Tchake is the duo of Melbourne drummer Michael McNab and Perth electronic musician Josten Myburgh. Their music utilises durational interaction and textural juxtaposition to explore the intersection between digital and acoustic sound worlds. Through the use of live electronics both accompanying and processing improvised percussion, Tchake investigate the contextual implications of their sound to create eclectic performances influenced by onkyo and contemporary classical with an incorporation of techniques and aesthetics of collage, reductionism and malfunction.
Simon Whetham is a British soundartist and performer, currently as a artist in residence in gallery Školská 28. Over the past eight years Simon Whetham has developed a practice of working with sound recordings as a raw material for composition. These are often environmental sounds he has captured employing a variety of methods and techniques, in order to obtain discreet or obscured sonic phenomena.
Simon has a large number of works published through many specialist organisations, including Touch Music, Cronica, Dragon's Eye, Monochrome Vision and Entr'acte; has performed extensively internationally; collaborated with artists from musicians to performance artists, painters to video artists, dancers to poets; has run listening and field recording workshops in UK, Estonia, Colombia, Chile and Australia; and received a large number of commissions and awards for projects and installations – notably for his own project 'Active Crossover'.
Supported Arts Council England and PRS for Music Foundation, the project comprises sound installation, performance, collaboration and workshops. 'Active Crossover' has toured six cities in the UK, and also been hosted in Estonia, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Australia, with future residencies in Germany and Norway.
Josten Myburgh is a 20 year old musician from Perth, Western Australia. He has studied under Perth-based composers Lindsay Vickery and Stuart James and his musical output includes notated chamber ensemble works, sound art installations, improvisations, lengthy works for electronic playback and collaborations with video and contemporary dance artists. His music often deals with labyrinthine structure, dynamic and textural extremes and the intersection between digital and acoustic timbres. In 2014 he was the recipient of first prize in the ComposE Competition, and was accepted into the Speak Percussion Emerging Artists Program, for which he composed two new works for percussion & spatialised electronics. As a performer, he has premiered works by Alvin Curran, Lindsay Vickery, Cat Hope a n d Freya Zinovieff, and has toured internationally with Decibel New Music Ensemble, performing the music of John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi, as well as a program of Australian works featuring his piece “UNAWARE_”. He is currently working as a curator for award winning organisation Tura New Music's 2014 “Club Zho” series of improvised and experimental music, as well as performing regularly as a solo performer and ensemble director, and with improvisation duos Tchake and Mr Government.
Michael McNab is a 23 year old musician from Melbourne, Australia. He works within a broad range of contexts such as improvised and contemporary music, electronic composition, and spontaneous performance art. He studied jazz drums with Simon Barker at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2012, before going on to complete a government funded mentorship in Europe under the tutelage of Will Guthrie and Tony Buck in 2013. He is currently participating in the Speak Percussion Emerging Artists Program, as a performer of new electro-acoustic works that feature structured improvisation and spatialised sound, and is a member of the mixed media improvising performance collective THIS ensemble, who aim to blur the line
between social engagement and performance. He also performs with the contemporary music group the Phonetic Orchestra, who this year are working with 4 guest artists - Peter Knight, Eugene Ughetti, Dale Gorfinkel and Jim Denley. He has released two discs of his own electronic music under the alias Wumpy, and also performs under this moniker using YouTube to make live improvised sound collages. Other current projects include the improvising duos Disc.Card, who explore the acoustic relationships between found objects and a given surface, and Tchake, who use digital processing in conjunction with acoustic improvisation.
