So last night I went to see the latest concert in Raster’s Alphabet series where they go through each letter of the alphabet and invite artists to play who’s moniker starts with said letter. They’re up to the letter E, and invited Eomac and Emika to perform live.
I’ve known Eo, aka Eomac, aka Ian McDonnell for over 20 years at this point, and he never fails to impress me with his drive, determination, persistence, and willingness to experiment.
His A/V show last night did not disappoint – a varied and fascinating performance shifting from dense and complex beat production, to ambient explorations, to dark and unusual sound design, all backed by an engaging set of visuals which I suspect were recorded around the same time as his video for Temple of the Jaguar (see below).
I found myself delighted by how much variation he was willing to put into his set, giving an excellent push and pull between light and dark, rough and smooth, rhythm and melody.
Continually striving forward
His newest release will be coming out on the 14th of July on the legendary Planet Mu Records, a long-distance collaboration with Saint Abdullah.
This follows on from his first Planet Mu release, the excellent Cracks EP.
But it doesn’t just stop there, Eo has released with another one of the legendary electronic music labels, Raster, another fascinating collaboration coming out of his residency at EMS Studios Stockholm, this time with Kyoka, under the moniker Lena Andersson.
Eotrax
Further to all of that, he runs his own record label titled Eotrax, which has produced a fascinating series of releases, most notably the Collaborations Series (which I’m happy to say I own all of on vinyl)
Lakker
And as if all of that weren’t enough, he’s one half of Lakker, where alongside Dara Smith, he’s produced consistently excellent music, performed at Block, Mutek, Glade, Sonar and more, and been featured mutliple times by Mary Anne Hobbes on 6 Music Recommends on BBC Radio 6. Lakker have released with a number of well-known labels, such as R&S Records, Blueprint, and Stroboscopic Artefacts.
Here’s their most recent album length release on R&S Records, Época, which continues their strong tradition of moving forward, experimenting, and bringing us new sounds.
Anyway, after the show last night I thought how nice it would be to also use this blog to highlight some of the music I love, and the people behind it, and decided I’d start today with a new category, Culture.
Watching the show I found myself thinking just how much work goes into not just creating a body of work to perform with, preparing the live performance and making sure it sounds great, but also preparing an hour of visuals that complements the performance so well.
These are not insubstantial tasks, and to do all this as a solo artist takes an enormous amount of dedication, persistence, patience, and passion.
So please take a moment to check out some of the wide and varied music from this creative soul.
On a Variety of Topics 