MSCTY, the leading global agency for music and architecture, announces its Summer 2021 programme of commissions, partnerships and events, each exploring new ways to experience the world through sound and space.
MSCTY creates audio collaborations for physical, tangible and imagined landscapes, seeking new ways of reading the world around us. Its unique studio brings with it decades of experience in music and sound production, sensitively curating new work by imaginative and dynamic musicians and sound artists.
“We have a busy summer lined up at MSCTY with new online track releases, including the launch of our collaboration between Kengo Kuma, the V&A Dundee and pioneering Japanese ambient composer and percussionist Midori Takada. We will also be releasing a new double cassette tape collection of MSCTY EXPO tracks via the reactivated MSCTY label, as well as a series of online essays.”
Nick Luscombe
Launching in May 2021 is the latest in MSCTY’s ongoing ‘Spaces + Places’ series of unique, site-specific music commissions, created in response to different locations around the world, geolocated at each site and also available to listen (and relax) to via mscty.space. In ‘Rochdale Vivification’, industrial-era engineering marvels and sound collide as Lone Taxidermist, aka Natalie Sharp, presents a sonic response to the Rochdale Canal. The composition, presented in four ‘scenes’, is a sonic journey by bicycle along this industrial-era wonder and the recently fully-reopened link between Manchester and Sowerby Bridge. An artist at the forefront of what The Quietus magazine described as ’New Weird Britain’: “a new wave of underground musicians, creating immersive worlds for their audiences to participate in”, Lone Taxidermist focuses on presenting live music in non-conventional settings, challenging existing frameworks and expectations and explores issues around gender and sexuality, pain and the body, pushing the parameters within a live setting. The new track is presented with a newly commissioned essay by Rebecca Morrill and Guy Tinsdale, exploring the history of the Rochdale Canal and Britain’s related industrial history.
A second series of commissions will be presented in June as part of the 2021 London Festival of Architecture, a collaboration with Otocare at the University of Tokyo and Team London Bridge (Kirk Barley and Elsa Hewitt). For this project, MSCTY is partnering with the University of Tokyo’s OTOCARE project to sonically enhance the locations of Potter’s Fields Park and the communal garden of Gibbons Rent, both located directly next to Tower Bridge, via exclusively commissioned soundscapes by artists Kirk Barley and Elsa Hewitt. Both tracks respond to each location and draw inspiration from LFA 2021’s “care” theme.
Opening in June is Reinventing Texture, a MSCTY_Studio collaboration with Toshiki Hirano and Clare Farrow for the Japan Pavilion at the 2021 London Design Biennale. Asking questions such as ‘What is the sound of Tokyo?’ and ‘What does London feel like?’, this experimental immersive Pavilion ‘Reinventing Texture’ links the two cities through a sensory stimulation of texture without touch, at a time when physical travel is restricted. Toshiki Hirano’s multi-layered Washi paperwork evokes the spirit of everyday life and includes MSCTY_Studio’s recordings of Tokyo streets, household objects, vending machines, toilets, and more.
Also this summer, MSCTY will launch their new radio show, MSCTY_Radio Tokyo on Resonance FM (weekly on Sundays), taking listeners on a weekly, hour-long journey into the heart – and the sprawl – of Tokyo. Expect field recordings, music, interviews and exclusive MSCTY tracks and happenings, hosted by MSCTY’s Nick Luscombe and James Greer. MSCTY_Zine 02 [Spring 2021] is available to read through mscty.space and features specially commissioned essays, contextual articles and archive gems from the MSCTY world.
MORE: mscty.space
About MSCTY
While it’s standard practice to consider the visual impact of developments, the aural experience is often assumed an afterthought at best. MSCTY [pronounced mew-zi-sit-ee] challenges that assumption. We believe that the things we hear are as important as those we see, and since 2010 we have pioneered a new approach to placemaking and sonic interactions with ‘Spaces + Places’. Driven by our core in-house Studio team with decades of experience in music and sound production, our [250+ so far] site-specific curations + creations partner with institutions, developers, brands, city planners, regional governments and more. We also commission and produce new written work and essays, short films, host workshops about field recordings and lecture about sound art and music for space. We work with research partners including the Bartlett in the UK and The University of Tokyo in Japan.
