Ai-maako, the 10th Festival Internacional de Música Electroacústica de Chile, will take place on October 6 - 16, 2010 in Valdivia and Santiago (Chile). Of interest are two «carte blanche» concerts to David Berezan (including a world premiere) and Robert Normandeau. Amongst the selected works are those by Francis Dhomont, Coin Gutter, Terri Hron, Flô Menezes and several others.

Do not miss Finnish duo Pan Sonic and Canadian duo Coin Gutter in concert at Richard’s on Richards in Vancouver (BC) on September 23, 2004.

Electronic music duo Coin Gutter will take part in the Signal to Noise ’04 event held in Vancouver (BC) from March 4-7, 2004. They will present a live performance on Saturday March 6th at 9pm.

On November 4, 2003, Radio-Canada French radio show Le Navire «Night» will present the concert of Vancouver electronic music duo Coin Gutter recorded last March in Montréal during the Rien à voir (13) event of electroacoustic musics. 100.7 FM in Montréal, 90.9 FM in Vancouver and simultaneously in RealAudio on www.radio-canada.ca.

Since forming the electroacoustic duo Coin Gutter in 2000, Vancouver’s Emma Hendrix and Graeme Scott have been blessing local ears with their consistently beautiful noise. The pair’s latest release, All your dreams are meaningless is like a surrealist landscape painting rooted firmly in our city’s rich tradition of experimental sound design. As if October hadn’t already given us enough wonderful electronic music concerts, Coin Gutter adds to the lovely din with an appearance on Tuesday (October 28) at the Railway Club. Noise freaks unite!

Noise artists Emma Hendrix and Graeme Scott seem at home in the Barfly-esque Astoria Hotel, an offbeat hangout for an out-of-the-ordinary duo that emulates neither dance culture nor the classical tradition.

In Coin Gutter’s work, beats are rare. Likewise absent is the contemplative, whooshy blip-bloop sound associated with the electroacoustic composers of academe. Both members admire popular and classical music but are not pulled in either direction, as listeners will hear in the pair’s concert at the Scotiabank Dance Centre.

Typically, Coin Gutter compositions feature electronic sounds improvised around samples, creating shadowy, ominous narratives.

“I put my guitar down one day and started fiddling with a cheap, crappy sampler back in 1999. That was like opening Pandora’s box,” says Scott. “It was like walking into an orgy, a big free-for-all where you could sample everything and everybody.”

“Before then, we were playing music,” continues blond, angular Hendrix, “but when we pooled our gear and started making noise together, we created dialogues. It seemed stupid to attach these dialogues to some art tradition or disco. What’s the point of making something [original] and then pussying out by attaching it to something familiar?”

“In the novel Trainspotting, the dialogue’s vernacular is strange to most readers,” Scott says by way of example. “But as these unfamiliar words are repeated in different intonations and contexts, they acquire meaning for the reader. We try and set up the same kind of discovery process with noise.”

“Noise is traditionally unwanted sound,” says Hendrix. “It’s mentally discarded. But if people concentrate on organized noise, it intrigues.”

“We’ve never intentionally put up barriers,” Scott argues. “Compared to the loudness of the Japanese noise bands, we’re quite polite.”

Polite in terms of volume perhaps, but a scrappiness pervades Coin Gutter’s material. In Timewise, from its latest recording, All your dreams are meaningless, a woman’s voice repeats the words “he’s gone” as Hendrix and Scott improvise around the quote with electronic noise.

The listener’s focus is made to shift gradually from anxiety over the missing man to concern for the speaker herself.

Hendrix and Scott’s nuanced soundscapes range from subtle to calamitous. In another Coin Gutter track, Lullaby, a recorded song by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu seems caught in a whirlwind of aural waste, flying from the mix’s background to foreground, compromised by crackle and hiss. The song itself now rages in a cyberpunk mode that Martinu could never have envisioned.

Each Coin Gutter piece has its own edginess, as does the Astoria. It’s late. A sunburned man tries to sell us a power drill. I pay and leave. Hendrix and Scott remain, acclimatized and comfortable.