KLARA LEWIS & NIK COLK VOID
DEBUT ALBUM FULL-ON - OUT TODAY VIA ALTER
“Full-On is like an extreme tasting menu, recommended if you like your experimental electronics crunchy and burnt.” – The Wire
“… these short, spiralling sounds are particularly pleasing, engrossing, oddly rewarding, and thoroughly brilliant” – The Quietus Album of the Week
Following their first single, ‘Work It Out’, and a run of festival dates that included Sonar and Donau, today the artists share the video for final track from the album, ‘I’ll Always’, where a wordless voice conjures raw emotion. Listen to the track, described by the pair as “a manifest of strength through vulnerability” here: https://youtu.be/WSnYP07gjVs
The collaboration between Lewis and Void seems somehow inevitable: both artists have released solo work via Editions Mego, and both have individually carved out idiosyncratic voices in the worlds of extreme, abstract electronic music. Lewis explains, “We kept bumping into each other at shows, then Nik invited me to support Factory Floor and after the show we were hanging out, and said we should collaborate”. A series of improvised live shows followed, with performances commissioned by Café OTO, BBC Radio 3 Late Junction and the Liverpool Philharmonic, before the pair created Full-On.
With Full-On, Klara Lewis and Nik Colk Void explore and assimilate the very edge of their individual practice where a unique collaborative interface allows two voices to combine and morph into a third, emerging as Lewis and Void play ping pong with the conversation of sounds, generating ideas and bouncing them off each other, simultaneously encouraging the other to go further with their ideas opening up an opportunity to engage with previously unexplored terrain. Guitars, synths, modular systems, voice, sampling and outboard processing are folded in a playful unification with a propensity to tease, explore and extract new ideas and shapes, sometimes brutal, sometimes playful. Trust was also a compositional tool allowing instinct to freely move on any aspect of the sound and space. This sound / feeling / instinct / association let this wild and wonderful material grow organically into something new.
The result of this exploratory interplay are 17 intense miniatures revelling in the process of unadulterated experimentation, not just between the humans, but the machines themselves. United in an endless series of sonic U-turns, they intertwine pop and noise whilst also bringing together visions of tender techno and ambient.
Void goes on to explain that the effect is akin to “being sat next to someone on a train browsing Instagram with the sound up… mixing genres, as though the algorithm has made a mistake…”. Lewis expands on the process, “Exchanging ideas in the way we did gave a new perspective, discussion and form - we would pick up what aspect one liked from the other and elaborate the idea by treating, shaping, letting it grow using processes we would use on our own sounds. Like remixing, reworking each other's ideas one at a time - passing over and trusting the other to develop further.”
The various zones manifesting from all this reveal vocals shifting in mysterious ways, dust drenched beats and devilish string loops navigating a disorientating domain. The experience of listening to Full-On is to be confronted with a range of ideas, a platter of emotions. A place where beauty and the beast collide with the impulsive and outright weird. What a wonderful world.
Klara Lewis & Nik Colk Void – Full-On tracklisting (ALT74)
Say Why
In Voice 1
Junk Funk
Ski
Swimming
Guitar Hero
In Voice 2
Green
Pop
Teeth
Found
To Hold
Amo
Phantasy
Travel With Friend
Full-On was recorded at Casa Rolão (in Braga, Portugal) and mastered by Sarah Register.
Klara Lewis selected discography
KLMNOPQ - collaboration with Peder Mannerfelt (2021, Trilogy Tapes) Too (2016, Editions Mego) Msuic (2014, Peder Mannerfelt Produktion) Ett (2014, Editions Mego)
Nik Colk Void selected discography
33 33 – NVPR – collaboration with Peter Rehberg (2017, Editions Mego) Transverse – Carter Tutti Void – with Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti (2012, Mute)
