Aaqila (they/them)
Aaqila makes ends meet between a few different places via Boorloo on Whadjuk Noongar boodja. Their creative output operates towards a provision of tools for collective liberation, beyond the tools of the institution. Their threads of research are drawn from within Malay-Anglo subjectivities and move slowly through contemporary and ancestral understandings of gender, collective healing and embodied ritual. Aaqila has participated in lots of projects in both conventional and unconventional capacities, but mostly they orient themself with discretion and intimacy. They DJ under a few different monikers, write prolifically, experiment with sound and waft in other performative capacities.
Annika Moses (she/her)
I live and make on Whadjuk Nyoongar land in Boorloo (Perth), so-called Australia. On this land I also like to write, play, listen, and sew. Nike Mo is a moniker under which I perform and release alt/freak-folk music. I perform and contribute to the musical projects Didion’s Bible and Lyndon Blue. I organise and curate with Tone List, a Boorloo-based label for exploratory music. I co-present Drivetime with Doug Swamp, and also belong to the Difficult Listening collective where you can catch my selections every month-ish. Across some of the year I facilitate creative projects in Tura New Music’s regional program, and through this work I spend time on Martu and Gija lands in the East Pilbara and Kimberley, and also in Fitzroy Crossing (traditionally land of the Bunuba people). My work has been premiered and exhibited in festivals including Totally Huge New Music Festival, Fairbridge Festival, Audible Edge, FRINGEWORLD, WAMfest and Sound Spectrum, and installation works at Cullity Gallery and Mundaring Arts Centre. In 2016 I was awarded the Robert Juniper Award for the Arts, and was nominated for Best Folk act and Most Popular New Act in the 2019 WAM Awards for the project Nika Mo. My work has been commissioned by Tura New Music, Liquid Architecture & the National Gallery of Australia, and Decibel Ensemble.
August Pope (they/them)
August Pope is a Boorloo based sound artist passionate about creating and performing noise. Interested in exploring improvisation and texture, building industrial soundworlds, Jewish Klezmer and esoteric practice, investigating the fine grey lines we use to define genre, music and sound. August regularly performs at events such as Noizemaschin!!, ALT/Heart of Darkness and Outcome Unknown, employing a range of synths, brass, accordion and deconstructed sounds. August has collaborated with various interdisciplinary artists, recently performing with dancers at the Blue Room Theatre’s 600 Seconds of Summer and Resonant Fields.
Bec Bowman (she/her)
Bec Bowman loves nothing more than a good chat, which she gets to do every Friday as presenter of Artbeat on RTRFM 92.1. She’s particularly looking forward to chatting with her bestie Eduardo Cossio about his creative practice and inability to banter.
Ben Greene (he/him)
Ben Greene is a Perth-based drummer whose improvisational approach draws upon elements of free-jazz, noise music and math-rock. He is a former member of the instrumental post-metal band, ‘Tangled Thoughts of Leaving’, and currently plays with local improvised groups ‘orphans’, ‘Ghost Gum Reverb’ and ‘Dez Cartez’.
Claire Orman (she/her)
Claire Orman is a percussionist based in Perth, WA, who uses her classically-trained background as a stepping point for sound exploration. She has previously played with Resonant Fields. She is currently interested in experimental, improvised and exploratory art, with a focus on metallic-based sounds and found objects in conjunction with electronic textures.
Craig Pedersen (he/him)
Craig Pedersen is a trumpet player, composer and improvisor recently moved to Boorloo/Perth from Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. He has performed with Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, Joe Morris, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Joane Hetu, Jean Derome, Pauline Oliveros, and many others. Most recently he was the music director for Creation Destruction for 12 dancers, rock band (half of GY!BE), strings and voices, where he wrote and arranged music for the strings and voices and conducted the chamber ensemble. In addition to performing in his own groups, The Craig Pedersen Quartet and Sound of the Mountain, he has been the trumpet player for Ensemble SuperMusique, a new music ensemble in Montreal dedicated to the performance of graphic and conceptual scores. He is currently involved in a multi-year research project into the limits of text score writing, soliciting creative input from Manfred Werder, Ryoko Akama, Heather Roche, Julián Galay, Gudinni Cortina, E Millar, Zhao Cong and Zhu Wenbo and Mark Molnar and many others.
Dan O’Connor (he/him)
Dan O’Connor is an improviser, trumpet player, and mastering engineer based in Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia. Since 2016, O’Connor has been digging into the nuance of the acoustic trumpet with minimal modification, focusing on the hearing of detail within air stream effects, split tones, and muted, pitched tones, looking to redefine melody in terms of timbral change. In 2016 O’Connor co-founded Tone List, a record label releasing improvised and new music from Boorloo’s underground. In 2020, he open ENCODER Sound, a mastering studio for the indie, alternative, and experimental musicians of Boorloo.
Djuna Lee (she/her)
Djuna Lee is a bassist and composer from Western Australia. After completing her Honours degree in Jazz Performance at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2012 Djuna moved to Melbourne where she further developed her style, composing, performing and recording with a number of groups including Blind Spot and Question Time. Music has taken Djuna around the world, performing at several festivals around Europe, Asia and Australia. Now back in Perth, Djuna is an active member of the jazz, improvised and experimental scenes and collaborates with artists across varying disciplines.
Eduardo Cossio (he/him)
Eduardo Cossio is a Peruvian-Australian musician based in Boorloo, Perth, Western Australia. His work on prepared instruments and electronics foregrounds spontaneity, collaboration, and the development of a musical language whereby instruments are treated as malleable objects open to new configurations. Based in Perth since 2005, Eduardo has led his own bands and written music for ensembles, film, and dance productions. He maintains collaborations with leading West Australian composer-improvisers such as Ross Bolleter, Josten Myburgh, Michael Terren, and Sage Pbbbt. He has also collaborated closely with national and international artists including Jim Denley [NSW], Annette Krebs [GER], Matthias Muller [GER], Gabriella Smart [SA], and Laura Altman [NSW]. Eduardo is a prolific organiser, broadcaster, and writer in the Perth community. He runs Outcome Unknown; presents Difficult Listening on RTRFM92.1; and his writing has appeared on local and national music publications. He has received the West Australian Music Industry Award for experimental music on several occasions, and was nominated Industry Representative of the Year in 2018.
E Millar (she/her)
E(lizabeth) Millar is a sound and multi-disciplinary artist, experimental musician and composer. She has performed and presented works in Australia, Canada, the USA, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. She works with acoustic and electronic sound, texture, repetition, duration and structure. She creates sound sculptures from small electronic components and found materials, composes and performs text and video scores, and collaborates across the disciplines of installation, choreography and videography.
Hannah Reardon-Smith (they/them)
cyberBanshee aka Hannah Reardon-Smith is a settler flutist, electronic musician, composer, thinker and improviser living on the unceded land of the Yuggera Ugarapul and Turrbal Peoples. Their music explores the sweetness in unsettling difficulty, and reveals the monsters lurking in traditionally beautiful instruments. Their work and thinking are rooted in queer and feminist collaborative and contaminative co-creation with other soundmakers and artmakers, physical and social environments, ecologies, histories, and narratives, exploring the possibilities of making-kin and finding agency within community. Asides from cyberBanshee, Hannah plays with Meanjin’s radically inclusive symphonic pop collective Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra, and improv and experimentation trios Rogue Three and It’s Science And Feelings, and is part of the curation team for Cave Inn Experimental. They are one of the community organising thinker-troublemakers behind the Brisbane Free University, its Radical Reading Group, and its 4ZZZ offshoot Radio Reversal. They work as postdoctoral research associate to Wiradjuri trans-nonbinary Professor Sandy O’Sullivan on their project Saving Lives: Mapping the influence of Indigenous LGBTIQ+ creative artists.
Izzy French (she/they)
Izzy French is a trans composer-performer located in Boorloo, Australia, whose work explores a variety of practices such as indeterminacy, play, noise, and non-traditional notation. She’s been involved with various local groups such as NoizeMaschin, Outcome Unknown, and Alt Noise, and is currently pursuing an honours degree at WAAPA. Outside of music, Izzy draws comics and supervises bouncy castles.
