Friday, December 6, 2013
8:00pm until 11:00pm
$15 entry
Facebook event


The Auricle is proud to present a double bill of local legends, Bruce Russell and Roy Montgomery plus guests on Friday 6th December. This is a fundraising event with all proceeds going back to help set up The Auricle.

In a rare performance, Roy Montgomery (guitar) will be presenting a new work: a live improvisation for electric guitar, two violas and floor toms. He will be joined by long standing collaborator, Dunedin drummer Peter Stapleton on percussion along with guest viola players (to be announced).

Bruce Russell will be deploying his patented ‘mock stereo’ electric guitar set-up, pushing ice-floe-sized bursts of sonic debris through a fine-grained electronic mesh of circuitry. Light blue touch paper and stand well clear.

Roy Montgomery is an occasional guitarist/composer and a very infrequent performer. He has recorded some sixteen albums either as a solo performer or in collaboration with others in groups such as The Pin Group and Dadamah. His work is predominantly instrumental and filmic in orientation although he sometimes strays into lyric territory. He is rather too obdurately situated in a low-tech recording aesthetic for his own good at times but his “less-is-more” motto is not entirely an exercise in laziness-deflecting sophistry.

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.

Roy Montgomery, Peter Stapleton and friends upstairs

Bruce Russel

The crowd gathers

Thursday, November 28, 2013
7:30pm until 11:00pm
Artist Talk: 7.30pm (free)
Performances start 9pm sharp ($5)
Facebook event

The Auricle presents an evening of seismic sound with Christchurch premiere performances of Stanier Black-Five and Zeug Gezeugt’s Body Waves – a work created from unique recordings of the Christchurch’s earthquakes – and Austrian artist, Klaus Filip’s 36 Days of Earthquake in Japan. The performances will be preceded by a talk by the artists on the music and acoustics of earthquakes.

Body Waves is a work created with the powerful field recordings of earthquakes and seismic phenomena made by Lyttelton sound artist, Stanier Black-Five near the epicentre of the February 22nd 2011 earthquakes. These will be tuned by local electroacoustic artist, Zeug Gezeugt to the unique resonant frequencies of the performance space, creating an infrasonic soundscape in which the audience is immersed in a visceral music that goes beyond the auditory system to be felt in the body.

Body Waves has generated considerable international interest and was the subject of a feature on TV3. After touring Body Waves around the world, the duo will be bringing it back to its Christchurch source for its first and final performance in the city. The event is also celebrating the launch of their Body Waves album by the European Entr’acte label, as well as Avast!, Stanier Black-Five’s solo release on Entr’acte.

They will be joined on the bill by highly regarded Viennese performer, composer and programmer, Klaus Filip who will be performing 36 Days of Earthquake in Japan. In this sonification of the magnitude 9 Japan 2011 earthquake, Filip will be creating a live mix using raw seismological data from four different seismic stations played 4000 times faster to make it audible.

Filip’s installation, Photophon is also being exhibited at the Auricle in the week leading up to the performance. Using the principle of Graham Bell’s invention of the “photophone”, the installation features a direct translation from sound into light and vice versa: you see what you hear, you hear what you see. Listen through headphones as the light signals are transformed into sound and every light bulb transmits a different frequency. The installation can be experienced on Sunday 24th: 2-5pm, Wednesday 27th 12-5pm & Thursday 28th 12-6.30pm

Saturday, November 30, 2013
10:00am until 5:00pm
Facebook event

Fundraising bring and buy sale of vinyl, CDs, audio gear, books, funky clothes and any other ephemera. Book a trestle or donations gladly accepted. Free up some space in your collection, or find some Xmas presents. A percentage of the proceeds go towards the new Auricle, Sonic Arts Gallery. The sale is at 35 New Regent St and may be extended to Sunday (check this FB page for updates). For more info contact us!

Friday, October 25, 2013
6:00pm until 7:30pm
Facebook Event

The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery invites you to discover the surprising synergies between wine and sound in this multi-sensory tasting experience hosted by leading local wine writer and sound artist, Jo Burzynska (aka Stanier Black-Five). This is a fundraising event for the city’s first ever sonic arts gallery and is part of the Festival of Transitional Architecture.

Through pairing a diverse selection of delicious wines with a wide array of music, Jo will explore the harmonies and discords that can be created by different combinations and illustrate how the perception of a wine’s flavours can be altered by what we’re listening to when we drink it.

Jo is one of the country’s most widely read wine writers, penning regular columns in The Press, New Zealand Herald and Wine NZ and is the author of Wine Class: All You Need to Know About Wine in New Zealand (Random House). She is also an active sound artist, recording and performing under the name Stanier Black-Five, whose work in recent years has increasingly combined her interests in music and wine in a series of multi-sensory pieces and workshops.

The Auricle is a new sonic arts venue currently being set up by the Cantabrian Society of Sonic Artists in New Regent Street. This will include the world’s first wine and sound bar, whose wine list will be curated by Jo to complement the various exhibitions and music played in the space. They are currently raising the extra funds required to open this not-for-profit artist run space later this year.

Arrive early, and you can hear the sounds of the vineyard in the city, as Jo plays her work Oenomatopoeia created from the sounds of harvest at Pegasus Bay Vineyard. There’s also the opportunity to stay on for a glass of wine from the night’s wine sponsor’s Pegasus Bay to toast this first event at The Auricle and Rekindle’s Whole House Reuse launch, the latter which is happening at the gallery following the tasting.

Suggested donation of $25, with all proceeds going to The Auricle. Booking for the tasting is essential via Jo at joburzynska.com