EarthQuaker Devices Presents: Essential Tremors

EarthQuaker Devices Presents:
Essential Tremors
Saturday, December 2, 2023

Akron Historic Arts District
(Baxters / Musica / Blu Jazz / Circle of Fifths)
DOORS @ 5PM
FREE TO ALL, ALL ARE WELCOME

ESSENTIAL TREMORS is a celebration of artists navigating the boundless nature of sound, highlighting the challenging, the esoteric and the bold. Initially conceived by Angus Andrew [Liars], the festival originated at Phoenix Central Park in Sydney, Australia in 2022 with an all-Australian line-up. Since then, the concept has grown with iterations taking place in Sydney, Canberra, Beijing, NYC and Tokyo, fostering an international community of creatives providing emerging and left field artists of diverse traditions and cultural backgrounds the opportunity to perform on a global stage.

Angus Andrew says, “I initially launched Essential Tremors in Sydney during the height of lockdowns as a means to highlight underrepresented voices in Australian music. Since then it’s evolved into this incredible nomadic point of convergence for innovative artists worldwide. With iterations in Beijing, Tokyo and New York the goal continues to be centered on providing left field creators the opportunity to perform on a global stage.

My own experience as an emerging artist actually began in collaboration with Julie Robbins [EQD CEO] who booked Liars’ first tour around America way back at the turn of the millennia. Many moons later it’s deeply satisfying to partner again on bringing Essential Tremors to Akron, Ohio where it feels particularly important to uplift and celebrate underrepresented innovators.”

Essential Tremors Akron will feature performances by Lisa Bella Donna, Otay:onii, Mourning [A] BLKStar, babybaby_explores, Fatboi Sharif, Fia Fiell, Fej, DÿkeNÿte, Free Black! and Eaters.

“EarthQuaker endeavors to create an inclusive musical community and support artists near and far, so working with Angus to bring this special event to Akron was an exciting opportunity. I am so grateful to the support of the Knight Foundation and Downtown Akron Partnership to make this a free event.” says Julie Robbins of EarthQuaker Devices.

In addition to the musical performances, the event will feature:

An extra special pedal release and demo stations by EarthQuaker Devices
LGBTQ+, community mental health and recovery resources from CANAPI, The Last Letter Project and Project DAWN and Summit County ADM Recovery Friendly Workplace Program

Special thanks to the Knight Foundation and Downtown Akron Partnership for their support in making this event free to the community.

Performances By:

DÿkeNÿte
DÿkeNÿte (Sam Wandtke)  is a multi-instrumental queer solo artist based in Akron, Ohio. They have played in numerous bands over the past two decades. DÿkeNÿte combines modulated vocals and electronic soundscapes to uplift minds and move bodies. They are inspired by the queerness of nature, connection of earthly beings, and love of bird song.

Fej performs “For Friends and Loved Ones” 
Fej [Jeff France] is an Akron-based musician and multimedia artist. His work centers around things forgotten. Creating music and imagery from media that are no longer relevant, “For Friends and Loved Ones” is a chaotic and cathartic take on musique concreté done visually. He uses cast off VHS players, stacks of old televisions and turntables to chronicle his depressing staycation with OCD, loneliness and the degradation of existence in a present non-post-apocalyptic dystopia all while trying desperately to keep up with the trash that he runs his show on.

Free Black!
Free Black! is a Hip-Hop collective consisting of Hip-Hop musicians Floco Torres & producer/drummer Holbrook Riles III aka HR3. The Free Black! mantra is that “There isn’t one way to be black. There are many stereotypes with blackness specifically that suggest that we aren’t multifaceted people, and through our music we attack those stereotypes head on. In embracing our individuality we can learn to be more accepting of ourselves & where we come from as well as our peers.”

Lisa Bella Donna
Lisa Bella Donna is an internationally acclaimed recording artist, composer, modular synthesist, sound designer, educator, and clinician. She has decades of experience as a multi-instrumentalist session musician and educator, as well as developing extensive techniques with musique concreté, modular synthesis, analog recording & mixing techniques, microtonal music, orchestration & film composition. Lisa has traveled all throughout the USA, Japan & Europe performing concerts and conducting workshops and clinics. She has been commissioned for many multichannel audio art installations in the USA and Europe.

Mourning [A] BLKStar
Multi-generational, gender, genre non-comforming amalgam of Black culture, Mourning [A] BLKStar is dedicated to sharing stories and songs of America’s unfolding apocalypse. Their music melds live instrumentalism with hip-hop production creating sonic frequencies that illuminate the African Diaspora. Founded in Cleveland, the US-based Afrofuturist collective continues touring their music globally across Europe and the US, playing festivals from Crossing Border in Berlin with Lonnie Holley to Bear Ears Festival and Le Guess Who? In Utrecht.

Fatboi Sharif (NYC)
Sharif doesn’t look at his performances with the traditional lens that a normal rapper does, but treats the live show as a spiritual experience where Sharif and the crowd become married through raging and serenity. Having been inspired as a child by Nine Inch Nails, White Zombie, and Parliament Funkadelic, it’s hard to put Fatboi in a box. Grit over glamour is the name of his game. Production wise, once he finds the right instrumental that speaks to him in his language, he’ll sit with it for a few weeks and sleep to it on repeat. He’ll dream and see certain visions, colors, and shapes that create an image on top of the production canvas. This keeps his music everlasting.

Fia Fiell (Melbourne, Australia) 
Vietnamese-Australian electronic/synth musician Fia Fiell, aka Carolyn Schofield, combines her profound practical and theoretical chops as a pianist and composer with a modern and perceptive ear for stretching out the orbit of millennial electronic music constructs. Her improvisatory live performances involve multiple synths played and processed in real time to create hauntingly ethereal, unsettling and subtly-shifting meditative soundscapes, built on nebulous chords and melodic cycles.

babybaby_explores (RI)
babybaby_explores (the Reasons Why that Gum is Still on the Sidewalk), is a pseudo concept, garage-pop, art-rock project made of three fweaky BFFs from the ghost town clam chowder suburbia Warwick, RI. Utilizing obsolete and low-tech gear, the band makes simple structured danceable songs that pay homage to musique concrète, European underground synth punk of the late 70’s through the 80’s, anthem music, dada, and the Providence DIY & noise scene.

Eaters – Armonica (NYC)
Originally created by Benjamin Franklin, the Glass Armonica is an instrument in which spinning glass bowls are made to resonate through friction, producing individual tones. Eaters member & visual artist Christopher Duffy hand-built his own Glass Armonica, though not to any set scale, resulting in a microtonal drone machine. Together with Robert Jones & Jonathan Schenke on synthesizers, the group recorded their initial improvisations, which have been edited and arranged into the pieces.

Otay:onii (China)
Otay:onii (Lane Shi) is a multifaceted artist originally from Haining, China, currently based in NY. Her artistic practice spans music, sound design, installation art, and film composition. Her artistic practice is characterized by an experimental approach that defies genre boundaries, exploring electronic, ambient, sound collage, and noise, with the aim of breaking down the structures that limit creative expression and achieving a bodily connection through the synchronization of the heart and mind. She believes in echoes, and the potential of “solving a puzzle with another puzzle that can’t be seen, be touched, but to feel.”

Gold Dime (NYC)
Gold Dime is a band & the brainchild of Andrya Ambro, best known as half the duo Talk Normal. 2017 brought the release of their fascinating debut Nerves. Their more surreal 2nd LP My House was released in 2019, both on Fire Talk. Their 3rd album No More Blue Skies will be out 10/20 on No Gold.