Owen Roberts’ Recycled Hyperprism Plastik for Amplified Chamber Ensemble is inspired by Edgard Varèse’s influential piece, Hyperprism, written in 1922/23 as a response to the new electric and electronic worlds developing rapidly at the time. The work bridges Varèse’s compositions and contemporary techno productions by highlighting their timbral similarities.

Suitable for performance in a large club space, Recycled Hyperprism Plastik is conceived as a concert work for an inversely amplified eight-piece chamber ensemble that itself comprises some of the most renown and creative instrumentalists in Berlin’s Free Improvisation scene.

Owen Roberts does not arrange techno for orchestral instruments (something that has been tried many times in recent years) but instead embraces the extreme percussive, timbral, and textural possibilities of acoustic instruments as a sound palette for music which drives, grinds, and grooves within the more experimental end of modern techno.