Work Project Land Year
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Love Chants

Notated composition

Bidawal, Dhudhuroa and Gunai–Kurnai Country, Whadjuk Noongar boodja, and Prague

Notated composition

Bidawal, Dhudhuroa and Gunai–Kurnai Country, Whadjuk Noongar boodja, and Prague 2024

An electroacoustic work for five performers (clarinet in Bb, steel-string guitar, violin, contrabass and electronics).

Work composed for Ian Mikyska & the Prague Quiet Music Collective for the Alternativa Festival, 2024. My visit to Alternativa is supported by the Western Australian government through the Department of Local Government, Sports and Cultural Industries, with thanks.

Performances:
2/11/24 - Prague Quiet Music Collective at Prague City Gallery for Alternativa Festival

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<3 love song

Sage J Harlow

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Sage J Harlow

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2024

I've been working as Sage's producer for the last few years. This is her first foray into a theatre space with a work that combines poetry and experimental composition.

"Three people meet at the same moment. They embark on a relationship that radically challenges conceptions of romantic love–other people’s and their own. Their love will be tested by the misunderstandings and assumptions of everyone else in their lives. Will they cope? Written by beloved experimental singer, composer and poet Sage J Harlow (Sage Pbbbt), <3 love song is a queer love poem exploring the joys, hurts and dangers of non-normative love, set to live original music played by avant-garde dream team Annika Moses (Nika Mo, Great Statue), Lyndon Blue (Heathcote Blue, Leafy Suburbs) and Josten Myburgh (Land’s Air, Ghost Gum Reverb). This is a quietly ambitious, tender work by a special local artist exploring new facets of her practice."

Sage J Harlow - writing, directing, performance
Josten Myburgh - producing, performance
Lyndon Blue - performance
Annika Moses - performance
Andrew Sutherland - dramaturgy
Catherine O'Donoghue - stage management
Adelaide Harney - lighting design

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Audible Edge Festival

Audible Edge

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Audible Edge Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2017–2024

Audible Edge is a festival exploring the marginal and not-normal in sound and listening, in Boorloo and Walyalup. Operating since 2017 on Whadjuk Noongar land, we have carefully grown a platform for experimental and tangential approaches to music and other sound-based art. We’ve persisted through COVID disruptions, taking on many new shapes and forms in the process.


Audible Edge celebrates play, freak energy, silliness, ephemerality and “getting stuck into it” as meaningful ways of engaging with new experiences. We love local, emergent, queer and contingent projects. We like straight-faced experimentation rubbing shoulders with unhinged wildness (or situations where you can’t tell which is which). We strive to make accessible contexts to appreciate the radical potency of our community of independent artists and makers, and our friends from distant lands and waters.

Our program is full of wild and weird high-contrast bookings. Sometimes they contain contradictory approaches, unresolved tensions. Through open invitation and absolute permission, Audible Edge listeners and makers alike are thrown into the messy process of ‘making sense’, whatever that might mean, together.

Audible Edge is presented by Tone List, an artist-run, Boorloo-based label for exploratory music founded in 2016. Audible Edge was awarded an Art Music State Luminary Award in 2023 by APRA AMCOS and the Australian Music Centre, recognising five years of contributions to the creative music culture of the west coast of the continent. It has received 4.5 and 5 star reviews in Limelight Magazine, and been covered by various other publications.

Josten Myburgh - project manager, co-curator
Annika Moses - co-curator
Dan O'Connor - production manager
Tess Stephenson - front-of-house
Jameson Feakes & Ben Leeming - stage managers
Adelaide Harney - lighting designer
Patrick Gunasekera - accessibility consultant

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Tour of Aotearoa with Daisy Sanders

Josten Myburgh & Daisy Sanders

Aotearoa

Josten Myburgh & Daisy Sanders Aotearoa 2023

In August 2023, Daisy Sanders and I travelled through Aotearoa, performing five times and giving an artist talk over the course of a week.

6.8 - Yours, Ōtepoti
7.8 - Lyttelton Coffe Co, Ōhinehou
9.8 - New Zealand School of Music, Te Whanganui a Tara (artist talk)
10.8 - Pyramid Club, Te Whanganui a Tara
11.8 - Audio Foundation, Tāmaki Makaurau
12.8 - Audio Foundation, Tāmaki Makaurau - Josten Myburgh (solo), and quartet with Johnny Marks & Genevieve Davidson

The tour received support from the University of Otago Division of Humanities Performing Arts Fund, and my flights over were sponsored by the Department of Local Government, Sports and Cultural Industries via another project.

Josten Myburgh - alto saxophone
Daisy Sanders - movement

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Saxophone solo archive

Solo improvisation

Badimia & palawa country, Tlaxcala, Menang Noongar boodja

Solo improvisation Badimia & palawa country, Tlaxcala, Menang Noongar boodja 2019–2023

Rough recordings of alto saxophone solos, often made outdoors.

