It's been a minute, but Mouthfeel is back for a bumper festive edition, with its trademark combination of experimental music, performance and pointless culinary gimmickry.
Fiesta En El Vacio // Ashtray Navigations // Kar Pouzi — The Fox & Newt, Leeds — Sunday 14th December
FIESTA EN EL VACIO
Latin tinged bedroom pop, staccato keyboards and flamenco warmth via France/Argentina (Teenage Menopause recs)
ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS
Explorers of the outer reaches….raga guitar, psychedelic krautrock, experimental electronics (VHF recs)
KAR POUZI
Relentless sax/electronics pummelling
FULFORDGATE CLUB @UTTERLYFUZZLED YORK, YO10 4HN SEE TICKETS, £10 OTD
DOORS 6.00PM ADV TICKETS PAY AS YOU FEEL
Kar Pouzi
Helen Papaioannou's baritone saxophone & electronics meld into stark, playful and unrelenting performances.
Misery Bacon (Bergen)
Luke Drozd’s found sound, field recordings, objects and electronics audio collaging.
ADRA
Andy Abbott's ever-evolving immersive experimental and ambient music project.
at Nan Moors, 18 Rochdale Rd, Todmorden OL14 7LD
7:30pm - 11pm. £10/£8 (plus booking fee).
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, the world-renowned, award-winning electronic artist, transforms synth-driven soundscapes into immersive, otherworldly experiences. Known for her ability to weave organic textures with futuristic electronic elements, Kaitlyn creates music that feels both ethereal and deeply human. Her work blurs the lines between ambient, experimental, and dance music, capturing the attention of tastemakers and festival-goers alike. With each release, she continues to innovate, crafting sound journeys that challenge convention and connect listeners on a visceral level.
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Kar Pouzi melds baritone saxophone, electronics and voice into heavy, fractured beats, ecstatic drones and incessant repetitions. Kar Pouzi has a fascination with repetitive tasks, sounds, thoughts, or expressions that simultaneously straddle the ridiculous and the dark, the melancholic and the silly and the minimal to the maximal, within and between different pieces. Her new album will be released in November 2025.
Kar Pouzi is a moniker of artist Helen Papaioannou, based in Leeds, UK. Helen’s work draws from her varied experiences across electronic music, performing in bands, improvised musics, and ensemble compositions. Across Helen’s projects, her style gravitates towards minimal sound palettes and evolving patterns, matched with an intensity that spills out into music that is at once stark, visceral, playful, and precarious.
ARSDIY and Wharf Chambers presents a double barrel baritone bonanza of noise witchery, maxi-minimalism and delirious tremors; tasting every dish on the skronky-to-spooky spectrum buffet. A calamitous sax sandwich with an unearthly and electric ectoplasm centre? JOINNNN USSSSSSSSSSS
YEXXEN: deranged yet sensitive punk noise quartet feat members of Guttersnipe and Cuntroaches (Berlin). Drums, lapsteel guitar, baritone sax and bass through a great oscillating mass of electronics, effects and group vocals.
"Incredibly dumb music" - Bulgarian jazz fan
Hawthonn: cursed Miasma-tone deep psyche songs from your friendly neighbourhood coven. Members of Tristwch y Fenywod
Kar Pouzi: Helen Papaioannou’s solo project of baritone sax, electronics & voice: relentless, pulsating precariousness. Members of best ever UK noise rock band Beauty Pageant
From 5pm: Mini - oramics machine workshop with Tom Richards
From 7:45pm - Helen Papaioannou | Cherry Seraph | Artists’ Child
Oram Awards Live: Lou Barnell
Helen Papaioannou & Noriko Okaku perform their AV collaboration ‘That Long Moonless Chase / その長い月のない追跡’
About the biennale: A series of events presenting Polish and international contemporary art oriented at media experiments, interaction, examination of impulses coming from the works, and relations of art and consciousness, which we are going to try to capture through the lens of a relatively young philosophical concept, which has its roots in epistemology.
