Friday, February 22, 2019
Performance 8pm / Doors 7pm
What: Michele Mercure, champion of kosmiche minimalist synth sampling and trance, returns to the stage after 30 years as part of Roulette’s annual Mixology Festival.
When: Friday, February 22, 2019
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $18 presale, $25 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: https://roulette.org/event/mixology-festival-2019-michele-mercure/
Brooklyn, NY – Roulette, with RVNG Intl. and Freedom To Spend, is proud to present minimal synthesist and experimental composer Michele Mercure‘s long-overdue New York City debut. Following the 2017 reissue of her 1986 album, Eye Chant, Mercure celebrates the release of Beside Herself, a collection of her self-produced and distributed cassettes from 1983 and 1990 now reissued on Freedom to Spend. The album charts Mercure’s early experiments with sampling and synthesis, drawing influences from kosmiche and experimental German musician Conrad Schnitzler, and restores the canon of the composer’s arresting dream-music by revisiting her breakthrough material. For the first time in 30 years, Mercure will perform live.
Mercure will share the evening with Shadowlust co-founder Lili Schulder, celebrating the release of her debut album under the alias 51717.
Mixology Festival 2019: Signaling – highlighting artists whose work in sound and media contains embedded truths, both heartening and startling. Active for over 25 years, Roulette’s Mixology Festival celebrates new and unusual uses of technology in music and the media arts. Primarily a snapshot of current activity, the festival strives to reflect both the history and trends of innovation that impact the Zeitgeist. Curated by David Weinstein.
Michele Mercure’s artistic path never ran through creative meccas New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles. Raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, and then moving to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in her twenties, Mercure was already an adept musician when she encountered a local and lively theater scene and was asked to score an unorthodox performance of Waiting for Godot. The experience was pivotal in marrying music and image for Mercure, and so she began making music for film, television, dance, and theater. It wasn’t until a long sojourn in Eindhoven, however, that she became transfixed by electronic music (ala Conrad Schnitzler, whom she would correspond with for years) that would inform her music to come. Through her self-released cassettes, Mercure established her music among like-minded artists abroad. Circulated through tape-trading networks assisted by insightful reviews in Eurock, a seminal music magazine covering progressive rock and electronic music scenes, these album-length releases included Rogue and Mint (1983), A Cast of Shadows (1984), Dreams Without Dreamers (1985), and Dreamplay (1990). Though unvarnished in fidelity (and now scarcely seen), these tapes showcased Mercure’s transportive aptitude within and beyond the limited sound recording medium.