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A Resting Mess

A Resting Mess

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

A Resting Mess

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2018–2024

Since 2019 I have provided live music for Daisy Sanders' expansive dance lifework, A Resting Mess. This large-scale, immersive performance installation hosts an ensemble of performers that explore human and planetary fatigue and focuses on healing through its exploration of chaos, care, community and climate crisis. In this piece I play mostly electroacoustic percussion, leaning into the core concepts of the work (rest and mess) to inform ways of improvising on the drum kit.

The piece has so far been presented in partnership with 10 Nights in Port (Walyalup), PICA (Boorloo), Dunedin Dream Brokerage (Ōtepoti), Hothouse Theatre Company (All Saints College, Boorloo) and Winter Nights Festival (The Blue Room Theatre, Boorloo).

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Reflections on a European tour

Land's Air

Germany, Austria & Gadigal Country

Land's Air Germany, Austria & Gadigal Country 2023

A dispatch published whilst on tour in April/May 2023.

"Eduardo Cossio and Josten Myburgh are currently in Europe touring with their duo project Land's Air: a duo using improvisation as a methodology with a timbrally complex aesthetic built from textured microtonal drones and melodies. The duo have just released their debut self-titled album. Here they share reflections from their tour, and diary entries made after each concert, in a loose self-interview following prompts from the Australian Music Centre. Their reflections were completed on May 9, after playing ten shows in Graz, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Köln, Munich and Paretz. Six more shows await in Wroclaw, Łódź, Berlin and Rosendal."

Written by Josten Myburgh & Eduardo Cossio.
Published by the Australian Music Centre.

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Land's Air

Land's Air

Whadjuk & Ballardong Noongar boodja

Land's Air Whadjuk & Ballardong Noongar boodja 2023

Eduardo Cossio & Josten Myburgh are a duo of improvisers based in Boorloo (Perth, Western Australia). Having played together in various formations over many years, they began refining a duo language in 2021 towards this unexpectedly melodic release.

Working with found microtonality in detuned zithers and alto saxophone multiphonics, the duo spin melodies and harmonies around each other, slowly unfolding, making sense of the tonality in real time. The harmonic sense is emergent from the interaction between instruments, players, space and place, rather than forethought by any system.

Meanwhile there is a striving for textural complexity, as each player constructs foreground and background layers both within their own part and in relation to the other. Cassette tapes, electromagnetic microphones, sustain pedals, harmonica, e-bows and field recordings are all in service of this dense layering. But so is the way the melodies are put together: leaps between rough and smooth timbres, high and low pitches and dull and bright timbres producing something prismatic rather than just linear. The result is lush and polyphonic, grounded in the steadiness of drones and melodic spinning-out.

To prepare the album, the duo took edits of over ten hours of improvisations, splicing them into each other with the same sudden logic as Eduardo's tape improvisations.

This music was improvised throughout 2022 in the Artsource Old Customs House, on Whadjuk Noongar boodja, and the Holy Trinity Church in York, on Ballardong Noongar boodja. Field recordings from Badimia country appear in the music. The artists acknowledge Country, and custodians and Elders of Country, past, present, and emerging. 

Josten Myburgh - alto saxophone, electronics, recording
Eduardo Cossio - zithers, electronics, harmonica, photography, design
Mixed and mastered by Dan O'Connor at ENCODER Sound.

With thanks to Bennett Miller and Stirling Kain (Artsource) and Philip Raymont (Holy Trinity Church) for the use of the space. Thanks to Katie West and Simon Charles for their hospitality.

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owls.place

owls.place

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

owls.place Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2023

OWLS is a calendar and resource list for exploratory music and sound art occurring in Boorloo (Perth), Walyalup (Fremantle), and broader Western Australia.

OWLS is friends with EMUS in Sydney, but otherwise unaffiliated.

You can contact us via our Gmail account with the username outwestliminalsounds, and our Instagram account owls_place.

Pedro Alvarez - social media
Izzy French - logo
Josten Myburgh, Sage Pbbbt - maintenance
Alex Turner - design

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The Reckoning

Joshua Pether, Helah Milroy & Janene Oxenham

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Joshua Pether, Helah Milroy & Janene Oxenham

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2021–2023

The Reckoning is a decolonisation project that aims to generate a First Nation’s performance methodology, that addresses the intergenerational trauma of Australia’s colonial past and the collective amnesia surrounding this. It will explore this by facilitating reflective engagement and healing through a First Nations paradigm and performance pedagogy. First Nations ways of being and knowing have been critical sites of resistance in the process of decolonisation, and a First Nations paradigm privileges embodied knowledge and aims to achieve right relationships with both human and non-human forms. The performance methodology will connect mind, body and spirit and ways of learning as both a collective experience and thus become an act of decolonisation as it seeks to both explore and honour First Nations ways of being and doing.