Jaxon Degebrodt (he/him)
Jaxon Degebrodt is writer and musician based in Boorloo. He has a background in writing music and prose and currently focuses on producing works of narrative guided musical improv. Jaxon is currently in his fourth year of the WAAPA composition program and is producing a draft for his film GRAND PRIX: Infinity, which will be performed at his graduation recital.
Jeremy Segal (he/him)
Jeremy Segal is a musician, sound artist, and audio engineer based in Perth. He predominantly makes experimental electronic music with a particular interest in gradual process, audible transformation, and generative systems.
Jim Denley (he/him)
Interested in what his music instinct might learn from language, from 1989 to 2003 he worked with the text/music group Machine for Making Sense, with Amanda Stewart, Stevie Wishart, Rik Rue and Chris Mann. Jim co-formed 180º with Amanda Stewart and Nick Ashwood to continue this intertwining of text, speech and music, releasing their first recording, Submental in 2019.
When in Sydney he’s deeply involved with the Splinter Orchestra an improvising ensemble defined by its radical inclusivity. They have recorded for ABCTV and Radio and developed a number of procedural scores, some of which they performed at Tectonics Festival, Adelaide in 2016.
Through Fire, Crevice and the Hidden Valley (Splitrec CD16) documents his deep engagement with the Budawang Mountains and around Gadigal Country (Sydney Harbour) which is part of PhD research he is currently undertaking at the dept. of Art, Design and Architecture at UNSW. The first release in this series is In Weather Volume 1: The Hidden Valley (Splitrec LP 31). The second With Weather Volume 2: Gadigal Country (Splitrec LP 32) will be released later this year.
https://splitrec.bandcamp.com/album/in-weather-volume-1-the-hidden-valley
Josten Myburgh (he/him)
Josten Myburgh is a composer, organiser & saxophonist based on Whadjuk Noongar boodja in Boorloo. He has performed and recorded with distinguished artists in experimental music internationally including Burkhard Beins, Michael Pisaro-Liu, Emilio Gordoa, Sabine Vögel, Adam Pultz-Melbye, Jim Denley, Aviva Endean & Annette Krebs. Locally he maintains duo projects with Eduardo Cossio, Sage Pbbbt, Daisy Sanders and Jameson Feakes, leads ensemble Ghost Gum Reverb, and works with interdisciplinary artists Joshua Pether and Elizabeth Pedler. Performances include Vestafor Festival (Norway), Offene Ohren (Munich), FILEC Festival (Cuernavaca), VOLTA (CDMX), the Perth International Jazz Festival, Fremantle Biennale, Supersense Festival of the Ecstatic (Melbourne), Festival Cable#8 (Nantes), Sacred Realism (Berlin), the NOW now (Sydney) and Inland Concert Series (Melbourne & Perth). He is co-director of Tone List (2016-), the Audible Edge Festival of Sound (2017-), and the Walyalup Weekend of Improvised Music (2023-). He has curated programs for the Unhallowed Arts Festival, Totally Huge New Music Festival, Mandurah Arts Festival, State Library of WA, WA Museum Boola Bardip, and Liquid Architecture.
Kirsten Symczycz (she/her)
Kirsten Symczycz is a composer, pianist and accordionist based in Perth, Western Australia. Her main focus currently is composing and arranging for contemporary large jazz ensemble. Kirsten recently graduated from a Bachelor of Music Honours majoring in Jazz Composition and Arranging at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. She has played piano in various bands and ensembles over the past decade, most recently in Artemis Orchestra, and has been active within the Perth free-improvised music scene since 2015.
Lara Pollard (they/them)
Lara Pollard is a singer, songwriter and instrumentalist based in Boorloo. They have operated in numerous musical disciplines, studying a degree in composition at UWA, whilst also pursuing jazz keyboard playing, exploratory guitar/electronics and folk songwriting over the duration of these studies. They also spend a lot of time playing around Boorloo’s indie scene in bands Ocean Cosmonaut, Vacuum Dreamer and Honour Culture. Their musical focus now lies mostly in writing songs for their solo folk project ‘Lara Fay’ and experimenting with electroacoustic guitar soundscapes.
