Vancouver New Music’s annual festival returns this year with PROPULSION, October 17-19, 2024, at VIVO Media Arts Centre. We have invited three local guest curators to each program a night of the festival that centers emerging artists with visionary sonic and musical expressions. Curators are artist, writer and curator, Kendra Place; composer, multi instrumentalist, sound and media artist, Anju Singh; and audio-visual artist, DJ and radio host, Reylinn. The festival will feature a mix of local and visiting artists doing a wide range of exciting work.

Purchase your festival pass here.

Day 1: Curated by Kendra Place

Hot Snack (Vancouver)

Hot Snack is a modular synthesizer/vocal duo created by Sol Chiniquay and Ryan Clough-Carroll. Drawing from the repetitive phasing of Steve Reich and Suicide, Hot Snack embraces technical obstruction and lyrical prostration as a means of piloted improvisation.

Hot Snack is a modular synthesizer/vocal duo created by Sol Chiniquay and Ryan Clough-Carroll. Drawing from the repetitive phasing of Steve Reich and Suicide, Hot Snack embraces technical obstruction and lyrical prostration as a means of piloted improvisation.

Jane Harms and Donna Allen (Montreal)

After first performing alongside one another with their respective bands in 2022, Jane Harms and Donna Allen cemented their collaboration on a US tour in the fall of 2023, providing a mixture of improvised and scored accompaniment to one another's songs from New York to Nebraska.

Jane Harms' interest in propulsive songwriting is interpreted via her obsessive orchestral guitar-synthesizer and sample-sequenced arrangements. Her project Trifectahas a song forthcoming on a compilation with Montreal’s Celluloid Lunch label, and her solo performances have been hosted by Video Pool in Winnipeg/Treaty One, Slut Island Festival in Tio’tia:ke/Montréal, and UNIT/PITT on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaɬ land (Vancouver). Together with Donna Allen, they arrive somewhere between alter-futurist chamber folk and celestial Big Music, actualizing their mutual interest in Olivia Records, the Canterbury sound and music as a marker on a road to utopia.

Donna Allen's four-finger guitar and melodic proficiency are expanded by her training in post-Cagean art music and experimentation. Her New York-based band Chronophage has released four LPs ranging from punky post-punk to prefab post-contemporary rock, and she has released four solo recordings in the last year alone. Together with Jane Harms, they arrive somewhere between alter-futurist chamber folk and celestial Big Music, actualizing their mutual interest in Olivia Records, the Canterbury sound and music as a marker on a road to utopia.

Markus Floats (Montreal)

By combining text and soundscape, Markus Floats attempts to offer a listening experience grounded in anarchist thought, meditation, poetry and electroacoustic exploration. Markus will be joined on stage by James Goddard.

Markus Lake is a Montréal/Tiotia’ke based musician and composer. Lake’s albums, live shows and soundtrack work explore themes of attention, obscurity, visibility and repetition through the use of a constantly expanding palette of digital instruments and samples. He released his Juno-nominated fourth LP, “Fourth Album,” on Constellation Records in October 2023. He is a graduate of the electroacoustics program at Concordia University and has played bass in the Montréal bands Elle Barbara’s Black Space, Egyptian Cotton Arkestra, and Silver Dapple. 

About the Curator: Kendra Place

Kendra Place is an artist, writer, and curator. For the past two decades she has worked with various art centres and collectives, most recently Gallery Gachet and VIVO Media Arts Centre on the stolen and sacred lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaɬ people. She is interested in accidental art, oneiric architectures, psychic knots, and thinking about pharmakon.

Co-presented with:

Banner Credits: Markus Floats photo by Laura Lynn Petrick