A MASSIVE hit at Edinburgh and a sell out at the Royal Festival Hall in London, a rock n roll theatrical experience unlike any other is coming to Colchester.
KlangHaus:Alight Here, is a site specific show which is taking place at the old Queens Street Bus Depot thanks to the Colchester Arts Centre for The Roman River Music Festival.
KlangHaus features live band The Neutrinos collaborating with visual artist Sal Pittman deconstructing and reinventing the idea of a rock gig as a site specific promenade theatre/live art experience. The show blends live music, live art, visual art and promenade performance in a way that creates a totally original experience for the audience.
It's coming to Colchester as part of the Roman River Festival thanks to Norwich Arts Centre director Pasco Kevlin, who grew up in the town and was former director of the Lakeside Theatre at Essex University.
He says: "When I saw them in Norwich there was this Velvet Underground/Andy Warhol type vibe and I was really interested in what they were doing.
"For us KlangHaus was all about inverting that idea of theatre companies creating rock n roll by putting guitars into actors hands so that now it was a band making theatre."
KlangHaus originally grew out of the band’s experiences recording their third album The Butcher of Common Sense, working together with Pittman in Berlin’s legendary FunkHaus, a vast former DDR radio studio. The sessions revolutionised their attitudes to making music and art. The result was a limited edition 340 page hand-finished art-book containing the album on CD and a 10inch vinyl record.
The Neutrinos have released three albums and performed all around the world, their music having been used for various underground film soundtracks, while Sal Pittman is an artist working with light, supergraphics, typography and montage in a seamless line between analogue and digital presentation whose art direction and design work has been used on promos and short films for 4AD and Mute record companies.
KlangHaus is newly created for the space it is being performed in and is always performed in an unusual location not normally used for performance. In London it was in the Royal Festival Hall’s ceiling/roofspace alongside the air conditioning plant, and in Colchester it will be housed in the disused Bus Depot and the 1970s open backed Routemaster bus that Colchester Arts Centre and Firstsite gallery have put to such brilliant uses in the past.
KlangHaus: Alight Here
Colchester Bus Depot,
Queen Street, Colchester.
Today until Sunday. 6.30pm and 8.30pm.
£12, £6 concessions. 01206 500900.
www.colchesterartscentre.com
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