Mopcut aims at minimalism or maximalism, depending. Improvisation, noise, and electronic beats work well as backgrounds… With its lo-fi electronics, the album Accelerates Frames of Reference is mostly zany and playful, but with darker, visceral explorations such as “Hail Shaft.”A tightly disciplined yet exuberant set of performances. (WIRE, 2018)
The 25 tracks of JITTER (opal tapes, 2021) are a condensation of EAI’s performative history, with all silence ejected. Space and time is filled with their hyper kinetic approach leaving little respite for any listener. It’s as repulsive as it is fascinating. As exhausting as it genuinely would be to live a 24 hour life, be that blue bottle or snare skin. (Opal tapes, 2021)
Mopcut finds three distinguished members of the experimental and improvisational scenes coming together to unleash a work of true chaos. Lukas König leads this hyper-rhythmic assault from behind the drumkit. He is joined by guitarist extraordinaire and Fire! Orchestra member Julien Desprez, who arrives with both maniacal renditions of instrument exploration and minimalistic sound scape craftsmanship. Rounding up this magnificent company is vocalist/cellist Audrey Chen, who leaves behind the cello and instead dives into a no-holds-barred investigation of the human voice and its capabilities.
What defines Mopcut is the tendency to rapidly change perspective. Introducing their debut record Accelerated Frames of Reference with the seven-minute long opus “Fictitious Forces,” it is glorious to behold how they are able to switch from frantic, free-jazz-inspired outbursts to minimal, psych-induced overtures. For Mopcut, the duality of maximalism and minimalism has a common point of origin, and that is exactly what they explore. All three members embrace this schism and deliver both energetic explosions filled with extreme noise and complex progressions, but also tribalistic introspection with a dose of spirituality. König, Desprez, and Chen are able to produce a Janus-like record, one that fully embraces its bifurcations.
(Invisible Oranges, 2019)
Mopcut
Audrey Chen: voice, electronics
Julien Desprez: electric guitar
Lukas König: drums, synthesizers
Audrey Chen (USA)
Recent projects, aside from performing solo, include her long running voices duo with London based artist, Phil Minton, and duos with NYC abstract turntablist, Maria Chavez, French guitarist, Jean-Yves Evrard, BEAM SPLITTER, the “romantic noise duo” AFTERBURNER with Doron Sadja (electronics/light projections), with modular synth player, Richard Scott, with American percussionist, Flandrew Fleisenberg and a collaborative project with German conceptual artist, John Bock.
Julien Desprez (FRANCE)
Evolving between sound art, performance and contemporary improvisational music, Desprez’s work today is centered around all the questions that exist within a stage space, through body, space, sight, and light, but where the sound remains the central pillar. He played with Charlie Haden, Mats Gustafson, Jeanne Added, Edward Perraud, Thomas Depourquery, François Jeanneau, Louis Sclavis, Stephane Payen, Guillaume Orti, Benoit Delbecq, Tortoise, Han Bennink, Hubert Dupont, Rob Mazurek, JeffParker, Frank Vaillant, Gilles Coronado, Marc Duckte and many more.
Lukas König (AUSTRIA)
Born in St.Pölten, König played with a variety of international artists such as Reggie Washington, Briggan Krauss, Malcolm Braff, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, David Murray, Wolfgang Mitterer, Klangforum Wien, Jazzwerkstatt Wien, Maja Osojnik, Wolfgang Puschnig, Shahzad Ismaily and many more. Aside performing with bands like Kompost3, 5K HD and other projects based in Vienna, he has developed a solo concept, KORNBERG, which combines live-drums, synthesizers and a rapping voice simultaneously played and creates a live performance between Hiphop and Noise.
