PITS, Coster & MacKinnon Performance

30 March 2009. $5 entry.

Presented in association with Borderline Ballroom

Hot from playing at or around Dunedin's Lines of Flight festival come a trio of experimental out of town performers: Melbourne's PITS, Auckland's Tim Coster and a rare solo performance from Dunedin's Alex MacKinnon.

PITS is ex-Dunedin and now Melbourne resident, Ryan Cockburn, who has been exhibiting, recording and releasing in Australia and New Zealand under the name SPIT since 2001, with this his first tour using the PITS moniker. Cockburn, who has been associated with acts such as Eye, Jojo Ef Steve and Ray Off, describes his work as "home-wired, stuck together with tape; record interventions and caves of audio tape; scouring the fragile grooves, excavating the dust mines; wonky, outsider-art turntable percussion machines and collected trash ensembles; full of cast-offs, seconds and contradictions aplenty".

Auckland-based Tim Coster graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from AUT in 2002, specialising in sculpture. Since then he has been practising mainly as a sound artist, working with audio releases, installations and performance. Coster uses field recordings and gathered musical sounds, played from computer and processed by a variety of looping devices to create delicate works of shifting hums. Current collaborative projects include sound-poetry/mail-art pop duo Currer Bells (with Angeline Chirnside); late-night ritual acoustic/digital time-warp trio Silent Spring; a dronez duo with Nigel Wright; repeatedly guesting with Dunedin heroes Dirtroom; as well as dance soundtracks.

Alex MacKinnon's performance usually revolves around collaboration inside noise/improv circles. Based in Dunedin, the most recent participation in live groups has been in Dirt Room, Super Flying Pencils, Piano Queen Rainbow Star, and the Lee Noyes/ Alex MacKinnon duo. Solo performances are not common, but they draw from his primary occupation as a solo recording and installation based artist.