Lost Signals Weave a Trance

Wild overtones, ancient pulses, Numedal slåttar. And you, enveloped by sound.

Some instruments you feel in your body. The Norwegian jaw harp and the Greco-Roman aulos are small instruments with tremendous sonic power. One vibrates through mouth, skull and throat. The other is driven by breath, reed and pressure. In the hands of Thov Wetterhus, Lukas De Clerck and Marcin Pietruszewski, they are treated not as museum objects, but as living sound technologies.

The concert unfolds in three parts:

Wetterhus + De Clerck

First, aulos and jaw harp meet in a raw acoustic field of tension. De Clerck's telescopic aulos creates an unstable, droning soundworld. Wetterhus responds with metallic resonance, mouth-sound and rhythmic drive, while beating frequencies emerge between the instruments.

Wetterhus solo

Wetterhus continues solo, opening the jaw harp with electronic effects. Through loops, delay and reverb, the folk dance tradition becomes a pulsating rhythmic engine. Layers of repetition, echo and resonance grow into something trance-like.

Oto Aulos

De Clerck and Pietruszewski close the evening with Oto Aulos, a performance in which aulos and computer meet. As the sound unfolds around the audience, the instrument is heard anew — through machine, room and the pressure of the reed.

Programme

19.00 Thov Wetterhus & Lukas De Clerck
19.30 Thov Wetterhus solo
20.15 Oto Aulos, with Lukas De Clerck and Marcin Pietruszewski

Want to know more?

The concert is produced in collaboration with Riksscenen and nyMusikk, a partnership that mirrors the music itself: folk music, contemporary music and experimental sound sharing the same room.
The aulos was a central wind instrument in ancient Greece, typically played as two pipes simultaneously. Lukas De Clerck has built his own version, The Telescopic Aulos of Atlas, based on a copy held at the Louvre in Paris.
The jaw harp is one of Norway's oldest folk instruments. Thov Wetterhus has won the Landskappleiken a record number of times, but also takes the instrument into new contexts, from the traditional kappleik stage to clubs and festivals.
Marcin Pietruszewski moves as researcher, composer and live electronics performer between art spaces, festivals and Berlin's experimental club scene. He too works with an instrument from the past — this time a digital one: nUPIC builds on Iannis Xenakis' UPIC from 1977, in which sound could be drawn directly on a screen.