top of page
Off%20Grid%20event%20icon_edited.png

CoDI Off-Grid Events

CoDI Off-Grid runs a programme of free online events to support artists to connect each other, promote their work, share practice and ideas, and reach new audiences. 

COMING UP:

CoDI Off Grid Gwilly Edmondez square _edited.jpg

Caffi Arbrofol Sbesial: Gwilly Edmondez

19:00 Thursday 11.07.24

Avant-garde composer and performer Gwilly Edmondez talks about his kaleidoscopic musical career. The 60-minute presentation concludes with a 15-minute Q&A session.

Gwilly Edmondez emerged in the 1980s from Bridgend, south Wales, where he was a founder member of Radioactive Sparrow, once dubbed ‘the most legendary band you’ve probably never heard of.’

Gwilly practices a form of composition that is about immediate performance, collage, and improvisation. He operates both as a solo artist and as collaborator. Having coined the term 'Wild Pop' to describe his aesthetic as both a solo artist and as Gustav Thomas in YEAH YOU (est. 2013), his primary materials are voice, recorded media, sampling & sequencing; he also works with 8-bit Techno (Gameboy with Nanoloop), online video and drawing.

Gwilly also teaches Contemporary Music Practice at Newcastle University, specialising in historical-cultural musicology options on hip-hop, jazz, fringe cultures and underground / experimental popular music.

PAST EVENTS:

NEW EXPECTATIONS no figures square.jpg

Conference: New Expectations

An experimental music conference presented by the Welsh Experimental Music Alliance (WEMA) in association with CoDI Off-Grid Saturday 18.03.23 - SHIFT, Cardiff.

 

New Expectations provided an opportunity to work collaboratively, share practice, explore ideas and have fun. Through an afternoon and evening of open discussion and music making delegated investigate many of the issues important to Wales-based avant-garde and improvising music makers.

 

GALLERY

CoDI Off Grid Freya Dooley square_edited.jpg

Sgwrs #12 Freya Dooley

Sound artist and Creative Wales Fellow Freya Dooley discusses current projects stemming from her encounters with Italian cinema, Italo-disco, recent compositional experiments and her approach to sound within collaborative relationships.

 

Freya Dooley is a Cardiff based artist whose practice incorporates sound, writing, moving image, installation, and performance. She is interested in the narrative potential of sound within her work, and the social function of music in general. Rooted in close-range observations, her semi-fictional narratives and sonic compositions often expand on the harmonies and tensions between personal and collective experiences. The voice - live, recorded, spoken, synchronised, muted, muttered and sung – is both a tool and subject in her work. 
 
Freya was awarded the Creative Wales Fellowship at the British School at Rome, Italy in 2021, and is currently working on a Wales Venice 10 Artes Mundi commission. Freya also often collaborates with other artists and musicians in projects including listening events, performance programmes and broadcasts. She is currently undertaking an MA in Sound Design at Bath Spa University.

 

CoDI Off Grid Elaine Mitchener square_edited.jpg

Sgwrs #11 Elaine Mitchener

Award winning vocalist, movement artist and composer Elaine Mitchener talks about her career in contemporary and experimental music, free improvisation and visual art.

Elaine Mitchener MBE is a British Afro-Caribbean vocalist, movement artist and composer working between contemporary/experimental new music, free improvisation and visual art. She is a Wigmore Hall Associate Artist (2021-26); a DAAD Artist Fellow (2022); and is an exhibiting artist in the British Art Show 9’s current touring exhibition. Elaine is founder of the collective electroacoustic trio The Rolling Calf (with Jason Yarde and Neil Charles).

 

VIEW HERE

CoDI Off Grid Bastard Assignments (smaller).jpg

Sgwrs #10 Bastard Assignments

Bastard Assignments' Caitlin Rowley and Edward Henderson talk about their work as composer-performers and working collaboratively, and discuss recent and current projects. The session is illustrated by examples of their work and include some (very gentle) participation in a couple of online pieces and concludes with a 15-minute Q&A session.

