VOLUME @ South of Sunset
1218 W. Temple St.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
VOLUME is pleased to present a performance by Swedish composer Tobias Hellkvist on the occasion of his new release on Dragon’s Eye Recordings. Hellkvist is joined by fellow Dragon’s Eye artists Sublamp & Robert Crouch.
About the Artists
Robert Crouch is a Los Angeles based artist and curator who works across a wide range of media including photography, sound, installation, video, and sculpture. He has exhibited in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and London, and performed at venues including the Art Center College of Design, Human Resources, the Hammer Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Stone.
He is the co-founding Director of VOLUME, a curatorial project that functions as a catalyst for interdisciplinary new media work through exhibitions, performances, events, lectures, and publications, and has worked with a wide range of artists including William Basinski, Nate Boyce, Richard Chartier, Loren Chasse, Tim Hecker, France Jobin, Kadet Kuhne, Lucky Dragons, Carsten Nicolai, Yann Novak, Steve Roden, and Christopher Willits. VOLUME has presented projects at venues including the Hammer Museum, the de Young Museum, the San Francisco Art Institute, and SF Camerawork.
Crouch is the former Associate Director/Curator at LACE, where he organized Resonant Forms, an electronic music festival exploring the relationship between sound, installation, and video, and curated exhibitions with artists Karen Lofgren, Sean Sullivan, and Margo Victor. In 2012 he organized Steve Roden: Shells, Bells, Steps and Silences and Group Dynamics and Improper Light, a new project with Los Angeles artist Gina Osterloh. He is currently curating a new project with artist Taisha Paggett and co-curating a survey of performance work of the late Chilean artist, Juan Downey as part of the Getty initiative, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.
Crouch is currently the Director of Artist Programs at Pasadena Arts Council and the Curator for the AxS Festival.
Tobias Hellkvist (b. 1984) is a Swedish composer and sound designer, working mainly within the field of ambient, drone and electroacoustic music. Blending the electronic with the organic, dense shimmering drones with intense ‘wall of sound’-textures, Hellkvists’ cinematic atmospheres has been referred to as dynamic, varied and “packed full of life”.
Having been described as “one of Sweden’s best kept secrets” when releasing his first widely distributed album on Home Normal back in 2010, Hellkvist has continued to evolve his sound throughout the years, experimenting his way forward combining the heavily processed soundscapes with the use of acoustic instruments, analog loops and, in some cases, a steady 4/4 beat.
His second album ‘Everything is Connected’, released on Home Normal in September 2012, reached critical acclaim and various blogs and magazines regarded it as one of the finest releases of the year. It was marked out as a continuation in the evolution of Hellkvists’ sound, and even though he rarely performs live, this culminated in a headline performance at The Vortex in London in March 2013.
After having released three fullength albums and three EP’s on various independent labels over a span of 5 years, as well as being a frequent contributor to several compilations and remix projects, Hellkvist has gained a strong following in Japan and parts of Europe and North America.
While also doing occasional production, mixing and mastering work for other artists and labels, Hellkvist currently spends his time between Stockholm and Copenhagen where he’s studying and pursuing a career as a composer and sound designer, while constantly working on new material for upcoming releases.
Sublamp is Ryan Connor, a sound and video artist from Los Angeles.
He has been releasing music as Sublamp since 2005 (officially, although older recordings exist), on labels such as Hibernate, Dragon’s Eye Recordings, and Eilean Records.
Ryan is also a sound designer, creates audio and video for the immersive theatrical experience Alone: An Existential Haunting, and is an audio engineer at Earwolf.
