On the occasion of Loop - A Summit for Music Makers, which takes place 30 October – 1 November 2015 in Berlin, Ableton and CTM are extending their long-standing partnership and teaming up for a concurrently running CTM x Ableton concert series. 

→ Facebook event

The first of three nights features Border Community label head James Holden, whose unbound approach is perhaps best exemplified in his critically lauded 2013 full length, The Inheritors: a sprawling, occasionally cacophonous divination of hidden, primordial, and wild places counterposed against a techno scheme and suggesting the influences of ceilidh music and krautrock, psychedelia and pentatonic folk scales, pastoral minimalism and pagan rituals. During his latest Berlin appearance, Holden jumps in for a talk within the Loop programme, while at night celebrating the work and influence of minimalist composer Terry Riley, who pioneered the use of technology in minimalist music and is widely considered to be one of the greatest composers in contemporary music. Indulging himself in long luxurious washes of Terry-esque arpeggiations, all generated by the rule-based chaotic system of his bespoke modular synth, Holden, together with tabla player Camilo Tirado, pay homage to Riley with their performance of "Outdoor Museum of Fractals", a composition influenced by his work, created earlier this year for the Barbican in London.

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (b. 1975) is an artist and composer that works with voice in the realm of spontaneous music often under the moniker of Lichens. Most recently, creating patch pieces with modular synthesizer and tonal vocal work has been a focus of live performance and recordings. The marriage of synthesis and the voice has allowed for a heightened physicality in the way of ecstatic music, both in a live setting and recorded. The sensitivity of analogue modular systems echoes the organic nature of vocal expression which in this case is meant to put forth a trancelike state.

Lowe’s works on paper tend towards human relations to the natural/magical world and the repetition of motifs. Throughout a series of artist residences and commissions in 2014 Robert has focused on performance directly related to hypnagogic states. 2015 has seen further collaboration with french composer Ariel Kalma as well as Jóhann Jóhannsson, and theatre/installation based work with artist Alexandra Wolkowicz, as well as a focus on video synthesis. Through collaboration Robert has worked with Ben Russell, Ben Rivers, Sabrina Ratté, Rose Lazar, Nicolas Becker, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Tarek Atoui, Philippe Parreno, Evan Calder Williams, Ariel Kalma, Lucky Dragons, Alexandra Wolkowicz, Biba Bell, ADULT, Doug Aitken, and Rose Kallal, as well as many others.

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

→ jamesholden.org
→ twitter.com/lichensarealive
→ loop.ableton.com