Richard Bowers, South Wales Improvisers, Laura Phillips, VERY FRIENDLY, NPOT, WEMA, TTF Radio.
SHIFT Through The Floor Test Transmissions.
SHIFT relocate to St John’s Church, Canton and online with TTF Radio during September & October; testing and experimenting with TTF Radio.
Focusing on experimental sound, artistic practice, community, and culture. Featuring experimental music, performance, talks and installations. SHIFT offers a platform for both emerging and established artists, encouraging collaboration and presenting bold, boundary-pushing work.
Audiences can expect an engaging atmosphere filled with thought-provoking performances, conversations, and creative exchange.
Online:
September 25th: 7pm
WEMA (The Welsh Experimental Music Alliance) Zoom network session/discussion (Online) (Free session) (TFF Radio)
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/N9j3B-B5RBiOv_Wi9cfm5A
TTF Radio Test Transmissions. 24/09/25, 26/09/25, 28/09/25, 01/10/25 & 03/10/25-04/10/25
Friday 3rd & Saturday 4th October
Friday 3rd October
5pm-7pm
Richard Bowers The Tower of Destruction: (Free entry)
Multi channel audio installation blending experimental opera, moving image, cinematic and historical references. Subtitled Fourteen Short Operas About Fourteen Long Operas. Its text was a personal rumination on the cultural heroes and betes noire of European culture from the French Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In St John’s Church, the sound from the installation can be heard in full over the course of two days.
7:30pm-10pm Open (tickets) LINK
South Wales Improvisers
South Wales Improvisers performance in response to Richard Bowers The Tower of Destruction installation.
Ensemble performance.
10pm Curfew
Saturday:
11am-4pm Free entry
Wema
An experimental music conference for Welsh & Wales based artists and beyond, presented by the Welsh Experimental Music Alliance (WEMA) WEMA gives an opportunity to work collaboratively, share practice, explore ideas and have fun. Open discussions and music making investigate many of the issues important to Wales-based avant-garde and improvising music makers. Featuring contributions from festival artists.
Dissection Ensemble. A small invited ensemble of improvisers and experimental musicians playing at any time can stop the performance to dissect what is happening and initiate discussion.
Dissection Ensemble. Concluding reflection – short 5 mins solos with discussion around musical ideas and potential responses, ‘’why we do what we do’’
Closing piece by Dissection Ensemble + others
Featuring artists from the weekend and TTF Radio.
4:00pm-6:00pm
Richard Bowers The Tower of Destruction: (Free entry)
Multi channel audio installation blending experimental opera, moving image, cinematic and historical references.
7pm-10pm (Tickets) LINK
7:30pm-8:30pm
NPOT
Lecture and performance. No-input mixer duo’s sound art lecture evolving into performance. Performed in the round.
NPOT have developed a collaborative iteration. Cross Input Mixing sees the duo plugging in the outputs and inputs across a pair of mixers. Various modulation devices: effects pedals, synthesisers and live inputs give further opportunity for creativity and sculpting of the sound.
An introductory lecture into this creative process will provide an context to the practicality and philosophical intention of this process. The lecture will develop into a performance in the round through a quad speaker system which identifies and amplifies the edges of the two mixers and their melding. Join us and experience the places into which the sound inevitably fluctuates continually, between sonic fluidity and chaos.
9:00pm-10pm
Laura Phillips & VERY FRIENDLY.
Laura Phillips filmmaker & sound artist, using live 16mm film projection in collaboration with power electronics duo VERY FRIENDLY. In a compelling fusion of analog media and sonic intensity, filmmaker and sound artist Laura Philips collaborates with the power electronics duo VERY FRIENDLY to create site-specific live performance.
At the heart of this collaboration is Phillips’s use of 16mm film, wielded not as a pre-recorded backdrop but as a dynamic, responsive instrument. As VERY FRIENDLY constructs dense, abrasive walls of sound filled with feedback and textured distortion, Philips manually manipulates the film projectors, creating a flickering, grainy visual dialogue that responds directly to the sonic onslaught.
The result is a visceral and symbiotic experience where the tactile decay of the film strip and the raw energy of the sound become inseparable.
Curfew 10pm
Artists
Richard Bowers
Biography
The Tower of Destruction
Installation and live Performance Friday 3rd October & Saturday 4th October, St Johns, Canton, Cardiff
Richard Bowers is an artist based in South Wales who makes installations that have a musical dimension.
