Opal Tapes has established itself in recent years as one of the finest record labels in the UK. They release primarily on limited-run cassettes, working with a diverse array of artists at the point where dance music and punk/outsider aesthetics collapse. Tonight, three from the label perform live.
“We’re in a phase at the moment where techno and house and musical tropisms are just being blown apart by punks essentially.”(Stephen Bishop, Opal Tapes)
Karen Gwyer is a Michigan-born London-based artist with a burgeoning reputation, having released records on No Pain in Pop and Kalaedoscope, as well as the seductive Kiki the Wormhole tape on Opal Tapes. She produces cyclical, pulsing, shimmering electronic music, drawing like her label mates on elements of noise and drone along with the propulsive templates of classic house and techno.
Basic House is label founder Stephen Bishop’s own solo project, highly acclaimed. Bishop is a mainstay of the North-East’s DIY scene. His debut album for Digitalis Records was described as sounding “somewhere between Kassem Mosse, The New Blockaders and Zoviet*France.”
Dwellings and Druss is an electronic off-shoot of the ever-ferocious experimental rock collective Gnod – swapping guitars for classic drum machines sequenced in expansive, ecstatic compositions that seem to draw on the electronic legacies of Cologne, Detroit and Sheffield.
Opal Tapes website / facebook / videos
CHANCE TO WIN
We have five pairs of tickets to give away for the performance. To be in with a chance of winning please email the answer to the following question to boxoffice@arnolfini.org.uk by 5pm Monday 27 January*.
“What is the name of label founder Stephen Bishop’s solo project?”
* The winners will be randomly selected and notified by email on Tuesday 28 January.
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