I'm privileged to have provided live music for the performance at both of its creative development showings at PICA, in 2021 and 2023.

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Kinds of Light

Tone List

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Tone List Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2022–2024

Kinds of Light is a concert series for creative music at PS Art Space in Walyalup/Fremantle which I curate. Kinds of Light celebrates ambitious experimentation, careful musicianship, and sounds that are relevant to this time and place. We program across style and genre, excited by the love and rigour that goes into projects that defy categories.

Josten Myburgh - curation
Dan O'Connor - production management
Co-presented with PS Art Space, with thanks to Guilhem Therond.

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Live at WA Museum Boola Bardip

Ghost Gum Reverb

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Ghost Gum Reverb Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2022

Live recording of a performance for the Perth International Jazz Festival.

Jameson Feakes - electric guitar
Ben Greene - drums
Djuna Lee - double bass
Josten Myburgh - saxophone, electronics, recording

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New North Concert 4: Mahagonny

Mahagonny

Whadjuk Noongar boodja, Wurundjeri Country & Berlin

Mahagonny Whadjuk Noongar boodja, Wurundjeri Country & Berlin 2022–2022

A performance enacted simultaneously in Berlin, Naarm/Melbourne and Walyalup/Fremantle using the telematic performance software JackTrip. Hosted by New North and the Audible Edge Festival of Sound.

Lena Czerniawska - visuals, text
Emilio Gordoa - percussion
Michael McNab - percussion
Josten Myburgh - alto saxophone

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Two Scrolls from Western Australia

Jameson Feakes, Josten Myburgh & Michael Pisaro-Liu

Whadjuk Noongar boodja & Chumash, Tongva, Fernandeño Tataviam, and Kizh lands

Jameson Feakes, Josten Myburgh & Michael Pisaro-Liu Whadjuk Noongar boodja & Chumash, Tongva, Fernandeño Tataviam, and Kizh lands 2022

“When one contemplates there is no form, but when one examines, there is coherence.”

Bu Yantu, quoted by François Jullien in The Great Image Has No Form

"Two Scrolls from Western Australia was written in collaboration with Jameson Feakes and Josten Myburgh. I asked each musician to select a location in Western Australia and then to make a set of field recordings there at different times of day. These recordings form the basis of the two scrolls. As with scroll paintings made in China from the Song dynasty onward, poetic characters (here represented by music for the two instruments) are placed above the landscape.

Michael Pisaro-Liu
 
The development and recording of this work was supported by the Western Australian Government through the Department of Local Government, Sports and Cultural Industries.

Jameson Feakes - electric guitar, field recordings
Josten Myburgh - alto saxophone, field recordings
Michael Pisaro-Liu - composition

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Banksias under snow (temporal mirror)

Notated composition

Whadjuk & Wiilman Noongar boodja & palawa Country

Notated composition

Whadjuk & Wiilman Noongar boodja & palawa Country 2022

A piece for flute/alto flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, electric guitar, pedal harp & electronics (five performers). The duration of the piece is between 18' and 23'.

Banksias under snow (temporal mirror) is a piece which explores the idea of translocation and transtemporalisation of place through sonic metaphors. Field recordings from palawa and Wiilman Noongar country are collaged together and veiled by bandpass filters tuned to pitches appropriated from the first movement of Peter Sculthorpe's 1971 work, "Night Pieces".

Commissioned by GreyWing Ensemble directed by Dr Lindsay Vickery as part of their project of the same name

Performances:
29/01/21 - by GreyWing Ensemble at Lost Eden Creative, Dwellingup
22/05/21 - by GreyWing Ensemble at Ellenbrook Arts, Ellenbrook
8/10/21 - by GreyWing Ensemble at Old Customs House, Walyalup
16/04/23 - by Rebecca Lane, Owen Gardner, Judith Hamann, Xavier Lopez & Josten Myburgh at Petersburg Arts Space, Berlin

Recording by:
Catherine Ashley - pedal harp
Jameson Feakes - electric guitar
Josten Myburgh - electronics
Kirsten Smith - flute, alto flute
Lindsay vIckery - clarinet, bass clarinet

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Sculthorpe Studies

Notated composition

Mandjoogoordap Bibbulmun & Wiilman Noongar boodja, palawa Country, and Bidawal Country

Notated composition

Mandjoogoordap Bibbulmun & Wiilman Noongar boodja, palawa Country, and Bidawal Country 2021

A conceptual score situating harmonies from Peter Sculthorpe's body of work against field recordings.