He regards the combination of visual and audio components in some of his works to be necessarily incongruous to allow visitors to switch between modalities when contemplating the work.
Realising his work through custom software is, for him, an important part of the composing process.
The Tower of Destruction was an art installation for Turner House Gallery, Penarth, and was subtitled Fourteen Short Operas About Fourteen Long Operas.
Its text was a personal rumination on the cultural heroes and betes noire of European culture from the French Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In St John’s Church, the sound from the installation can be heard in full over the course of two days.
The Tower of Destruction was made possible with support from the Arts Council of Wales and Turner House Gallery. Performing artists on the sound track are Sarah Dacey, Angharad van Rijkswijk, Pam Rose Cott, Grace Curtis, Katie Stevens, and the SAAB Singers.
WEMA
Biography
Saturday 4th October St Johns, Canton, Cardiff
The Welsh Experimental Music Alliance (WEMA) is an independent, voluntary network that exists to strengthen and support producers of experimental, interdisciplinary, and performance-led art and music.
Our priorities are to – Develop site specific events that help strengthen existing collaboration and encourage new partnerships. Create engaging, progressive, and accessible experiences for a range of audiences in a range of geographical locations.
Provide valuable support, resources, and opportunities for our network members. Produce an annual network event; a forum for critical and crucial conversations in and around the scene.
Laura Phillips
Biography
Performing live Saturday 4th October St Johns, Canton, Cardiff
Laura Phillips is an artist who makes artworks using a mixture of photochemical processes, sounds & digital imagery.
Working at the intersection of visual-music, expanded film and performance, Laura’s work explores obsolescence, precarity and collective histories.
Salvaging and recycling digital & analogue media, Laura is interested in the ideas of the commons, ecology & information infrastructures.
Improvisation & expanded film is a key part of Laura’s work.
They have closely collaborated with Viridian Ensemble: an interdisciplinary instrumentalists based in Bristol, who advocate for women and non binary people in experimental music and free improvisation.
South Wales Improvisers
Biography
Performing live Saturday 4th October St Johns, Canton, Cardiff
South Wales Improvisers in collaboration with SHIFT has carved out a vibrant space for musicians to engage in free improvised ensemble music.
By providing a platform for regular monthly sessions this initiative invites a diverse range of participants to step into the creative flow of spontaneous musical expression.
Recognising the importance of inclusivity SW Improvisers warmly welcomes players of all skill levels whether seasoned musicians or complete novices. The essence of these gatherings lies in the joyous exploration of sound; thus, no prior experience is required.
NPOT
Biography
Performing live Saturday 4th October St Johns, Canton, Cardiff
Following in the tradition of Bach, Cage and Blobby, Joe and Jonny (Nuanced Presence of Tongue) dive into each recording with no preconceived ideas about the sounds they wish to make.
No plan, no map. No target and no mistake. Trusting their instincts and their desire to reject instinct in equal measure, they engage in dialogue with their equipment and each other.
Provoking, reacting and responding to each other in real time. There is no ‘undo’ button. There is no going back. Go back to what? When (not if) something unexpected happens they follow the new trajectory regardless of destination, repeating this process until time runs out.
Joe and Jonny of NPOT have developed a collaborative iteration.
Cross Input Mixing sees them plugging in the outputs and inputs across their pair of mixers. Various modulation devices: effects pedals, synthesisers and live inputs give further opportunity for creativity and sculpting of the sound.
Joe’s introductory lecture will extend his PhD research into creative process and provide an introduction to the practicality of this as well as the philosophical intention they work to.
Following this, they will perform in the round through a quad speaker system which identifies and amplifies the edges of the two mixers and their melding. Join us and experience the places into which the sound inevitably fluctuates continually, between sonic fluidity and chaos.
VERY FRIENDLY
Biography
Performing live Saturday 4th October St Johns, Canton, Cardiff
VERY FRIENDLY are a formidable duo, blending the abrasive ferocity of power electronics with the unsettling aural landscape created through noise and feedback.
Comprised of Jo Sheehy, known for the bleak noisescapes of Slow Murder and INSATIABLE WOUND, and Kieran Doe, behind the confrontational cacophony of FUCK RADIO and MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE.
This collaboration immediately signals a ascent into extreme auditory territories.
With VERY FRIENDLY, Sheehy and Doe channel their individual practices into a collaborative onslaught, defined by searing feedback, guttural vocalisations, and the eerie, fragmented transmissions of manipulated signal processing.
To buy tickets for this event please visit our events page: Through The Floor tickets from Skiddle .