Richard Francis & Bruce Russell Performance

27 February 2009. $8 entry.

Auckland-based Richard Francis (aka Eso Steel) has been active as a musician since the mid-90's. His sound work is dominated by an interest in recording, manipulating and combining acoustic and electronic sounds from a variety of sources. In live performance Francis uses acoustic objects, microphones, a modular synthesizer and a computer to create textural and tonal sound works.

Bruce Russell will improvise sound with a vintage electronic organ and a guitar in ways their makers never imagined.

Francis and Russell will also perform collaboratively.

Richard Francis has released solo and collaborative sound works on labels such as Drone Records, Stateart, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Absurd and Scarcelight, as well as his own label CMR. Currently CMR is focused on releasing limited edition lathe cut records by sound artists living in the Auckland region.

As a performing artist he has toured in Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Canada, USA and Europe. From 2003-2006 Francis co-operated ACROMA, an organization that coordinated a series of experimental music events in Auckland hosting local and visiting experimental sound artists. From 2004-2007 Francis was a member of the Alt.Music committee-New Zealand's long running experimental music festival and performance series, and in 2005 joined the board of the New Zealand Audio Foundation.

He has collaborated for recording and/or performance with many artists including Francisco Lopez, Jason Kahn, Mattin, Birchville Cat Motel, Gate, MSBR, Tetuzi Akiyama, Lawrence English, Rosy Parlane, Howard Stelzer, Jason Lescalleet, Jay Sullivan, Empirical, Pumice, Kuwayama Kiyoharu, Phil Dadson, Anthony Guerra, Sean Meehan, Ishigami Kazuya, Antony Milton, James Kirk, MHFS, Tim Coster, Paul Winstanley, Takefumi Naoshima, Toshihiro Koike.

Bruce Russell is a practitioner in sound, who since 1987 has been a member of the Dead C. This genre-dissolving New Zealand trio mixes rock, electro-acoustics, noise and improvisation in equal measures. He has also been active as a solo artist, and directed two of New Zealand's vanguard labels, Xpressway and Corpus Hermeticum.

As a writer he has been responsible for numerous liner notes for a variety of artists' releases, as well essays and criticism for The Wire, artists' catalogues, and his own Ekskubalauron Press publications. He is currently studying at RMIT towards a doctorate in sound, seeking to establish an aesthetic of improvisation, building on Guy Debord's critique of the commodity-spectacle.