During the 21st WRO Biennale, 21 premiere artistic realizations will be presented. All are connected to media art, expanding beyond genre boundaries, providing an opportunity for thorough or casual insight into the impulses we experience through art.
Cherry Seraph, Artists’ Child and Helen Papaioannou have all taken inspiration from the ideas and legacy of electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram, celebrating her 100th anniversary in their individual ways using laptop, modular synth and cassette tapes.
All three will be performing their pieces in the Cubby Broccoli Cinema in the National Science and Media Museum, as part of the Make Some Noise! day of sonic activities during British Science Week.
Helen Papaioannou:
Inspired by the format of Daphne Oram’s Electronic Sound Patterns (1962), Helen Papaioannou performs a piece with four tape cassette players, based on Oram’s four categories of sound experiments on the album. While Oram’s album was an example of her artistry with multiple reel-to-reel tape recorders, Helen explores the brief with another form of tape technology in the form of cassette loops and live layering of cassette players. Helen’s performance inhabits an altogether different soundworld, drawing from sounds and patterns influenced by electronic dance music, but with an approach that chimes with Oram’s somewhat stark approach to Electronic Sound Patterns.
Antidote - 3 November 24
Ex-Easter Island Head
quartet composing and performing music for prepared electric guitar, percussion and other instruments. "Free flowing genius" – The Guardian
Kar Pouzi
Helen Papaioannou's baritone saxophone & electronics meld into stark, playful and unrelenting performances.
ADRA
Andy Abbott’s ambient solo project launching his ‘Music for Psychiatric Wards’ album.
https://www.victoriatheatre.co.uk/whats-on/antidote-November
Springing from Osaka, Japan’s cultural centre and historical heart, comes HYPER GAL, a two-piece band consisting of visual artist Koharu Ishida on vocals and noise artist Kurumi Kadoya on drums. The minimalist duo make maximum impact – stripping music down beyond the bare essentials, to create shimmering, no wave pop from blastbeat drums, glittery keyboard loops and ethereal bubblegum vocals – laced with velvet and firecrackers.
Kar Pouzi: Helen Papaioannou’s solo project melds baritone saxophone & electronics into singular, all-consuming textures which move between thunderous, fractured beats, ecstatic drones and minimalistic, evolving repetitions. Heavy, playful, unrelenting.
TOUGH SELL presents a typically eclectic lineup uniting the worlds of experimental music and contemporary performance. Choreographer Lorea Burge investigates the moving body as musical instrument in the UK premiere (!) of her solo dance work 'B Field', while Kar Pouzi (composer and musician Helen Papaioannou) engages in a precarious relationship between human and machine, and performance duo Emergency Chorus explores the simple potency of language and repetition.
Noriko Okaku & Helen Papaioannou perform their audiovisual work That Long Moonless Chase / その長い月のない追跡
Event info available here
MAGINOT (Romain Perrot [Vomir, Trou aux Rats] and Paul Hegarty [Safe, Power Acoustics])
KAR POUZI (Helen Papaioannou)
MICHAEL BARTHEL
MAGINOT (Romain Perrot [Vomir, Trou aux Rats] and Paul Hegarty [Safe, Power Acoustics])
KAR POUZI (Helen Papaioannou)
MICHAEL BARTHEL
VOMIR (Romain Perrot)
22nd July Kobo Chika, Tokyo.
Noriko Okaku and Helen Papaioannou perform That Long Moonless Chase + artists’ talk with Naok Fujimoto. Event link
Thank you to Help Musicians & Daiwa Foundation for supporting our events!
17th July Monade Contemporary, Kyoto
Noriko Okaku & Helen Papaioannou present their recent collaborative project and lead a workshop based on their audio-visual piece That Long Moonless Chase and their week’s residency at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. We’re really happy to be hosted by this unique venue in Kyoto.
