The artists talk about their work.

David Toop has been developing a practice that crosses boundaries of sound, listening, music and materials since 1970. This encompasses improvised music performance, writing, electronic sound, field recording, exhibition curating, sound art installations and opera. It includes seven acclaimed books, including Rap Attack (1984), Ocean of Sound (1995), Sinister Resonance (2010), Into the Maelstrom (2016) and forthcoming – Flutter Echo, a memoir first published in Japan in 2017 (May 2019) and Inflamed Invisible: Writing On Art and Sound 1976-2018 (2020). Briefly a member of David Cunningham’s pop project The Flying Lizards in 1979, he has released thirteen solo albums, from New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments on Brian Eno’s Obscure label (1975) and Sound Body on David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label (2006) to Entities Inertias Faint Beings (2016). His 1978 Amazonas recordings of Yanomami shamanism and ritual were released on Sub Rosa as Lost Shadows (2016). In recent years his collaborations include Rie Nakajima, John Butcher, Thurston Moore, Ryuichi Sakamoto and many more. Curator of sound art exhibitions including Sonic Boom at the Hayward Gallery (2000), his opera – Star-shaped Biscuit – was performed as an Aldeburgh Faster Than Sound project in 2012. He is currently Professor of Audio Culture and Improvisation at London College of Communication.

Polish, Edinburgh-based composer and researcher Marcin Pietruszewski is engaged in sound synthesis and composition with computers, exploring specific formal developments in the tradition of electroacoustic music and sound art. He works across composition, pluriphonic installations, and radio productions. Recurring interests of his practice include synthetic sound, algorithmic systems, and the integration of scientific formalisms as compositional materials. Marcin Pietruszewski has collaborated extensively with musicians and composers such as Marcus Schmickler, Tristan Clutterbuck, Jules Rawlinson and Lauren Sarah Hayes. Recent projects include a collaboration with Florian Hecker and a graphic design company NORM from Zurich, a philosopher Chris Schambaugh, choreographer and dancer Agnes Cebere, the Laboria Cubonics Collective (the authors of Xenofeminist Manifesto).

Slovak composer, sound designer and saxophonist. Miroslav Tóth is focused on contemporary music, improvised music, electroacoustic music and conceptual audiovisual work. He is author of many compositions for orchestra, solo instruments, chamber and ensemble pieces and music for film, theatre and radio games. He founded and plays in Dystopic Requiem Quartet, Drť, Srnka, Predskokan Otrok, Shibuya Motors, Musica falsa et ficta, etc.
Miroslav Tóth will talk about his project Nemiesta (Non-places) with Dystopic Requiem Quartet, released on NEXT Festival Records this year.
Three years after the release of Black Angels Songs, Miroslav Tóth together with Dystopic Requiem Quartet comes up with a rare album inspired by non-places, i.e. buildings and objects that were either unfinished, abandoned, over-multiplied, or were marked by mining and yet had no meaning in the end. Also featured on Nemiesta (Non-places) is Nénia, a track dedicated to the victims in Ukraine, written three days after the outbreak of war during the album’s creation. The recordings were made in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria.