The extent to which JENNGREEN encapsulates the high and low energies of dance and ambient is evinced no better than through her numerous sets online and live throughout the Midwest. Expressing a deep and relentless curiosity towards all forms of underground music, Jenn brings a vibrancy and enthusiasm to her work that radiates towards dancers on the floor and resonates in the sonic afterlife of the cloud. Born in Detroit and having lived in Chicago for years, she is a well known DJ and promoter in Seattle and Portland. Jenn has handcrafted mixes for NTS, KEXP, Worldwide FM, Particle FM, Balamii, RPU Amsterdam and Francesco Piunti’s ambient Deep Breakfast Series in Italy.
JENNGREEN y’all. Her set opens the atrium on Saturday night alongside the hallucinant visuals of ephemeral objects
See you tomorrow for Day 1 of TRANSFORM!
The musical union of Tsimka and Michael Red on Day 2 of TRANSFORM follows their bespoke performance at Active/Passive this past summer. Michael creates and reveals music & atmospheres with the natural sounds recorded by Tsimka from her ƛaʔuuqʷiʔatḥ home territory, and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh territory (where she lived recently for 2 years). Breaking ice as light percussive rhythm, bull kelp head explosions becoming kick drum patterns.. a Squamish valley wolf, a large cat in the dark.. Cixwatsac (Frank Island frogs), Swainson’s Thrush, other birds.. a little creek at Hiłwinʔis, ocean, rain and mist.
Tsimka sings and speaks and sometimes plays a drum. Most lyrics are in Tsimka’s heritage language Tla-o-qui-aht ƛaʔuuqʷiʔatḥ. Her themes deal with love, cleansing, healing, liberation through imagining and more.
Tsimka’s voice is also used as an instrument through live fx and embedded in Michael’s pre-made production. Words and tones and expressions are shaped and woven into all layers of the sonic fabric, from deeply embedded to very visible.
This Saturday, KW Studio warms as industrial dynamics spliced with obscure phrases ensnare our senses. Cultivating anarchic chaos — part Goo, part Haptic Feedback — will guide us into the night. If they aren't serving up the devil's cocktails, dos pendejxs will lead with slow and sleazy beats for sinful scenarios.
Sebastien, also known as SUBDIDI, is a multi-disciplinary artist currently residing in Vancouver as a DJ, VJ and tattoo artist. Sub is adding his experiences as a Black artist to the BIPOC Canadian underground music and art scene by implementing sounds and ideas originating from Black creatives of the past.
Catch Subdidi shaping visuals alongside Tsimka and Michael this weekend. Check out some of his mixes in the link above.
Lil Smudge’s singular sound is a sustained effort to heal with every honest word over wavey beat. This 2-spirit Indigenous femmece and producer is from the Vuntut G’witchin Nation and Kawacatoose Nation of Treaty 4. They grew up in the streets of the DTES estranged from their family for a number of years during their youth, and their music represents the journey to the person they’ve become today.
Canadian bowed guitarist and multi-instrumentalist C. Diab creates soundscapes that evoke the spectacular wilderness of his childhood home in northern Vancouver Island. Emulating classical motifs with acoustic vibrato, transmitting ambient textures with processing and distortion, lush narratives pervade Diab’s work.
Incorporating folk overtones and tape manipulations, The Wire calls it "ambient music in the best sense - music for living, which can be both non-invasive and immersive…epic…totally fresh." Diab's forthcoming LP 'Imerro' (Tonal Union) is perhaps his most ambitious yet, exploring new sonic realms and instrumentation.
Check out the music video for Lunar Barge from C. Diab’s forthcoming album Inerro, on UK-based Tonal Union imprint. Find more in the link above.
The producer and DJ Night Jogger lifts off from his home base in Vancouver, BC with nothing less than a sonic boom. As a DJ, Night Jogger has become a featured node within the manifold of techno-oriented parties in the coastal city, performing within spaces such as Paradise, Dolly, Sprinkler Room, and Village Studios (amongst many other events such as Zap, Drill, and Normiecorp, to name a few). Favouring systems of high-velocity jet propulsion, Night Jogger’s productions reanimate the circle into a cube through direct fuel injection (formula 909).
This year at TRANSFORM will mark Night Jogger’s live debut in the KW atrium.
Evidence Doll’s Arabic identity, dance background, and hardcore-inspired music project spearhead their interest in weaving various musical perspectives together through the love of drum patterns and rhythm.