16th July UrBANGUILD, Kyoto
Leg 2 of our tour in Japan!
That Long Moonless Chase + Noriko Okaku showreel + Kar Pouzi (Helen Papaioannou solo)
Noriko & I can’t wait to bring That Long Moonless Chase to its second home of Kyoto! The piece is based on experiences of the Gabriel Hounds in Sheffield and the water weeping ginkgo tree of Kyoto, so it’s extra special for us to perform here. Event link
Thank you to Help Musicians & Daiwa Foundation for supporting our live events.
Noriko & I are excited to bring our audiovisual performance, That Long Moonless Chase to the amazing venue of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa
We’ll be performing the piece on 8th, 9th and 14th July, along with solo sets from myself as Kar Pouzi and Noriko’s own animations and media art creations.
We’ll also have an open lab during the week, during which we’ll be creating a new short performance based around folklore and stories from around Kanazawa, which the public can drop in on.
https://www.kanazawa21.jp/data_list.php?g=147&d=100
Thank you to Help Musicians and Daiwa Foundation for supporting our live events in Japan.
STRIDENT NIGHTS PRESENTS:
The first ever HATCH headliners Gum Takes Tooth return to our sweaty bosom. Fresh of the press with a brand new album care of the ever-excellent Wrong Speed Records - 'Recovery Position'
https://gumtakestooth.bandcamp.com/album/recovery-position
Bangin bangers will abound.
Support comes in the skronkingly strident shape of Kar Pouzi
https://dontdronealone.bandcamp.com/album/red-sprite
And a special bilateral reimagining of the good ol' days from our good ol' Death Rays of Ardilla. Something in the vein of:
https://soundcloud.com/death-rays
Helen Papaioannou & Noriko Okaku perform their live animation & music piece That Long Moonless Chase / その長い月のない追跡. Event link
The work centres around two folk tales, one from Sheffield and one from Kyoto, which the artists looped through online translation engines, propagating new iterations of the original texts, resulting in a bizarre & spectacular audiovisual performance. Read more here.
QWAK club is a carefully curated night from The Cube Microplex, Bristol, bringing eclectic sounds, visuals and performance together with a fun and inclusive atmosphere.
The third in the Digital Redux series of synchronized live performances in Wroclaw and London.
A live stream of the event will be available on the HOMEPAGE and on their Vimeo channel (@wrocenter).
Programme:
WRO Art Center: Rafał Zapała – Scrolling to Zero
Watermans: Noriko Okaku & Helen Papaioannou – That Long Moonless Chase / その長い月のない追跡. Event link
That Long Moonless Chase centres around two folk tales, one from Sheffield and one from Kyoto, which the artists looped through online translation engines, propagating new iterations of the original texts, resulting in a bizarre & spectacular audiovisual performance. Read more here.
WRO Art Center: zapała | SCROLLING TO ZERO >>(0) performed by Lilianna Krych for organ, electronics and audience chanting
The composition is a collective sound meditation, a sound ritual for organ, electronics and audience’s voices, led by a digital avatar.
Hosted by Utyske
Poundy, stompy, droney, skronky; Kar Pouzi is Helen Papaioannou's solo project of baritone sax & electronics.
Hosted by Bergen Improklubb Konserterie
Poundy, stompy, droney, skronky; Kar Pouzi is Helen Papaioannou's solo project of baritone sax & electronics.
Bex Burch & Leafcutter John play live at Church of Sound ft. Seb Rochford, Helen Papaioannou, Xhosa Cole, Jason Singh and Theon Crosss.
+ Holy Tongue: Valentina Magaletti & Al Wootton
Prepare for a spontaneous kinetic performance as Helling Nelly play with an array of objects, materials and instruments, including trumpet, cello, baritone sax, hurdy-gurdy, chapel harmonium, scissors, tape, cardboard boxes and sculptural trails of paper. Warning: things could get messy!
