Spencer Clark and Lieven Martens are two legends of the European music underground. They share an approach at once humble and phantasmagorical, consistent and colorful: they could be called masters of sonic worlding, but perhaps it is more accurate to speak of revelations of nature, a radical listening that defines this as ecological music in the deepest sense.
Under different names but often around the moniker Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Spencer is a mystical harlequin. Places and beings populate an interstellar and inner journey between dreamy sounds that melt in a ritualistic time, unrestrainable melodies on old keyboards in electronic, lo-fi, magical environments.
Lieven has often played under the name Dolphins into the future, which would suggest something very similar. But in recent years his equally kaleidoscopic imagination has gone to interacting with the real world more directly, as if it had landed on this planet after traveling to other worlds. What he discovers among synthesis sounds and field recordings is an equally juicy geography: myths, islands, marine and pristine environments, or conversely contaminations and balances of terrestrial energies are all stories that unfurl like lava in the endless research of the journey, that is ultimately a questioning about being in the world.
Event curated by Giorgio Mega (music curator Fondazione Studio Rizoma) and in collaboration with EPYC – European Palermo Youth Center