send + receive October 17: Dawuna, Niecy Blues, Mark Templeton

The opening night of send + receive: a festival of sound, v26.

Dawuna is the moniker and middle name of multi-disciplinary artist Ian Mugerwa. Using music as his primary medium, Dawuna has released multiple projects to much critical and fan acclaim. These works span many different styles of experimental black music, with influences spanning from Prince and D’Angelo to Jim O’Rourke and George Gershwin. His debut release, Glass Lit Dream, was called “one of 2021’s masterpiece albums” by The Guardian. The live exploration of his work expands on the sonic philosophy of this album, while incorporating the aesthetic evolution of his work that has occurred since Glass Lit Dream’s release.

South Carolina singer and producer Niecy Blues describes her songwriting process like an undertow: “I feel a strange pull, and let it carry me, following swirling leaves… whole days roll by, forgetting about the body.” Her full-length debut, Exit Simulation, captures this sense of deep-rooted divination, cycling between simmering ballads, ghosted R&B, downtempo gospel, and looped vocal improvisations – often within the same track. The title is taken from a science fiction novel they read during the purgatory of the pandemic, alluding to a dimensional ideation of departure – “the permission to imagine leaving.”

Mark Templeton is a Canadian media artist and the founder of Graphical, an audiovisual label dedicated to publishing his own musical and image-based experiments. Mark’s audio compositions are constructed from reel-to-reel tape loops and sampled cassettes that are contrasted with contemporary sound techniques. In his published notebooks, he incorporates his own 35mm pictures and found images, focusing on intangible fantasies and realities. During his audiovisual performances he utilizes digital instruments while projecting his own photographs, VHS footage, Super 8 film, and other sampled video. Since 2007, he has released material on various international record labels and photobook publishers, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with other artists. Templeton has performed live and exhibited his work at art galleries, festivals, and alternative spaces through North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, and China.

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