Described by the Financial Times as “one of the most exciting forces in contemporary music”, Bastard Assignments have been at the forefront of the UK experimental scene for nearly a decade.

 

VIEW HERE

Off Grid sgwrs 9 A Sonic Intervention_edited.jpg

Sgwrs #9 John Harvey: Penallta Colliery - A Sonic Intervention

Welsh coalmining has been pictorialised ever since it emerged as a cottage industry in the early 13th century.  From the second half of the 19th century until its demise in the 1980s, what grew into a large and complex technological means of production became a significant genre in Welsh landscape art. However, little attention has been paid to the unique and powerful acoustic character of the industry, other than the textual testimonies to such recorded by workers and visitors, that is. Until the development of electrical sound recording in the mid-1920s, and the increase in fidelity and capacity to record a wide frequency band, it was impossible to capture and preserve the actuality of the collieries’ sonorities.

In 1930, the British Movietone newsreel company recorded South Wales Colliers Go Down the Mine. It represented the ‘first sound pictures of a British coalmine’. The film’s sonic profile embraces the wide range and the peculiarities of noises produced by, for example, machines, steam, hydraulics, pneumatics, pit-wheels, drams, and cages, as well as the colliers’ voices and the movie’s accompanying musical interludes. This source represents the primary material for a suite of sound-art composition entitled Penallta Colliery: Sound Pictures, which will be released by the Screen and Sound Archive of Wales in July 2022.  

The presentation provides an overview of the sound work, including an account of: the source material; the conceptualization of the project; the methodology and technology of sound construction; the compositional process; the suite’s relationship to John Harvey's previous sound, visual, and art historical work; and the problematics of engaging with coalmining history in a post-COP26 world.

VIEW HERE

CoDI Off Grid Meilir square 2.jpg

Sgwrs #8 Meilir

Mae Meilir yn trafod mewn manylder ei agwedd at gyfansoddi, gan gynnwys  y broses o ysgrifennu a recordio ei albwm “In Tune”. Mae'n canolbwyntio ar rai o’r agweddau mwyaf arbrofol wrth ysgrifennu caneuon o “found sound” a sut mae’n gwneud defnydd arbrofol o wahanol eiriau i greu cerddoriaeth â swyn seinyddol.

​​

Mae Meilir yn un o’r crewyr cerddol arbrofol mwyaf cyffrous a beiddgar yn cyfuno arbenigedd creu caneuon efo ymagwedd telynegol heb ofni arbrofi wrth gwmpasu synnau seinyddol.

Ganwyd a magwyd Meilir yn Sir y Fflint, lle death i sylw fel pianydd a chanwr clasurol. Serch ei lwyddiant roedd Meilir am greu rhywbeth oedd yn perthyn iddo fo. Bu’n gyd-sylfaenydd y band “Manchucko”, a gyda’r band fe ymddanghosodd gyntaf mewn perfformiad byw  ar sianel genedlaethol y Gymraeg sef S4C.

 

GWYLIWCH YMA

CoDI Off Grid LoR square_edited.jpg

Sgwrs #7 Ladies of Rage: Tea with Teifi & Trishna 

Music-creators TeiFi and Trishna Jaikara present on their own practices and on the game-changing support and empowerment provided by the Ladies of Rage network.

Trishna Jaikara is an open format DJ resident for Bump & Grind, The Moon Cardiff & Ladies of Rage. Also a producer and lyricist in English, Welsh, Punjabi and Malay- making her bilingual debut on the Harddwch Du EP last year with track Rise Up which was played on BBC Radio 6 for BBC introducing and Radio Wales. She has been a part of Ladies of Rage since 2018 and champions local artists and businesses. 

 

TeiFi - with her “Rude Grooves and Smooth Loops” is a chameleon - funny, bawdy, Welsh-English rap, soulful vocals, lush harmonies, and a bit of dance thrown in. Singing about bodies, nature, sex, motherhood, death, Cymru, colonialism. Composing and producing and her music using loop station, vocal beats, nature sounds and dog noises. She has performed with Ladies of Rage since 2019 and is passionate about uplifting other artists.

