duo pantoMorf play electronic free impro. That is, we perform improvised electronic music as musicians, NOT looking like we check our email on stage. Our main rule is: if we take our hands away, the instruments go quiet. We use no fancy sensors or esoteric gestural controllers, but very basic stuff that we know well how to play. But we develop new ways of playing them, and - most important - new ways of mapping them to sound, using carefully designed sound engines that allows fingertip control, while retaining a vast sonic potential. Every sound relates to and comes directly from a physical gesture by the player, which makes a huge difference for the audience. There are no ongoing pre-programmed processes, no overdubs, and everything is free improvisation. The main question is: How can we explore and control complex electronic sound spaces in improvisation, retaining the millisecond interaction that is taken for granted in acoustic improvisation, but has somehow got lost in electronic music?
duo pantoMorf have performed in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Canada and USA so far. We recently completed a tour of the North American West Coast, playing in academic concert halls, art-loft noise clubs, pirate radio stations and acoustic impro gatherings. In Swedish national radio our new album was presented as jazz. It is nice to fit in all those contexts! Live electronics, academic electro-acoustic, noise, abstract electronica, (digital) circuit-bending, jazz or plain impro - does it matter?
New tours are planned for Portugal (Oct 2009) and USA (March 2010).
All our recordings are live free improvisations, made without overdubs. Each musician can be heard from one side of the stereo image, exactly as we are seated when we play.
This duo is the artistic part of a research project about new performance instruments and mappings for improvised sound synthesis.
