The Use (Michael Durek) – January 20
Our first artist of the 2013 season is Michael Durek, performing as The Use (formerly Cloud Cloud) on Sunday, January 20. Michael is a multi-instrumentalist, artist, and curator. From a chip-tunes beginning in 2009, Cloud Cloud became an electro-acoustic experimental chamber ensemble, and finally meshed into it’s current form as The Use: A saucy blend of pulsitile, structured, yet free electronic music making use of synths, theremins, and sampled sounds recorded from Durek’s everyday life. Durek has performed in six different countries with PAS, leads a group called the SK Orchestra, co-organizes the Omega Sound Fix festival, plays in the groups George Sand, and Ping Pong, and has appeared on over a dozen albums.
His performances are sometimes site-specific or have conceptual elements. Past projects include a site-specific performance on The WaterpodTM, for which he transformed Mary Mattingly’s floating habitat itself into an electric instrument. He also organized and conducted a 15-member SK Orchestra concert at The Tank in NYC, entitled The History of the Universe. In January 2010, he conceived of, produced, and performed in an event called The Caged Bird Sings. For the event, 5 musicians improvised continuously for 24 hours within the confines of a cage, which he installed in the Alfa Art Gallery in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Since 2010, Durek has performed in six countries and at some notable festivals including CoCArt festival at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun Poland (with PAS), Avant Garde festival in Germany (with PAS), and Kunstzwerg festival in Zweibrucken , Germany (SK Orchestra and PAS). He actively performs in the NYC and NJ area, and has played at many venues including the Flux Factory, Central Booking, The Social Plastic Space, The Tank, Monkey Town, Public Assembly, Madame Claude, and Surreal Estate. He has been on over a dozen CDs, and his group the SK Orchestra released a limited edition of hand-numbered tapes, on SicSic label, in 2011. You can see and hear more of Michael’s work at his video and sound pages.
The show will begin at 1:00pm with an opening set by ArtCrime. Advance tickets are available at a discount from http://musixplore.org/shop/.