Lyndon Blue (they/them)
Lyndon Blue is a musician from Boorloo/Perth (Whadjuk boodja) with a focus on composition and recording, and an instrumental background in violin and double bass. They have performed and released music locally and internationally, under their own name and guises such as Leafy Suburbs, Solar Barge, and Heathcote Blue. Lyndon’s musical output appears in past, present and intermittent collaborations including Spice World, Methyl Ethel, Seams, Spirit Level, Vanishing Island Group, Moses & Blue and many more. Though their main interest lies in the construction and deconstruction of song-forms, Lyndon has been a regular improviser in Boorloo and Naarm and composed for theatre, dance, film, and installation works. They are currently Music Curator at Goolugatup Heathcote Gallery, Applecross and a regular presenter on RTRFM’s Difficult Listening show.
Naoko Uemoto (she/her)
As a saxophonist based in Boorloo (Perth), Naoko Uemoto’s practice blends her classical training with improvisational curiosity. Her appetite for experimentation has led to numerous commissions by local artists and composers. In these collaborations, she has had the opportunity to bring a range of playful ideas to the concert stage, including the use of classical saxophone techniques to rock out to dubstep, and going on a sonic swim among animations of Frankenstein-esque, anthropomorphic fish. Naoko finds great joy in being surrounded by such imaginative people, but above all, she is inspired by the strong force of female saxophonists in Boorloo.
Nathan Thompson (he/him)
Nathan John Thompson is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring the possibilities of man/machine interaction, bio- mechanical sentience and the obtuse creative corners that arise from these relationships. Building systems – both electromechanical and biochemical, that play along the blurred edge of the ‘living’ while showing independent intent and agency. Nathans work often manipulates life to question and problematise humanity’s position in the contemporary environment in order to build greater understanding of the inhabited space we share. His machines are analogue and lifelike in their behaviour conjuring live interpretations of an ever- evolving machine language that’s yet to be fully understood. Nathans work has been awarded prizes of distinction at both Ars Electronic and The Japanese Media Art Festival and has a work commissioned by 2023 Venice Biennale Musica, Italy. He has shown work and performed throughout Australia, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Nathan is currently researching at SymbioticA – IP Stem Cell technologies implementing bio-engineered human cells to develop a “surrogate performer” for aged, infirm or deceased creatives.
Nicholas Kyriakacis (he/him)
Nicholas Kyriakacis is an emerging composer and improviser based in Perth. Beginning as a traditional Greek Bouzouki player, Nicholas changed direction late in high school to pursue his passion for composition. This lead to him completing a Bachelor of Music in Composition in 2022, under the mentorship of James Ledger. While at University, Nicholas began to pursue his deep interest in sacred art, and he would join the St Romanos Byzantine Choir. He is very fortunate to have had many opportunities as a composer, such as being selected for the Australian Youth Orchestra and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra composition projects. Equally he has been privileged to work with professional musicians and ensembles such as the Vanguard Consort. In 2022, Nicholas had the opportunity to be part of the Resonant Fields Ensemble where he would develop an appreciation for improvised music. This would lead him to perform at the Perth State Library’s New Music Archive relaunch, where he would play a self built “electric bouzouki”. Over the next few years Nicholas hopes to continue to work as a composer and explore use of visuals with his music, while also maintaining his interest and commitment to improvisation.
Pedro Alvarez (he/him)
Pedro Alvarez is an independent musician born in Chile and currently living on Whadjuk Noongar land in Western Australia. His musical interests span from Andean folk music to experimental free improvisation, informed by anti-colonial perspectives, critical theories, and poetry. Alvarez studied composition with Cirilo Vila in Santiago, with James Dillon in London, and with Liza Lim in Huddersfield, obtaining a PhD in 2014. He has been composer-in-residence in Vienna and in Mexico, and receives commissions from festivals and ensembles around the world. Alvarez has worked as a sessional lecturer in music at several universities in Chile and Australia. In addition to musical endeavours, Alvarez currently works in community mental health.