Jet Kye Chong - vibraphone, crotales
Jameson Feakes - electric guitar
Djuna Lee - double bass
Stuart James - piano & electronics
Kirsten Smith - flutes
Josten Myburgh - alto saxophone & electronics

Lee Buddle - recording, mixing, mastering at Crank Recording
Rob Nugent - cover image (video still from "Night Parrot Stories"), used with permission & thanks
Simon Reynell - executive producer

The recording and production of the CD was supported by the Western Australian Department of Local Government, Sports and Cultural Industries.

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variations without a theme (drones ongs)

Sage J Harlow

Whadjuk Noongar boodja & Haan, Germany

Sage J Harlow Whadjuk Noongar boodja & Haan, Germany 2022

I produced and performed in this CD by Sage J Harlow of her suite of compositions of the same name, written in 2016. Published on Edition Wandelweiser Records.

Performed by:
Jameson Feakes - guitar
Dan O’Connor - trumpet
Oz Kesik - synthesizer
Djuna Lee - double bass
Josten Myburgh - alto saxophone
Sage Pbbbt - voices
Saskia Willinge - flute

Recorded at Crank Recording, Boorloo (Perth, Western Australia) March 2022
Recording: Josten Myburgh
Mixing & Mastering: Dan O’Connor (Encoder Sound)
encodersound.com
Producer: Josten Myburgh
Executive Producer: Antoine Beuger

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Of Cloven Hoof in Honey

Nika Mo

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Nika Mo

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2021

I play percussion, clarinet and sing a bit on this wonderful record by indie-folk-freakazoid Nika Mo.

Annika Moses - voice, synth, recorder, guitar, percussion, composition
Imogen Castledine - voice
Dayna Cullen - voice
Shanay Cullen - voice
Josh Cusack - double bass
Jameson Feakes - guitar, mandolin
Laura Igglesden - voice
Lenny Jacobs - drums
Alex Jones - voice
Zoe McGivern - trumpet
Josten Myburgh - drums, voice, clarinet
Dan O’Connor - trumpet
Ini Ojo - voice
Alex Turner - voice
Brooke Wilson - voice
Nate Wood - violin
Jacob Wylde - voice

Recorded by Annika Moses
Mixed by Dan O’Connor and Annika Moses @ENCODERSound
Mastered by Lee Buddle at CRANK Recording
This project was supported by the City of Perth through its arts sponsorship program.

Album artwork sculpture by Ella Bunker
Album artwork photo by Emma Daisy Photography
Album artwork graphic design by Lyndon Blue
Album booklet design by Lyndon Blue

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We do not see from above

Notated composition

Whadjuk Noongar boodja and Gadigal Country

Notated composition

Whadjuk Noongar boodja and Gadigal Country 2018–2021

Work composed for bass flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, electronic keyboard, percussion with electronics (five performers).

There is an alternate, half-finished version for alto saxophone, electronics, electric guitar & percussion that might get completed one day.

Composed for the Ensemble Offspring Hatched Academy.

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Blessed, Very Blessed

Notated composition

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Notated composition

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2015–2016

A work for double bass, piano, small choir (at least four voices) & fixed media electronics, of 11' duration.

Written for my Honours graduation recital, this piece was then released on mini-CD by Flaming Pines. A paean to the cultural deserts of outer suburban Perth.

Recording by:
Andrea Sitas - contrabass
Natalya Czernicziw, Jameson Feakes & Sarah Cranfield - voices
Josten Myburgh - piano, percussion, radio, voice, electronics, composition
Recorded, mixed & mastered by Josten Myburgh.
Artwork by Kate Carr.

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The silver morning shifts their birds from tree to tree

Notated composition

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Notated composition

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2017

Work for three or four performers (open instrumentation) and generative electronics. The duration of the piece is open, usually 10' to 20'. Easily customisable to most smaller ensemble sizes and performance durations, feel free to write in.

In this piece a text score indicates a range of available responses to sonic prompts raised by the generative electronic part.

Title is from a poem by Robert Lax (with the pronoun changed).

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Where and how to gather

Audible Edge

Whadjuk, Wiilman and Wadandi Noongar boodja, Wurundjeri Country, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing and Berlin

Audible Edge Whadjuk, Wiilman and Wadandi Noongar boodja, Wurundjeri Country, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing and Berlin 2021

A multi-artform mixtape of works assembled out of the funding from the COVID-disrupted Audible Edge Festival in 2020.

‘The sound of my own voice butchering transliterated quranic arabic’, Aisyah Aaqil Sumito
‘The Hegemony of the DAW,’ Michael Terren
‘Hazard Waste’, Myriad Sun
‘1111 Typhoon’, Joee & I
‘What are the things that climate can’t change’, Noémie Cecilia Huttner-Koros
‘Listening to Dryandra Woodland’, Katie West, Simon Charles, Josten Myburgh
‘no rain’, Yan Jun
‘Meelup (Moonrise), Boranup (Sunrise)’, Sounding Together
‘Surveillance Lifestyles’, Jasmine Guffond

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The Lion Never Sleeps

Noémie Huttner-Koros

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Noémie Huttner-Koros

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2018–2020

I worked as the sound recordist and sound designer for Noemie Huttner-Koros on this project, re-enchanting the streets of Northbridge through audio recordings & walking tours focusing on the history of queer activism in Perth, especially amidst the AIDS crisis. The project specifically focuses on queer elders; our interviewees include Mark Reid, Janet Carter, Claire Bushby, and Carl Gopalkrishnan.

