BEYOND / BEHIND

BL!NDMAN [hybrid] is the newest formation of BL!NDMAN: Eric Sleichim gathers 3 versatile musicians around him for a project related quartet.
For this second edition of BL!NDMAN [hybrid] Sleichim will make a performance inspired by the Russian Futurism, together with vocal ‘jane-of-all-trades’ Claron McFadden, the adventurous and virtuoso cello player Jörg Brinkmann and composer, tuba player ànd turntable wizard Matthew Wright.

In contrast to the Italian Futurism, the Russian pendant was rather focused on literature rather than on visual arts. Taking a language away from grammatical rules to come to pure mater. The word becomes an object as such, that exists solely of its sound, freed of its conceptual meaning.

Text thus becomes very important. We deal with it in all possible ways: sung, recited, shouted, projected and manipulated. Among the quoted Futurist writers are Mayakovski, Kamenski, Pasternak…

BL!NDMAN [hybrid] will be – although mainly improvising – musically inspired by Futurist composers such as Lourié, Gnesin, Goedicke and composers who were influenced by Futurism, for instance Stravinsky, Antheil, Prokofiev …

Next to the voice, machines stand in the central focus. The fascination for mechanics, movement and speed manifests in the use of Theremins, speakers as auto-generating sound objects, turntables and pure sinus signals. The deep gurgle sounds of noisemachines (cfr. intonarumori of the Italian Futurist Russolo) are created by bass tuba and tubax (double bass saxophone).