Sound Symposium XXII: Duane Andrews, Pirarán, XEL

Duane Andrews

Duane Andrews casts a wide net in the musical ocean. He discovered Sound Symposium while growing up in Carbonear and making occasional visits to St. John’s, where Harbour Symphonies and throwing pianos off cliffs seemed normal at the time. He is most active these days with The Hot Club Of Conception Bay and you can go deeper into what he does at duaneandrews.ca.

Pirarán

Pirarán is a networked ensemble that combines the sound of analogue and digital synthesizers with live coded soundscapes. The band is influenced by synthesis creation and embodiment, just-intonation research and poly-temporal music creation, Latin-American popular modernism (Pérez Prado, Cumbia chichadélica, and MicoRex), and music genres like vaporwave, hippie synth music, techno, glitch, industrial, ambient and noise. This iteration of the ensemble – Pirarán (-) – is formed by Alejandro Franco, Sarah Imrisek, and Iván López.

XEL

XEL is a sound and vision composer and sound artist based in Canada, crafting audio-visual and sonic worlds unbound by genre. Through semi-modular synthesis, field recordings, and electroacoustic processes, she weaves complex and conceptual rhythms into expansive ambient and drone soundscapes, work that lives in constant flux between structure and dissolution, the immediate and the infinite.
Her compositions meld organic and synthetic textures, field recordings, analog synthesis, polyrhythmic density, and sub-bass frequencies that viscerally push and pull the audience. Her works shift between dense visceral intensity and intentional, organic minimalism.
Of Lur ancestral lineage, her practice is rooted in eco-feminine thought, mythology, decolonization, and interspecies dialogue. She has performed and exhibited at ArsElectronica, MUTEK.JP, Times Square, Vancouver New Music, and Vancouver International Jazz Festival, among others. Her work has been recognized by the Canada Council for the Arts and published in the IEEE journal.
She finds community in diversity.