Rui Ho, Jale, Papaphilia x Mossy 333, Ham Laosethakul, RHunter

LIQUID ARCHITECTURE and 4A CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART present a night of splayed club influences via Chinese producer RUI HO. Known for her work on Shanghai label Genome 6.66 MBP and her genre-defying live performances, RUI HO makes her Melbourne debut alongside JALE’s fine mesh of synthetic textures and a new performance by PAPAPHILIA x MOSSY 333, HAM LAOSETHAKUL’s oscillating explorations and the data smearing AI of RHUNTER.

RUI HO: A genre-blending tour de force, Berlin-based non-binary Chinese producer and artist RUI HO makes electronic music that infuses modern club music with traditional Chinese sounds, described as “a loose narrative of ancient warfare and imaginary events”. 戰記 is RUI HO’s debut EP, and their second release on Genome 6.66 Mbp. From grimy drums to epic soaring trance, their sound combines the intensity of the club with sweet and refreshing melodies from their past and present.

JALE is a DJ and irrepressible energy-source. She has cemented her place in the Melbourne club scene, creating sets featuring new sounds from around the world intended to disrupt and reimagine the idea of contemporary club music. JALE trades strict loyalty to any sub-genre for a free-wheeling mix of moods and tempos that subverts overly-familiar clubbing soundscapes.

RHUNTER constructs huge spectralist panoramas, held together at the seams by precise percussion that flickers between creaky electroacoustics and punchy HD SFX. His treatment of sound material is like hearing the hallucinatory product from a noise removal algorithm pushed beyond its intended domain; something uncompromisingly sharp, rippling, ringing, totally embracing its own digitality. But this digitality is not a cold digitality, finding its counterpoint in various organic interventions ranging from liquid bass stabs to autotuned lamentations to the occasional oceanic drum kit adventure. This translates into variously-sized tension-release-structures, keeping the material constantly breathing and moving. Crisp samples and smeared tones lose and regain assumed form, the density of the discrete sound components always inviting new permutations.

HAM LAOSETHAKUL is a Thai born Melbourne based DJ. His exploratory sets – voyage through codes and data of sound where oscillations of noise pulses in and out of life – represent his personal experience from the confines of his worldly walls. He employs linear narrative to construct a visual palette of his escapades which he expresses through a sonic exploration: takes mind through a vastly hypnotic and romantically awkward journey, allowing curiosity to be understood through uninhibited and experiential means.

Together PAPAPHILIA x MOSSY 333 imagine the connectivity between music and the body through movement – exposing the shared quality of poetics.

MOSSY 333: is a multi-disciplinary artist focused on painting, music, and performance. Her stage work evokes insight to the subjectivity of her trans feminine experiences regarding body and movement, casting a critical gaze on heteronormative cis-gendered conditioning. Her performances demystify the often essentialised idea of a trans woman, to remind people that “trans women are women with autonomy and complexities”.

PAPAPHILIA aurally interrogates the aesthetics of political representation, exploring how sensorial disorientation informs collective belonging. She blends the poetics of exaltation and sorrow from 90s dance music, RnB, disco, pop and traditional pop standards, into an electronic palette drawn from the dystopian poetics of contemporary technological disposability. Slopped pop samples morph into the stoned rhythms of backwashed synths that ebb from the rhythmic flow of acid techno to deep house.