|llllllllllllllllllllll| ----MARCH 27th, 2003 --- MONTREAL clonk & level 4 launch the following transmission: [ bleep ] ] ] ] featuring ! ---> naw - [live] .noise factory, piehead, clonk ---> sarcastic .level 4 productions ---> tobias ., quadrantcrossing.org, clonk ex-Vancouverite on a technoWest mission ---> kilobyte .level 4 productions [did we mention it's techno?] march 27 2003 - cost: $4 . @ club amnesia, 1421 bishop st. montreal. (in association with Fried Ass Productions) http://www.techno.ca/clonk http://www.level4productions.com/ http://www.quadrantcrossing.org ==== words for those of you who like to read! ===da press releasing! BLEEP! [bleep!] signifies a new collaboration between Neil Wiernik's Clonk and Sarcastic's Level 4 productions, a top-notch crew of techno wizards and producers. Neil, aka prolific minimal and experimental producer "naw," has returned to his MontrŽal hometown after spending several years scratching out his Clonk productions in Toronto, where with Greg Smith he pioneered both local and international techno talent. Level 4 has been hard at work in MontrŽal, launching Standard records and assembling a talented crew of techno DJs, VJs and artists who produce regular events and collaborations, including the Level 4 online radio show. Members of Level 4 include Kilobyte, Sarcastic, Freebass, Tolter, Simmetrik and Nter with Mindlab providing the visuals. tobias, a black sheep techno DJ, writer, and experimental audio producer of 10 years from the rainy environs of Vancouver, BC, brings his dub-influenced techno sounds and curating, DJing, and fishing skills to Montreal by submitting his soul to the Clonk empire. ..hot and fresh bios! [naw] - www.noisefactoryrecords.com/naw.htm MontrŽal born Neil Wiernik is a media artist turned electronic music composer who began creating electronic music in 1988. naw is known as one to push the boundaries of his musical form from designing new or manipulating existing sound making devices and software to creative uses of production environments and sound sources. Though his composition and production styles are diverse, naw keeps a central focus throughout all his production: experimentation. Neil has released music under his given name and under the pseudonym of naw, on various national and international record labels Noise Factory and Piehead. naw has performed extensively along side a variety of national and international artists including sutekh, kit clayton, stewart walker, unit, phoenicia, jake mandell, tikiman and scion, monolake, rechnezentrum, apparat, kero, todd sines, deadbeat, algorithm, tomas jirku, mitchell akiyama, jetone, polmo popo, david kristian, i8u, andrew duke and martin tetreault. [sarcastic] - http://www.level4productions.com The evil genius behind Montreal-based underground techno pantheon Level 4 Productions, this amorphous being has contributed to the subculture's cabalistic causes on many levels for the past decade. Possessed since childhood with a needling drive to splice together discrete musical compositions, first with cassette decks, microphones, CD players or 8-tracks, it was only a matter of time before an unwitting companion introduced Sarcastic to his destiny: the Technics 1200. His love for the chugging repetitive nature of techno, acid house and hardcore genres remains informed by an early appreciation for hip-hop, stoner rock, jazz and psychedelia of all sorts. Equally at home behind two or three decks, Sarcastic has performed at virtually all local clubs; he's conquered the main room of Sona, Montreal's longest standing afterhours venue, annihilated the main stage at Arrival, the city's largest outdoor festival, and, with the Level 4 Productions famiglia, has DJed and collaborated with numerous local promotion companies, including Nice Productions, Morphee, Renegade Legion, Alien Crew, Clonk, Kirk6, Aria, 514, etc., and performed coast-to-coast across the country. Describing his own style as "tek", Sarcastic's interests range from the dark looping industrial techno of label cohorts Kidstatik aka the Underground Shadow, the funky tek-house of Simmetrik aka Simon G., to his own tongue-in-cheek ghetto-tek productions based largely on recognizable samples from such disparate sources as movies, rap or funk. Residencies at Jai bar, Blue dog, Jingxi or Amnesia have seen Sarcastic spinning anything from pure tek, minimal and experimental techno to acid and deep house; some even surmise that Sarcastic plays hip-hop, downtempo and DnB under alternate guises. It's downright impossible to pin down the numinous wiles of the Sarcasm. -tek@level4productions.com [kilobyte] - http://www.level4productions.com Kilobyte joined the underground laboratories of Level 4 Productions in the cold winter of 2001. Inspired by a varied musical background including a love of heavy metal, his propensity for sheer volume and cryptic compositions inevitably drew him towards slamming hard electronic music. As the percussive element in a thrash/speed band he eventually began exploring techno through the medium of turntables in 1998. Acidified bass-lines and twisted psychedelic mid-range pulsations slide effortlessly through his hard progressive tek sets. Kilobyte has been busy consolidating his cabalistic powers with