At an average of 175bpm, their textural dance sets encourage cathartic, sexy, and sweaty energetic release for the girlies & enbies. Grabbing a mic halfway through their set, you'll find them yelling a handful of original songs.
Scree Running is the electronic music alias of Matthew [mark] Howells. Whether through their own inventions, producing, or performing with the Resonance Collective in Victoria, Scree Running’s idiosyncratic dance style sets a high energy mark for everyone in the room.
After a whirlwind stint of exclusively playing and singing in bands with hyphenate genres, they emerged into adulthood with a computer full of esoteric DSP plugins, a literature degree, a failed year in Montreal, and a desire to market these versatile ingredients in the only way that makes sense: by entering into the profitable world of producing, DJing, and performing experimental electronic music.
Scree Running will kick off the weekend in KW Studio below on December 8. Listen to an all-original live set here:
https://soundcloud.com/screerunning/all-originals-mix-live-at-lucky-bar-101223
Pesewa is the musical project of Jeffrey Ellom, a settler of Ewe, Polish and Irish heritage who resides on unceded Lekwungen territories. His afrofuturist sound inspires movement and contemplation in turn, integrating indigenous Ghanaian instruments and musical forms with electronic drums and synthesized ambience. As a student of his musical inheritance, Pesewa aims to contribute to the artistic legacies of the Ewe people.
Pesewa will be our first live set on Saturday, emerging from PuBu’s DJ set with a composite of synthetic rhythms and natural sounds. Check out a clip of his performance at Red Gate and listen to more in our link above.
Looting has been producing, DJing, and hosting events in BC for over a decade. Consistently pushing underground and emerging artists and styles while creating music and DJ sets that blend jungle, modernist and classic hardcore, uk funky, techno, experimental and banging club trax, dembow, reggaeton, hard drum, footwork and everything in between.
Looting has held a residency at Bloom nightclub, performed at Shambhala in 2019 and more recently at Bass Coast this past summer. Equal parts bliss to entropy, they will seal our weekend in the studios below as Zygote does the same above.
All ambient has a lustre, particularly when golden cloaks and sonic cues from our beloved consoles hover on the periphery. The Golden Age of Wrestling is the glambient side project of Vancouver-based DIY musician Jeff Cancade (Devours). Brash, machiavellian, and yet oddly emotional, this brooding alpha heel combines elements of ambient music, Hollywood soundtracks, chamber singing, and the sounds of classic Nintendo games to create moody, evocative scores for sleepless city nights.
Preface our closing night via TGAOW’s Bandcamp and prep for a brilliant performance.
We are thrilled to share our first TRANSFORM VJ with you this season. ephemeral objects is a Vancouver-based generative artist and VJ/DJ known for her vibrant and abstract style.
Her style is a high-energy fusion of colour and motion, creating lush visual experiences. Alongside Seattle DJ Jenn Green, ephemeral objects will shape the space with a fantastical pallet of hyperreal and dynamic processes.
Anju Singh is many things. For TRANSFORM, she is all of them — showcasing her affinity for multi-instrumental, media, and video experiences in its musical and non-musical magnificence. Presenting new work in quadrophonic, Singh will confront listeners with the conceptual and textured contrast that, while typical of her work, will rend our atrium space to construct a new one.
DJ Zygote’s material practice engages with ancient and colonial histories and practices from Southeast Asia and around the Pacific. Working with sculpture, found objects, digital media and plant life, his explorations of language, dreams, spirits, familial stories, ethnographic archives and speculative narratives propose new ways of experiencing the supernatural realm and the material universe.
Zygote will bring our dynamic weekend to a close with ample highs and tight rhythms to send us out into the very early morning.
New Forms Media Society has maintained a handful of websites over the years to curate future and past performances, installations, and experiences at our festival. In spring 2023, we decided to overhaul our sites and centralize. We were very lucky to have UX designer Gabriela Roestandy lend her expertise in the process.
Gabriela carried out extensive user research, connecting with various community members to assess our websites for their functionality and aesthetics. Through interviews, surveys and some competitor analysis, she created a new platform using Cargo — which we highly recommend for non-profits — that spoke to our future needs as an organization, while maintaining that fluid and form-focused style we all love.
Head over to newforms.ca and check out our new site!
New Forms GIF by Christian Petersen
New Forms Presents: Nicolas Sassoon & False Witness
