Borderline Festival 10 | 1st Day

Kostadis

Sensual melodies spread out, magnetic musical phrases exaggerate, and the distinction between experimentalism and pop is eliminated, much like in vintage synthesizer music. Kostadis dilates in the current field of contemporary electronics like a liminal wanderer that transforms into a specter, echoing a breathing machine in a fusion of vintage synths, minimal electronics, African percussion, and prog instrumentalism. Sound waves reflected from a distant childhood. For this exploration Kostadis uses live looping techniques, live electronics, pitched voices, electronic drum pads, junk pedals, ribbon device, field recordings, tapes, drum machines and analog synths.

Julia Reidy

Since 2019, Julia’s bubbling 12-string guitar work – sighing streams of crystal plucks drawn closer or echoing on – has moored a tactile, ever-lusher sound. On ‘Guitar’, the Australian, Berlin-based musician melts down sharp synths; electric fuzz and flex; uncanny found sounds; and autotuned voice and harmonica in a heady, overpowering potion.

Reidy’s music sweeps you up. It’s restless, always travelling on. Lonesome tones into machine chorales into hesitant hum. The side-long cuts sway between scenes but are always rooted: Julia’s guitar and vocal lines seem mapped to the natural ebb and flow of breath and thought, they lull you as they push through vast and secret spaces.

“Honor and Obey” (Warren Sonbert, 1988), live score by Pinna Bounce

“In Warren Sonbert's ‘Honor and Obey,’ soldiers march in formation, a tiger stalks through the snow, religious processions wind through the streets, and palm trees wave in a tropical breeze. As brightly colored images of authority figures blend into scenes of cocktail parties, this 21-minute silent film flows along with the grace of a musical score built on complex tensions hidden among the notes. ‘Whose authority will you obey?’ the film seems to ask, as it deftly avoids simple-minded juxtapositions. Instead, we see a mélange of images so full of geography (Notre Dame Cathedral, the Sydney Opera House, Fifth Avenue), that the work mocks the idea of any specific setting. Sooner or later, social and natural laws meet and probably clash, Mr. Sonbert suggests, but in this scenario of discrete images, all is apparent harmony.” – Caryn James, “The New York Times”

Thalia Ioannidou, aka Pinna Bounce, performs live against the fast-changing images of the film “Honor and Obey.” Improvising with amplifiers, pedals, microphonics, and her trumpet, she provides her own concept, as well as intensity to Sonbert’s film. The musical rhythm, either synchronously or against the pace of the images, draws the attention of the audience to the live act’s ‘here and now.’