The work was nominated for 4 PAWA awards in 2020, including 'Best Sound Design'.

Noémie Huttner-Koros - writing, concept
Josten Myburgh - recording, composition, editing

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What is written upon a leaf, what is held within a seed

Elizabeth Pedler

Menang and Goreng Noongar boodja

Elizabeth Pedler

Menang and Goreng Noongar boodja 2022–2024

I contributed recordings, software programming and composition for Elizabeth Pedler's exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Elizabeth Pedler - concept, sculpture, video, projections
Josten Myburgh - recording, composition

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Sounding Together

Tone List

Ballardong & Wadandi Noongar boodja

Tone List Ballardong & Wadandi Noongar boodja 2018–2020

​With few intensive workshop opportunities for improvisation and experimental sound practice in Australia, Sounding Together investigates the possibility of collective mentorship in this field, with the simultaneous goal of growing richness of practice in Boorloo/Perth and strengthening a sense of community in the field of improvised music at both a local and national level. 

The first instance of Sounding Together was led by Jim Denley in Koorda on Kaprun and Ballardong Noongar country, and featured participants from Perth, Adelaide and Hobart. Over four days participants worked in the Wheatbelt region of WA, improvising outdoors, taking field recordings and making work to present to one another. The final showing involved a group sound installation and an orchestral performance by all twelve musicians.

The second instance was led by Jim and Annette Krebs in Dunsborough on Wardandi Noongar boodja. Participants came from Perth, Canberra, Brisbane and Hobart. We spent five days working on the beaches, rock formations, Karri forests and freshwater pools of the region, as well as recording and experimenting at home. The final showing involved some small solo, duo and trio performances, and a large ensemble performance by everyone together.

In 2021, Disclaimer Journal hosted writing and audio from the 2020 Sounding Together workshop under the heading "Meelup (Moonrise), Boranup (Sunrise)".

Jim Denley - mentor (2018, 2020)
Annika Moses - residency host (2020)
Bowen Gosper - residency host (2018)

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TuneNoiseTune

Tone List

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Tone List Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2022–2023

TuneNoiseTune is a concert series co-presented by the Perth Jazz Society and Tone List. We host avant-garde jazz, improvised music and other creative musics which take influence from these two fields. We host one concert every two months, usually at the Four5Nine bar.

TuneNoiseTune had 9 concerts between 2022-2023, and also facilitated a new commissioned work by Naoko Uemoto, Jeremy Segal & Josiah Padmanabham.

The concert series has been on hiatus since co-curator Kate Pass took off for Masters studies in New York. Hoping to pick it back up eventually.

TuneNoiseTune's first season was supported by the Western Australian Government through the Department of Local Government, Sports and Cultural Industries, and Carl Erbrich.

Lyndon Blue - graphic design
Daisy Fanning - publicity
Josten Myburgh & Kate Pass - co-curators
Dan O'Connor - production management

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Berlin Split

Emilio Gordoa, Matthias Müller, Josten Myburgh, Adam Pultz-Melbye

Berlin

Emilio Gordoa, Matthias Müller, Josten Myburgh, Adam Pultz-Melbye

Berlin 2019

After playing sporadic sessions across three years since their first meeting in Berlin in 2015, Adam, Emilio and Josten produced this energised trio in a flat in Wedding in 2018. With a rapid rate of change and a tendency towards playful subversion, it's exploratory and colourful, while still precipitating in many moments of clarity and intensity.

A few days before, Josten had met with Matthias Müller in his studio to discuss Matthias' upcoming trip to Perth for Audible Edge; they figured they ought to play together as well. What emerged was an immediately familiar language, a synchronicity between sharp digital feedback and articulate trombone gestures. Their very first meeting is published here. As opposed to the expansive chamber music of the trio, this duo works mostly by layering noise, and the results are far more stark.

The recordings make a curious pair, with the same electronic sound-worlds existing in two spaces, divergent in approach to gesture and harmony. Perhaps Lena Czerniawska's artwork, drawn in response to the music, proposes some relationships between the two.

Lena Czerniawska - artwork, design
Emilio Gordoa - vibraphone (1)
Matthias Müller - trombone (2)
Josten Myburgh - electronics, recording, mixing
Adam Pultz-Melbye - double bass (1)

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Walyalup Weekend of Improvised Music

Walyalup Weekend of Improvised Music

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Walyalup Weekend of Improvised Music

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2023

The Walyalup Weekend of Improvised Music is a new festival held at PS Art Space in Walyalup/Fremantle which began in June 2023. It is dedicated to community-building around improvised music, a thriving sub-community of Boorloo’s broader exploratory music scene.