fellow technical decknician Freebass, as they wage bloody war on the Musical Establishment with subversive sequenced sound patterns. [tobias] - http://www.shrumtribe.com | http://www.quadrantcrossing.org tobias c. van Veen is a sound and net artist, DJ, and writer. He has been enmeshed with musikal resistance culture since 1993. >> writer residencies: immediatism columnist for e|i [http://www.ei-mag.com], Literature Editor for Capital [http://www.capitalmag.com], Panarticon columnist @ Discorder [http://www.citr.ca/discorder], & a resident critic for Incursion.org, Dustedmagazine.com & Stylusmagazine.com. >>sonic net.art can be found on rhizome.org, 120seconds.com, thisistheonlyart.com + ctheory.com. /Organised: audio curation of the 2002 Video-In Signal & Noise Festival, director of the 2001 Refrains: Music Politics Aesthetics UBC conference [http://www.shrumtribe.com/refrains], curated the 'glitch &granular' evening of the 2002 New Forms Festival[http://www.newformsfestival.com], & produced over two dozen events featuring international techno and experimental electronic talent as Direktor of the project & Collective [http://www.shrumtribe.com]; tobias is co-founder of [http://www.technowest.org] || ::performing across the globe as an experimental, slightly off-balance 3-deck techno DJ for the past 10 years - gig sampler: Sutekh's Static in SF, Betalounge.com, mix_sessions [SAT] & intr_version august 2002 showcase :: [residencies]: techno.ca/targetcircuitry w/ ben nevile, 3 radio shows on CiTR 101.9FM '97-2002, nights at The Sugar Refinery & Fiction Vancouver || & I'm currently in the Department of Communications at McGill University writing a thesis on the politics of sound and trying to eat all the different types of cheese MontrŽal has to offer. -tobias@rhizome.org [clonk] - http://www.techno.ca/clonk Clonk is a collective of individuals dedicated to promoting bleeding edge electronic art in detailed temporary environments with an emphasis on exposing new and unknown aural and visual talent to the electronic arts communities of Toronto and more recently Montreal. Clonk was founded in the early winter months of 2000 by Neil Wiernik and Greg Smith. Clonk has progressed from smaller monthly clubs nights that focused on the local flavor of electronic music and video artists of Southern Ontario to larger scaled one-off events. These larger events have been focused on bringing together local artists with more well known European and American artists on the same stage. In the past Clonk has showcased upstart music producers, DJs, record labels and emerging visual artists all working in the electronic realms. Our foremost goal is to showcase off-the-wall and raw genres of music and visual electronic arts-- not just those that are currently en vogue. Recently Clonk hosted a series of artists who influenced Greg and Neil over the past several years and provided the inspiration for Clonk. This ongoing series has included experimental German, American and Canadian minimal techno artists such as Rechenzentrum, Monolake, Joshua Kit Clayton, Tikiman with Scion, Sutekh, Kero, Todd Sines, and Apparat. Clonk has hosted Canadians Deadbeat, Crackhaus, Mike Shannon, Granny Ark, Tinkertoy, Algorithm, Dick Richards, tobias and Tomas Jirku. [Level 4 Productions] - http://www.level4productions.com Born in the mind of DJ Sarcastic many years ago, Level 4 has provided an outlet and a second family for some of Montreal's top underground electronica talents through various projects, including event organization and promotion, music publishing, radio show broadcasting, graphic design and live performance. Currently counting among its members nine DJs, many of whom also produce music and promote, and a VJ, the collective represents the voice of the urban subculture, abiding by such tried, tested and true tenets as "if the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise"; "one love"; or "we're all gonna die!" Level 4's record label Standard brought Kidstatik's productions to the world with the release of Contra Diction, their Tekstyle weekly proved that hard techno could thrive outside of the after-hours milieu, and their continuing growth shows all of us the beauty of living off-the-beaten path, as it were. Hard techno DJs Kilobyte, Freebass, Toltech and Nter form the core of the roster, variety can be found in the deeper, more minimal styles of Module M (currently based in Montpelier, France), the broad diversity of founder Sarcastic, the funky dance-floor appeal of Simmetrik aka Simon G, or the gritty east-coast hip hop of the mystical DJ Karl Marx. Mindlab exhibits dazzling, sometimes humorous, sultry or shocking visuals at numerous clubs, events and afterhours in Montreal or Quebec City on a regular basis. Level 4's willingness to work with other promotion companies has led to collaborations with Nice Productions, Kirk 6, Morphee, Submission, Millenium Productions, Clonk, Aria, Alien Crew and many more, producing club events at Jingxi, Blue Dog, Tokyo, Amnesia, Jai Bar or Kokino's, to name a few, and in a host of local loft and studio spaces. "Behold! Human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light... here they have been from their childhood" (Socrates, the Allegory of the Cave).