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© Claudia Schmacke
Tim
Hodgkinson [London] • flat guitar, electronics, reeds
Roger
Turner [London] • drumset & percussion
Thomas Lehn [Cologne] • analogue synthesizer
upcoming tour in the fall of 2009
November 25 - December 6
For booking please contact us here
The group met at Szünetjel Festival in Budapest 1997.
Tours in Italy and Netherlands followed. KONK PACK did a live broadcast
for BBC Mixing It and began to tour regularly, recorded three albums for
the Cologne-based GROB label, and played a sold-out concert in London
with Derek Bailey. Most recent, KONK PACK created the multi media performance
STATE OF PLAY at the Musique
Action Festival 2007 in collaboration with Romanian video artist Ramona
Poenaru and Swiss vocalist Dorothea
Schürch.
CD RELEASES:
1999, Big Deep [GROB.102]
2001, Warp Out [GROB.323]
2004, off leash [GROB.654]
all released on GROB
www.grobcologne.de
FESTIVAL APPEARANCES
Victoriaville, FIMAV 2000
Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy/F, Musique Action 2000
Mhere/F, Fruits de Mhere 2000
Wels/A, Music Unlimited 2000
Bourges/F, Synthese Festival 2001
Nickelsdorf/A, Konfrontationen 2001
Ann Arbor/USA, Edge Festival 2001
Seattle, Earshot Jazzfest 2001
Prague, Alternativa Festival 2001
Bratislava/SK, Next Music Festival 2001
Utrecht/Rotterdam, Rumor Festival 2001
Belgrade, ring ring festival 2002
Mulhouse, Jazz a Mulhouse 2002
Mhere/F, Fruits de Mhere 2003
Seattle, Earshot Jazzfest 2003
Vancouver, Dangerous Currents Festival 2003
Nottingham, Now 2006
Barcelona, LEM 2006
Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy/F, Musique Action 2007
Ann Arbor/USA, Edge Festival 2007
TOURS
1998: Italy
1999: The Netherlands
2000: UK, Germany and France
2001: UK, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, The Netherlands, Czech
Republic and USA
2002: UK, Germany, Austria,
2003: UK, Italy, Canada, France
2004: UK, France, Germany, Austria
2005: UK
2006: UK
2007: USA
Wed. October 15, Tilburg @ Paradox
Thu. October 16, Amsterdam @ OT301
Fri. October 17, Wuppertal @ unerhört
Sat. October 18, Weikersheim @ Club W71
Sun. October 19, Cologne @ Studio 672 > reconstructing song
with Swiss vocalist Dorothea Schürch
Wed. October 22, Hannover @ Atelier Grammophon (tbc)
Thu. October 23, Sicily (tba)
Fri. October 24, Palermo @ Sala Wenders/Goethe Institute Palermo / Curva Minore
Sat. October 25, Forli @ area sismica
PRESS
"Grob label artists Konk Pack are utterly awesome. Featuring Thomas
Lehn on the craziest old EMS synthi A, Tim Hodgkinson on flat guitar and
Roger Turner on percussion, the show is awkwardly brilliant and defiant.
With startling combinations of punkish nuisance, ingenious change-ups,
and rolling, stumbling, tripping and flipping sound inventions, Konk Pack
are one of the most exciting Improv groups in the world."
Lee Henderson reviewing Vancouver Electric City in The
Wire, Dec 2003
"Heralded by a release on the Grob label - Big Deep, recorded in
Rome, Tilburg and Brussels - Konk Pack's appearance at a central London
venue attracted a sell-out crowd. The accelerated,interactive electronica
of Roger Turner (percussion), Tim Hodgkinson (deconstructed tabletop guitar)
and Thomas Lehn (analogue synth) arises from a scintillating heap of sonic
detritus the way an artificial intelligence manifests itself in a Manga
movie: a writhing mass of automobiles, arcade consoles, street furniture
and mobile phones. Hodgkinson attacks his amplified strings with plectrum
and bow, his specs glinting as he waits for the right awkward moment to
kloodge a sonic shard on the side of one of Turner's amazingly vocalised
motifs (at times you swear you hear collaborator Phil Minton's mucal snorts).
Lehn restricts his pianism on analogue synth to pinched blurts, but still
manages to resemble a switched-on Liszt. Although we itched to interrupt
with applause, Konk Pack played an unbroken 45 minute set: fun debris,
rollicking freakouts ... and one magical section of scrape and pling where
the music seemed to play itself."
Ben Watson The Wire,
April 2001
"Collectively improvised music comes in many forms, with as many
degrees of success. Only some genuinely presses the envelope, pushing
into a terrain where the unknown can happen and where even the best players
encounter risk. On that transcendent scale, the trio Konk Pack - Tim Hodgkinson
on table-top guitar and clarinet, Thomas Lehn on synthesizer, and the
wondrous Roger Turner on percussion - fared best among the groups at this
festival [Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville, May 2000],
creating music in which a barrage of discreet particles bounced around,
colliding in a universe in which chance and interactivity blurred into
one another. Playing at one o'clock on Saturday afternoon in the festival's
smallest venue, Konk Pack established a benchmark by which other improvisers'
performances would inevitably be judged."
Bill Smith, Coda Magazine, June 2000
"As for pure total improvisation, the verdict on german-english trio
Konk Pack was unanimous. Even listeners unreceptive to improvised noise
(bending frequencies and sound-textures via an analog synth, manipulation
of a guitar on a table, free percussion, etc) were won over by these subtle
sonorities superbly segued, magnificent interplay."
Alain Brunet, La Presse, Montreal, 23 May 2000