Our program revolves around two evenings of first meeting plays of improvised music, complemented by a variety of workshops, talks, and more.

Stalls with merchandise, information, newsletter sign-up and EOI forms from local organisations connected to improvised music.

WWIM pays the rent to Save Our Songlines, of an amount equal to 2% of our income from ticket sales & donations.

Izzy French, Nicholas Kyriakacis, Josten Myburgh, Saskia Willinge - co-organisers

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As Below, So Above

Joshua Pether

Whadjuk Noongar boodja, Gadigal and Wurunderi Country

Joshua Pether

Whadjuk Noongar boodja, Gadigal and Wurunderi Country 2022

We stand at the interface of a new beginning; four connected through histories past and futures. But we begin at the end and arrive at the beginning, with one eye to the sky and one ear to the ground. “The Call to Prayer” pulls us deep into the depth of the earth, histories and lineages vibrate and shimmer as they rise to take their place in “Gods” clouds. We arrive at a junction between the thresholds of light and dark—four connected in the shape of the cross. As Below, So Above is a 20 minute ritual for personal deliverance and atonement, and a choreographic investigation into the concepts of reversal and inversion. Ritual after ritual As Below, So Above repetitively allows the performer to enter into a space that seeks familiarity whilst asking to uncover the hidden spaces that exist in the known.

Joshua Pether - choreographer, performer
Daisy Sanders, Josten Myburgh, Sage Pbbbt - performers
Helah Milroy - costume design

Devised for the Kier Choreographic Award, 2022. Performances at CarriageWorks and DanceHouse.

Siren Call

Joshua Pether

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Joshua Pether

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2020

Site-specific work devised by Joshua Pether for the short works program Situ8. Siren Call was viewed from above, and involved myself and Simon Charles playing as (I guess) haunted bartenders. The titular sirens of the piece belong to the water that Boorloo is built on: wetlands displaced by bricks and concrete. Water still drips through the brickwork at times, especially in the bsaement level. Simon and I increasingly folding our incidental soundings into a score that tried to give voice to the life of the water and its inhabitants, and involved a few sonic magic tricks.

Joshua Pether - choreography
Bobbi Russel, Daisy Sanders - movement
Simon Charles - composition, performance
Josten Myburgh - performance, co-composition

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un lieu pour être deux

Jameson Feakes & Josten Myburgh

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Jameson Feakes & Josten Myburgh Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2018

The first performance by Josten Myburgh of Antoine Beuger's 2007 work 'un lieu pour être deux' was with guitarist and electronic musician Andre O Möller at Klangraum Festival in Düsseldorf, as part of a performance which spanned all fifty pages of the work and which lasted upwards of three hours. Josten found the rich experience of playing the piece captivating and has endeavoured to perform it and share it in other ways many times since this first encounter.

This particular recording with Jameson Feakes spans about twenty-or-so pages of the piece. It was made in Josten's home at the time, as part of the 'places to be two' project, where numerous performances of this work were being made around Perth in 2017 as part of a process of 'handing down' and sharing the experience of playing it with many different duos.

Jameson Feakes & Josten Myburgh frequently collaborate together in a myriad of settings; their work as a duo explores the music of Wandelweiser composers and of other composers whose music creates similar listening situations. This piece in particular makes a compelling statement about 'being two', and about the musical duo: whilst its surface may seem relatively austere at first, being present with the work (through listening or performing) reveals its subdued intensity and the complexity of experience it creates for the performers, for 'the two'. It seems fitting for Feakes & Myburgh's first duo release (of surely more to come) to begin here, at some kind of investigation of the potential of 'being two' itself.

It is suggested that you play this recording at a volume level that blends in with/is absorbed into one's environment, rather than dominating it.

Artwork for the release has been provided by Lauren Salt (of Volim) who has created works in response to the experience of listening to the work. The physical release of the album comes in a box roughly A5-sized, featuring art prints by Salt and texts by the performers.

Please note: Bandcamp does not accommodate large file uploads, so the recording has been cut in half exactly.

Antoine Beuger (composition)
Jameson Feakes (guitar)
Josten Myburgh (electronics)
B Gosper (silent presence)
Lauren Salt (artwork)

Recorded by Josten Myburgh & Jameson Feakes.
Mixed and mastered by Josten Myburgh and Jameson Feakes with the assistance of Dan O'Connor.

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We hold you close

Katie West

Ballardong and Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Katie West

Ballardong and Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2022

I contributed some field recordings of the collective natural dyeing and stringmaking process undertaken to produce some of the artefacts in this work, and to inform the shape of the final installation. These were used in the eventual composition by composer Simon Charles. The show was exhibited in Perth Festival 2022.