Sage Pbbbt (she/her)
My singing practice takes inspiration from Tuvan and Mongolian overtone singing, Inuit throat singing, sound poetry and an ongoing exploration of extra-normal vocal technique. I also take influence from industrial musick, trance, and drone; insight meditation practice, urban/industrial shamanism and chaos magick; feminist, queer and trans praxis; and Discordianism. As a researcher, I have interests in feminist, queer and trans politics, intersectionality and ethical engagements with postmodern culture(s), with a focus on writing against normative narratives. A critical engagement with the ethics of performance, cultural appropriation and privilege form the core of my praxis. I use the moniker Sage Pbbbt for vocal performance work and my name Sage J Harlow for writing. I write text scores Sometimes I play the drums. Sometimes I play the theremin. Sometimes I play bass. (I also write weird, finger-picky, classical-guitary-sounding things for solo acoustic bass guitar.)
Sam Banks-Smith (he/him)
Sam is a Walyalup/Fremantle based musician exploring ambient textures and gritty fx thru the mediums of guitar and trumpet. Playing with Boorloo groups Butter & Warm Laundry, he blends his love of improv and sonic ‘fatness’ together.
Saskia Willinge (she/her)
Saskia is a flautist who is most interested in improvised and exploratory music. In 2022 she played at a variety of local gigs with/ for the likes of; Outcome Unknown, Resonant Fields, Tenth Muse Initiative, Kinds of Light, and Tone List. Highlights include being part of Sage Pbbbt’s album Drones Ongs, performing in Craig Pedersen’s quartet for Tune Noise Tune, and a commission alongside Berlin-based Sabine Vogel for Audible Edge. Also last year, Saskia commissioned composer Kate Milligan to write a graphic score based on flowers, and created her own object scores, for her honours research at the UWA Conservatorium of Music. Now that she has finished her studies, she is getting involved in the community-organising side of the scene, trying her hand at curating, and learning how to rest. In direct contradiction to the previous sentence, Saskia is also part of indie bands Heathcote Blue, Cryptids, and Lara Fay, an organiser of WWIM, and part of the Sound Exploration Fremantle team.
Simon Charles (he/him)
Simon Charles’ experimental musical practice explores themes of instability and relational dynamics. His compositions often incorporate electro-acoustic media and audio scores, and he works diligently, developing languages as a saxophonist and electro-acoustic musician. He has performed in Australia, France, Germany, Norway, Portugal, America, and Taiwan. He is currently based in unceded Noongar Ballardong country (Western Australia). Simon has collaborated with performers, including Callum G’froerer, Rebecca Lane, Ensemble Offspring, and WAAPA’s Listener Ensemble. He has also worked closely with Phonetic Orchestra, with whom he also performs. He has worked as a sound designer on several projects with visual artist, Katie West, including Clearing, We Hold You Close, I Love You My Baby You Are My First Born, and The women plucked the star pickets from the ground and turned them into wana (digging sticks).
Stuart Orchard (he/him)
Stuart Orchard is a West Australian composer, singer-songwriter, musician and educator who lives and works on Whadjuk Noongar boodja in Walyalup/Fremantle, Western Australia. His experimental music engages highly textured and site-specific composition and exploratory improvisation practices. An experienced performer Orchard’s live instrumentation generally oscillates between guitars, percussion, found objects and DIY musical instruments. Stuart’s aeolian inspired music and instrument design (instruments powered by wind) have seen performances in Boorloo and in the Midwest with Regional Sounds. Stuart moonlights as a singer-songwriter and guitarist in several bands in metropolitan and country WA.
Photo Credits
Emma Daisy (Aaqila, Annika Moses, Lyndon Blue), Josh Wells (Dan O’Connor, Djuana Lee, Sage Pbbbt), Martin Greizis (Elizabeth Millar), Bec Bowman (Eduardo Cossio), Thomas Oliver (Hannah Reardon-Smith), Claire Krouzecky (Izzy French), Howie Ng (Jeremy Segal), Eduardo Cossio (Josten Myburgh), Nick Huston (Saskia Willinge), duncographic (Simon Charles).
WWIM 