time and create dream-like space is something that is hugely influential on my album “Patterns for Auto-tuned Voices and Delay.” The album is built out of a series of ever-shifting rhythmic/ harmonic/melodic sequences and patterns which are, as in a lot of Meredith’s work, the basis for an otherworldly musical realm.
5 tracks that had a major influence on DOMNIQ’s music.
Radiohead – Paranoid Android
When I got my first drumkit, I took all the lp’s and cd’s of my dad and just started playing along with each band, from Deep Purple to Guns n’ Roses. Later I discovered Radiohead and I recognized that same sound, but this album also had a completely new sound world, such an inspiring album!
Dominique Vleeshouwers
5 tracks that had a major influence on Waakhond’s music.
Radiohead – Nude
“Radiohead’s Nude was a big aha moment for me. The otherworldly beautiful instrumentation combined with Thom Yorke’s biting lyrics opened my eyes to the infinite potential of text in music. I love the poetry that arises in the collision between word and note. The poem between the lines.”
Casper Buijtendijk (Waakhond)
5 tracks that had a major influence on Strange Boy’s music.
June Tabor – Plains of Waterloo
June Tabor’s voice and musicianship is a perpetual inspiration to me. The vocal ornaments on this track are so precise and virtuosic, and her voice is both energetic and pure intone. She’s a great storyteller, and really draws in the listener in her live performances.
Kieran Brunt (Strange Boy)