Katie West - lead artist
Eloise Sweetman - curator
Simon Charles - composer

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Room to Rest

Daisy Sanders

Whadjuk Noongar boodja and Wurunderi Country

Daisy Sanders

Whadjuk Noongar boodja and Wurunderi Country 2021

Presented as part of Alter State, a festival curated by disabled artists, Room to Rest was a durational online work by dancer Daisy Sanders.

Daisy Sanders - creator, performer, host
Joshua Pether and Janine Oxenham - performers
Felicity Groom and Josten Myburgh - sound artists
Georgi Ivers - video artist
Hannah Yaschenko - Auslan interpreter

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Hearing place through its demons

Audible Edge

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Audible Edge Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2022

I wrote a short article for Cool Change on some emergent, highly emplaced musics in Western Australia, with particular attention paid to Seacrest Gardens, Simon Charles and Sage Pbbbt. Some nods to Katie West, Ross Bolleter and others. The text is available in the Cool Change "two-and-a-half yearbook" published in November 2022.

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Bunker

Nick Ashwood, Emilio Gordoa, Michael McNab & Josten Myburgh

palawa Country

Nick Ashwood, Emilio Gordoa, Michael McNab & Josten Myburgh

palawa Country 2019–2020

Excerpts from a quartet improvisation recorded in a military battery in lutruwita/Tasmania, August 2019. Published on Emilio Gordoa's digital label WildSonico.

Nick Ashwood - guitar, room
Josten Myburgh - alto saxophone, room
Michael McNab - percussion, room
Emilio Gordoa - percussion, multi-tone generator, room

Recorded in a historical bunker during Mahagonny's Australian tour.
Alexandra Battery Park, lutruwita/Tasmania, August 2019

released July 31, 2020

recorded & mixed by Josten Myburgh
produced by WildSonico
photo by Nick Ashwood

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Some alpine translocations: a clustering

Notated composition

Bidawal, Dhudhuroa, Gunai–Kurnai and Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Notated composition

Bidawal, Dhudhuroa, Gunai–Kurnai and Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2024

An electroacoustic work for two to three performers. The duo version has the two performers playing alto saxophone, sustain pedal, delay pedal, computer & synthesizer, and alto saxophone, baritone saxophone & sustain pedal respectively. The trio version puts the synthesizer and computer parts in the hands of the third player. The duration of the piece is about 25' to 30'. Finished score forthcoming, please write in to request to see it.

Work partly composed during a residency at the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture. My visit to the centre was supported by the Western Australian government through the Department of Local Government, Sports and Cultural Industries, with thanks.

Performances:
20/04/24 - by Josten Myburgh & Erin Royer at Goolugatup Sounds, Boorloo

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Such and such

Ross Bolleter & Eduardo Cossio

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Ross Bolleter & Eduardo Cossio

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2023

Thanks to Eduardo Cossio for the invitation to write the liner notes to his stunning record with Ross Bolleter.

On Such & Such, each time Ross’s finger compels a hammer to strike three adjacent strings on one of his ruined pianos, their individual tangential tunings ring out in a gong-like sonority. Splintering harmonics and difference tones echo through a Bayswater kitchen in fractal patterns. Their unsettled-ness is ours. Inherited, translocated cultural forms and acoustics turn into a being-with the ngaangk/sun’s heat as it distends strings and floorboards to the cyclical rhythm of six seasons, splitting a poised twelve-tone intonation into something ever-new. The becoming-place of the piano, being-with ruination.

Place is also culture-in-place. Ross's maverick explorations belong in some way to our collective sonic worlding in Boorloo. Perhaps Eduardo has been listening and researching closely enough to find and transform the traces of this in himself. Viewed this way, when Eduardo switched from his frenzied guitar explorations and settled for the patient drones of two never-tuned hand-me-down harps, we weren't witnessing a creative departure, but a return - to this emplaced practice of sonic ruination. And where Ross’s ruination is revealed in the pointillism of plucks and strikes, Eduardo's zithers ring out constantly in eternally renewing micro-rhythms, sounding the pace of entropic unravelling. Stability on the precipice of collapse: a poem to the potency for rupture present in moments that seem inert. Ruination practices entangled across generations of our culture.

I hear other kinds of returns in the music, too: the frantic energy of Eduardo’s guitar manifests in pick scrapes across zithers; the modernist harmonic concepts that begat the honing of Ross’s listening into the potential of his ruined companions appear in detuned form in the album's final third. Ruination of story. Time is not a line. 

And I hear a friendship blossoming, and I see candlestick banksias and marri gums and moodjar boorna (Christmas trees) burst through the cracks in the brickwork of Kensington, Naarm, from where I write this. At times I am moved to tears.