VIEW HERE

Off Grid Jon Ruddick b.jpg

Sgwrs #6 Jon Ruddick

Jon Ruddick is a sound artist and SHIFT studio member and organiser, originally from Bath and now based in Cardiff. Established in 2018 SHIFT is a multidisciplinary research and development arts organisation, offering free working space and support for artists to develop artistic practice within a collaborative environment. 

 

Jon talks about SHIFT's structure, history and development and about its future plans for sharing space with other artists as a form of mutual aid.  He also touches on how it hopes to help build sustainable communities of spaces and networks for sound art, performance and production.

VIEW HERE

 

Torri Ffiniau Cerddorol.jpg

Sgwrs #5 Torri Ffiniau: gweithio ar draws genres gwahanol

 

Welsh language panel event with guest speakers Angharad Davies (avant-garde violinist), Glyn Roberts (artist, composer and experimental performer) and Gwion ap Iago (Roughion member and owner of Afanc Records), chaired by Nêst Thomas which discusses the challenges and joys of working across a range of musical styles and traditions.

Off Grid Maggie Nicols 2.jpg

Sgwrs #4 Maggie Nicols

Maggie Nicols was born in Edinburgh as Margaret Nicholson. Her father was from the Isle of Skye, and her mother was half-French, half-Berber, from North Africa. In her mid-teens she left school and started to work as a dancer at the Windmill Theatre. Her first singing engagement was in a strip club in Manchester in 1965. At about that time she became obsessed with jazz, and sang with bebop pianist Dennis Rose. From then on she sang in pubs, clubs, hotels, and in dance bands with some of the finest jazz musicians around. In the midst of all this she worked abroad for a year as a dancer (including a six-month stint at the Moulin Rouge in Paris).

​Nicols has also collaborated regularly over the years with Swiss pianist Irene Schweizer and French bassist Joelle Leandre, including tours and three recordings as the trio "Les Diaboliques". In 1991 she began a weekly free improvisational meeting in London, which became known as The Gathering, a taste of which was captured on the album The Gathering: For John Stevens. In 2020, she released her debut solo album entitled Creative Contradiction: Poetry, Story, Song & Sound on Cafe Oto's Takuroku label.

 

VIEW HERE

 

Off Grid Leafcutter John.jpg

Sgwrs #3 Leafcutter John

Described by The Guardian as "a musician who combines acoustic and electronic music with an irresistible compulsion to build Heath Robinson- like inventions”, sound-artist Leafcutter John has released seven studio albums, toured extensively and collaborated with a diverse range of artists including Imogen Heap, Talvin Singh and Shabaka Hutchings.

 

VIEW HERE

 

Off Grid Kathy Hinde SMALL.jpg

Sgwrs #2 Kathy Hinde

Audio-visual artist Kathy Hinde shares some of her recent work, elaborating on some of her motivations, methods and intentions. Her audio-visual creations echo phenomena found in the natural world to explore the relationship between people, other species, and the earth’s systems. Her work often sits somewhere between kinetic sound sculptures and newly invented musical instruments that can be played live in countless ways. She draws on systems, models, and data from animal behaviours, biodiversity and dynamic ecosystems, and often employs open scores and chance procedures. The animal and the elemental have all figured into a practice of installation, performance and participatory works. Birds, water, bogs and ecosystems take different forms through bespoke software, objects and inquisitive forms of media.

 

VIEW HERE

 

Off Grid Sarah Angliss 9 Sept.jpg

Sgwrs #1 Sarah Angliss

Sarah Angliss’ music explores the sonorities of voices and ancient instruments, revealing and augmenting them with her distinctive electronic techniques.Sarah draws on her lifelong interest in European folksong, cybernetics and esoteric sound culture. These inspire her progressive and strikingly original music for film, theatre and the live music stage.

Her work reflects an eclectic musical background. A classically-trained composer who specialised in baroque and renaissance music, Sarah cut her teeth performing on the UK folk scene. Her desire to get inside notes and finely manipulate sound led her to study electroacoustic engineering, then robotics, alongside music – fields that continue to inform her unique compositional style.

VIEW HERE

bottom of page