zoviet-france: -
For over 40 years the Newcastle, UK based music group :zovietfrance: has tested and explored the edges of known music both in recording and performance. Their approach to composition defies adequate description: its form is instrumental non- song based and derived from an eclectic mix of electronic and acoustic instruments, infused with field recordings. Though wilfully obscure and underground their music has an international audience. They have released over 20 albums and have featured in the catalogues of Mute Records (UK), Staalplaat (the Netherlands), Soleilmoon Recordings (USA), alt.vinyl (UK), and their own Charrm label. Over recent years they have worked extensively with contemporary dance companies and have been commissioned to compose soundtracks for new works by Karas (Japan), Zero Visibility Corp (Norway), Nye Carte Blanche Danseteater (Norway), balletLORENT (UK), and for award winning productions by Random Dance Company (UK). :zovietfrance: produce a weekly net radio programme and podcast, A Duck in a Tree, which is transmitted by Resonance FM in London, Colaboradio in Berlin and CJMP in British Columbia, and which they describe as a "continuous mix of some of the best genre-refusing, zero BPM and maximinalist recordings that have grabbed their attention.”
Zoviet France are a music group from Newcastle upon Tyne in north east England. While often dissonant and made of industrial textures, their music also falls into the ambient music category. Formed in 1980, and remaining largely anonymous,[1] the group has had a number of members; presently it consists of co-founder Ben Ponton and Mark Warren. Former members included Neil Ramshaw, Peter Jensen, Robin Storey (who now records as Rapoon), Lisa Hale, Paolo Di Paolo, Mark Spybey (who now records as Dead Voices on Air) and Andy Eardley. In 2005 Storey, Spybey and Eardley formed a new group, Reformed Faction.
The band participated in the early-eighties underground tape scene. The packaging of their releases was often unconventional, involving materials such as hessian, tar paper and aluminium foil.[2]
Zoviet France also provided the music for the 2015 movie Savageland, a mockumentary that depicts the aftermath of a massacre on a US-Mexico border town that leaves every citizen dead except for an amateur photographer who is accused of committing it.
Jon Davies (b. 1988) is a musician based in Liverpool, born in Hong Kong and raised in Croydon, producing work under the name of Kepla. Since 2016 he has produced a number of records, including collaborative records with DeForrest Brown, Jr. aka Speaker Music, and experimental writer Nathan Jones. His last full length was a debut solo record titled Within The Gaze, A Shadhavar released by Alien Jams in 2019, described "as a thoroughly idiosyncratic journey into the depths of an alien psyche." The Album In Furnace was released on Chinabot in 2023.
His compositional techniques are based on field recording and collaging, granular resampling and generative composition, and most recently he has incorporated improvisations on acoustic instruments and synthesis.
"The mournful echoe of the instrument called the Suona, recently banned from funeral rites in rural China, when heard in the repurposed religious space of In Furnace, makes one of Kepla's most ditinctive and moving releases so far." – The Wire Magazine
https://alienjams.bandcamp.com/album/within-the-gaze-a-shadhavar