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Shoulder deep underground

Audible Edge

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Audible Edge Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2022

I wrote a short article for Limelight Magazine about the ethics of how Audible Edge organises. Thanks to Jo for the invitation.

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Prechording

Éric Normand

Whadjuk Noongar boodja & Rimouski

Éric Normand

Whadjuk Noongar boodja & Rimouski 2021

Recording of a composition written by Éric Normand. Éric visited the Audible Edge Festival in 2019, and during the pandemic made this piece for some of the musicians he met to play together. We recorded the piece at the now-closed Soundfield Studio with Stuart James, making use of lightglobes, a CRT TV, and acoustic instruments.

Jameson Feakes - guitar
Lenny Jacobs - percussion
Djuna Lee - double bass
Josten Myburgh - alto saxophone
Dan O'Connor - trumpet, mastering

Éric Normand - composition
Marc Lepage - cover photo
Marie-Pierre Morin - cover design
Stuart James - recording

Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

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Melville Midwinter

Jameson Feakes, Stuart James, Djuna Lee, Josten Myburgh, Daisy Sanders, Holli Scott, Naoko Uemoto, Lia T

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Jameson Feakes, Stuart James, Djuna Lee, Josten Myburgh, Daisy Sanders, Holli Scott, Naoko Uemoto, Lia T

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2024

A site-specific, large ensemble, spatial performance developed for the finale of City of Melville's Winter Solstice event. A cross-disciplinary ensemble explored improvising in a harmonically consonant space, with a high level of attention paid to textural detail, depth-of-field and the incidental counterpoint of overlapping cycles of different lengths.

Cass Lynch's amazing text drawing on the parallels between the syrinx and the morphology of the river was the material from which Holli improvised; we also ruminated on the poetry in the hope that some of the ideas might inform how we sounded.

I also assisted with some of the curation of the event, in particular coordinating the creation of a new short contemporary dance work by Daisy Sanders, Lara Dorling & Lia Tsesmelis.

Jameson Feakes - guitar
Stuart James - spatial audio mixing
Djuna Lee - double bass
Josten Myburgh - alto saxophone
Daisy Sanders - dance
Holli Scott - vocals, electronics
Naoko Uemoto - baritone saxophone
Lia T - electronics
Cass Lynch - text

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Residency at Goolugatup Heathcote

Josten Myburgh

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Josten Myburgh

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2024

Josten Myburgh's residency involves the development of a concert-length electro-acoustic work for solo alto saxophone, projected through a triangle of speakers with Josten in the middle. 

The work centres a technique Josten has been developing combining non-standard tunings and electronic processing on the instrument. They will be using the residency to develop this technique in detail, looking for unusual combinations of frequencies which produce psychoacoustic phenomena, such as surprisingly loud sub-bass tones and rhythmic pulsations. Their focus is on a tender, embodied relationship to composing and playing, that comes out of a curious and idiosyncratic approach to their instrument and how its sound resonates in space and perception.

Within this residency project I also hosted "Rational Playtime", a co-learning space for just intonation theory and practice.

Rebecca Lane, James Rushford, Erin Royer & Patrick Gunasekera - mentors

Adelaide Harney - lighting

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

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Bogong Centre for Sound Culture residency

Solo improvisation

Bidawal, Dhudhuroa and Gunai–Kurnai Country

Solo improvisation Bidawal, Dhudhuroa and Gunai–Kurnai Country 2023

In November 2023 I undertook a solo residency at the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture, developing site-specific recorded works using alto saxophone. Release of the audio forthcoming.

Supported by the Department of Local Government, Sports and Cultural Industries.

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Programming for Tura New Music

Tura New Music

Whadjuk Noongar boodja

Tura New Music

Whadjuk Noongar boodja 2014–2018

Between 2014 and 2018 I worked for arts organisation Tura New Music on their programs Club Zho, Church Series and iMprov, as well as occasional ad-hoc programming and programs within their Totally Huge New Music Festival. During this time I organised concerts for Will Guthrie, Félicia Atkinson, Aviva Endean, Lucas Abela, Rosalind Hall and many more.

Club Zho was a long-running experimental music series which I curated a few instances of alongside Traianos Pakioufakis and Tos Mahoney during my years working with Tura. Church Series was a short-lived series of concerts dedicated to experimental chamber music. iMprov was a program of workshops and concerts focussed specifically on cultivating improvised music culture in Western Australia.

Some of this programming has been quite influential on the present state of the local experimental music scene. In the 9th edition of ADSR Zine, Eduardo Cossio wrote that "the iMprov program fostered exchange with local and visiting artists from different backgrounds. The safe environment of the workshops did much to enable the individual practice of its participants." From my perspective, the iMprov workshop series catalysed the latent interest of a small group of people, most of whom are still actively involved in the scene. It was a gathering space and boost of energy needed to start a scene. It was a privilege to be involved in this!