The indoor auditorium of Passage 35 at Mohamed Mahmoud Museum was a perfect platform to dissect everyday noise and create a work of art out of it. Two nights of live electronic music performances, entitled “100Copies Music Worx, were organized recently to promote the latest releases of Egypt’s only electronic music label 100Copies.
“I imagined the event in this place as it provokes a new relation between music and the recipient, said Mahmoud Refaat, organizer of the event and founder of the label. “It encourages a directly focused and deferential way of listening, he continues.
In a well-packed hall, multimedia artist Ahmed Bassyouni opened the first night with two performances: “Copia and “The Verbal is Kholi. Both pieces explored the impact of sound in relation to the visuals.
Tension was a palpable theme. Eloquently performing with his guitar, sampler and laptop, Maurice Louca’s performance was highly engaging, drawing loud applause from the audience.
Casual listeners might recognize Louca’s music from the soundtrack of independent film “Kahira. A member and co-founder of the band Bikya, Louca has also produced some tracks for different CDs, composed soundtracks and played his own pieces in solo performances.
Costumed especially for the event, Louca took Passage 35’s auditorium as an inspiration for a minimal, eary and abstract piece.
Visual and graffiti artist Kareem Lotfy explains his fascination with sound art.
“A 2D image is still static and limited; I want to experiment with something that reacts physically with the body and happens in a time line rather than a paused moment.
“We are a generation that grew up and created its perceptions, fantasies from the media. Even if it is created to be mass produced, everyone adapts it to a personal encounter, said Lotfy.
From that approach, he created one stimulating piece for the event – a played-back track of blending sounds of violence, famous pop culture sound-bites, fluctuating emotions, personal fantasies and daily domestic frictions.
“Dirty Zida is Lotfy’s first album that was launched at the concert. The CD is a mix of tracks that range from abstract soundcapes to electronic synthesized sound merged with narrative voices and folk music.
At a time when nearly every band in Egypt is heavily expounding on various forms of musical fusion, Lotfy asserts this LP avoids easy categorization. “In a fusion you can still find the barriers between different genres, it is not digested yet, he explained.
“Here, it’s a throw-up of varies sounds, where the separation line has disappeared.
Inspired by mass media, street art and everyday surroundings, Lotfy is in continuous search for iconic cultural elements that are usually overlooked.
Inspired for example by a taxi driver listening to Om Kolthoum via a tattered cassette tape, Lotfey created a similar piece recreating the sound. Here the canon is neither deconstructed nor destroyed but readapted to fit its contemporary reality.
“Each performance is different, we are not a band that plays its set of songs, said Emma Hendrix of the Canadian duo Coin Gutter. Hendrix, who is currently touring the Middle East without her partner, improvised solely using samples from her band’s back catalogue.
Hendrix piece invokes a different listening experience. A rythematic pattern is repeated along the piece that later becomes secondary as a new layer is built on. The ambient sound of the piece peaks with voices from a walky-talky of a famous air fiasco for Alaska Airlines.
Kareem Kenawy’s cuts were more melodic and less abstract. The youngest performer of the bunch had the audience nodding their head along the beat as he experimented with different digitalic acoustics and field recordings.
Magdi Mostafa, on the other hand, unleashed the “Sound Element – a mixture between different duals and layers of sound and image.
According to Mostafa, there are certain sound blocks inside any chaotic sound or image – a muffed voice or an unclear rhythm that causes a sound to relate to a specific image.
By using a keyboard, laptop, screen projector and a sound mixer, Mostafa created a three dimensional audio-visual experience inside the space. For him, the audio-visual experience is comprised of a set of information.
“You isolate certain info, to stress on another that is minimal but has a greater impact, explains Mostafa. For that, Mostafa’s “sound element swung between tangibility, clarity and vagueness.
Optimistically, “100Copies Music Worx was an extension of a movement already in motion. Even with diversified reactions of appreciation and disability to decode or accurately comprehend these sounds, there was an agreement that it was a hypnotic, meditative or stimulating experience.
“When I first started the label, it was a small circle but I was sure that starting a classical scenario would open up for a larger scene, explains Refaat. In fact, the young musicians stated that what signifies the label is that its ability to create a space for creative artistry and experimentation, rather than an institutionalized and conservative framework.
For 100Copies latest and future releases, please check out www.100copies.com.
