The 2019 programme features a series of live performances showcasing world premiers of newly-commissioned work. 4DSOUND software developer Casimir Geelhoed boasts extensive experience with spatial sound. His piece explores anxiety, confusion, overstimulation, and struggle, offering a tale of endurance and hope through persistence. 

Composer, sound artist, and researcher Tiernan Cross will perform Schema, a production developed at the Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest that thematises the nexus of consciousness between human and object in the post-biological world. Rooted around a MaxMSP device built by the artist that captures and blends a hybrid of more than 1,000 network-based field recordings, Schema investigates how sound and intricate spatialisation can develop new modes of listening. 

Yair Elazar Glotman and Mats Erlandsson draw on their respective musical backgrounds to create an imaginary, dislocated “folk” music for our current dark ages. Following the release of their collaborative record Negative Chambers, Glotman and Erlandsson have reconvened to compose a long-form work using electronically treated zithers and harmoniums in combination with extensive tape manipulation. For their performance at MONOM, the pair will present the latest iteration of this work. In addition to working with the unique spatial capabilities of the 4DSOUND system, this version of the piece will feature a small chamber ensemble consisting of Lucy Railton, Liam Byrne, Hilary Jeffrey, and Simon Goff. 

A key force behind legendary bands Coil and Psychic TV, Drew McDowall will play on the formidable spatial soundsystem following a stellar appearance at CTM 2018. Recently, McDowall released The Third Helix on Dais Records, a record that unravels the DNA of hallucination.

Ambátt is a collaboration between Icelandic artists Pan Thorarensen and Thorkell Atlason, also known as two-thirds of electronic music trio Stereo Hypnosis. Thanks to support from Up Node, Copenhagen-based electronic composer and sound artist Sofie Birch, who has released on Infinite Waves, will also perform.

Following the success of last year’s overnight experience NOQTURNL, Berlin-based composer and media theorist John Connell returns with a limited-capacity long listening session Interiority. Performed entirely in the dark, Interiority explores how sound manifests as complex, symbolic inner experiences. Attendees are invited to submit audio in advance, which will be woven into the evening’s palette, encouraging participants to monitor, process, and re-contextualise memories.