Refraction Index: ulla, bookworms, Lxv

Refraction Index

Time: 8:00 PM Price: $10-15

Refraction Index is an event series focused on presenting artists exploring the properties of sound in space.

Order of performances: Lxv, ulla, bookworms

Artist info:

Ulla (Ulla Straus) is an artist currently based in Philadelphia. Her algorithmic textures jolt and oscillate between detailed ambient and jazzy electronic — to offer only a few descriptors. She has released music on an array of labels such as Quiet Time, Experiences Ltd, West Mineral Ltd, Motion Ward, Longform Editions and her most recent record Foam on 3XL. Straus has become an essential part of the ambient avant-garde thanks to her compositions around electroacoustics and experimental jazz.

Nicholas Dawson (Bookworms) is a Los Angeles-born, New York-based electronic composer who produces and performs sound works under the name Bookworms. His work is often concerned with various modes of representation and interpretation through audio and non-linear living sonic histories. By way of advanced synthesis, generative sequencing and audio collage, Dawson accesses detuned realities, and conjures harmonics, rhythms and ghosts of the truths which they have come to signify across time and space through repetition...a multi-dimensional blues. He has released music through L.I.E.S. Records, Anòmia, BANK Records, DFA, Bánh Mi Verlag, and Break World Records. His debut album Xenophobe was a double-LP of inspired dissections of rhythmic musical lineages; whereas his second album Appropriation Loops, expressed impressionistic concerns with “"recurrent, fluctuant feedback loops in popular and unpopular culture." Dawson has performed in varying contexts internationally, ranging from clubs like Contact Tokyo and squat raves in Germany and Mexico, to festivals like Out Festival Portugal and Off Festival Katowice, to art spaces and museums like MoMA PS1 and The Museum of Fine Arts alongside the likes of Charlemagne Palestine, Moor Mother, Drew McDowell, DJ Stingray, Sun Ra Arkestra, and Rrose. His monthly residency, Confused House at Bossa Nova Civic Club in Brooklyn has been a curated zone for open-format electronic experimentation since 2013, hosting performances from artists such as Juliana Huxtable, Traxx, Bill Kouligas, Foodman, and Shyboi. Dawson also co-founded the Confused House record label with Jason Letkiewicz aka Steve Summers in 2013. Currently, he is part of two collaborative live and recording projects with Dylan Scheer (Via App) and Leila Bordreuil, respectively.

Lxv is the most prominent alias of producer composer David Sutton hailing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Under the Lxv moniker Sutton has created unique rhythmic contraptions and processed sound environments that have been referred to as "understated, unassuming", " enigmatic" with "intentions tantalizingly elusive". Since 2014 Lxv has produced releases solo and in collaboration for Anomia, Enmossed, Warm Winters, Psychic Liberation, Umor Rex, Sacred Phrases, Soft Abuse Records and more and performed internationally and throughout the US.

Host or Publisher Icebox Project Space