Text by Neshy Denton
Live music is often, and now rather indefinitely, associated with the experience of seeing instruments handled by a musician in the presence of our proximity. Watching the precision of this craft in person invites the spectator to join in the artistry by witnessing the translation of noise into sound. But what happens when a live performance isn’t about experiencing instruments in the traditional sense?
We could brave the norm and question the significance of what the traditional consumption of music looks like. We visit a venue to watch a musician perform live; we visit a club to adjust to a DJ’s trustworthy selection for the night. It’s what we correlate to general customs because, as restless beings, we electrified the acoustic; we digitally amplified the expansion of sound. So, it’s in our human nature to further understand the producer’s backdrop and attend their moment of handy concoction on stage.
The first edition of the InConcert. series, launched by npm label at London’s EartH Theatre, has set out to challenge this very notion in the rare form of musique concrète. Instead of just hearing the final product, Alex Piers, founder of npm label, wants to find purity that emerges from watching a sound artist manipulate sound in real-time and making intuitive conclusions that shape the digital experience in its most natural form to explore its – somewhat contradictory – physicality. In other terms, this series highlights the raw genesis of electronic sound.
Imagine watching an artist paint rather than simply admiring the finished canvas; this concept isn’t just about hearing music. It’s reaching a way to almost understand the music’s resonance while sitting in a communal space and being part of an atmosphere that blurs the lines between a concert and an art installation.
So here we take electronic music, typically consumed in the dim glow of clubs and in a mere conscious state of sobriety—or sometimes, on rare occasions, through the isolation of headphones—and place it in a rather fluxus environment. One where the need for spatial adaptation encourages deep listening and reimagines the appreciation of downtempo, ambient, and techno to be heard and consciously experienced in its process.
This first edition, released on May 3, will portray the search for this new experience by removing the restrictive audience target and encouraging everyone to join this space to feel connected to the artist and each other.
Emotional resonance is often found in the experience of listening to music on any sonic gadget. But the ignition sparked by presential soundwaves, their depth, and their physical presence creates something entirely different. There’s something uniquely captivating about sitting in a room, completely silent, and just watching an artist perform, says Alex Piers. Three artists will be doing the live honours: DEFTR, Jin Synth, and Tobias, each bringing their sonic philosophy to the space.
Berlin-based duo DEFTR, formed by Patrick Gröser and Jan Wagner, offer an immersive experience that fuses the driving energy of techno with the serene atmospheres of ambient music. Their performances swim with a certain free will via instantaneous layering, embracing the fluid and hypnotic approach that allows improvisation to shape the sound. They have a knack for weaving haunting melancholia into their music that lingers between minimal textures with leftfield techno, occasional breakbeat, liquid and an underwater-like delicacy of their ambient layers.
Jin Synth, a sound artist and DJ from London, also explores diverse textures within ambient music. By experimenting with synthesisers and modular setups, she also creates an array of microphones to capture the unique frequency of the atmosphere. She embodies the saying, A true artist is not limited by their tools, by building her instruments and transforming the turntable into a tool of pure expression. Abiding in the ethereal, otherworldly experimental world, she conveys the meditative experience the series offers to their audience.
Tobias Freund will be the last to perform. Not only will we be pulling him out of the studio but also out of Berghain and Berlin’s techno and experimental scene to explore the pioneering dimension of his custom-built instruments and modular setups. His work explores the boundaries of techno and challenges traditional sound structures by prioritising depth in his intention rather than the quantity of his appliances. Rich in immersion and evocative in mood, his performances can surpass the distance between the audience and the artist – a seemingly InConcert tagline for the rest of its events.
InConcert. runs on May 3, 2025, at EartH Theatre in London. Tickets can be found here.
