KlangHaus: On Air

KlangHaus: On Air

Part gig, part live art installation and total theatre from noise art/rock/visual art collaborators

World premiere at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall (7-29 July)

Welcome to KlangHaus a maverick collision between noise, concealed sound and visual imagery. In the unsung roof space above the Royal Festival Hall, and, weather permitting, on the roof itself, experimental art-rock collective The Neutrinos and visual artist Sal Pittman assemble a site-specific montage of light, sound and space in which sky, river, wave and cloud collide.

KlangHaus originally crept out of nowhere to become a sensation at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and win a ThreeWeeks Editors Award. It is now created anew as KlangHaus: On Air to harvest unheard sounds from the walls of the Southbank Centre's unseen spaces and unravel a secret world of sound and vision.

Re-inventing the gig-going experience and taking a sledgehammer to the conventions of audience and musician separation, this 360-degree, immersive experience brings buildings to life through live performance, sound design, projected images and glimpsed vignettes – akin to a duet with the room. Taking deep breaths of life and love it’s a sensory encounter of shifting sound, colour, electronica, improvisation and disorientation.

In Edinburgh KlangHaus was a true crossover experience, equally attractive to music and theatre critics, introducing theatre to rock n’ roll audiences and vice-versa as the drama of the promenade performance erupts into the dynamics of a full on loud rock show.

Klanghaus originally grew out of the band’s experiences recording their third album The Butcher of Common Sense, working alongside Pittman in Berlin’s legendary FunkHaus, a vast former DDR radio studio. The sessions revolutionised their attitudes to making music. The result was a limited edition 340 page hand-finished art-book containing the album on CD and a 10 inch vinyl record.

The Neutrinos have spent the last 10 years in constant states of reinvention. They have released 3 albums, performed around the UK, northern Europe, Canada and the USA. Their music has been used for underground film soundtracks and throughout the feature length Channel 4 documentary The Trials of Amanda Knox.

Sal Pittman is an artist whose work lurks somewhere in the shadows; rich with tactile, off-kilter, unapologetic personality - working with light, supergraphics, typography and montage in a seamless line between analogue and digital. Her art direction and design work can be seen on promos and short films for 4AD and mute, including Grinderman, Can, Scott Walker/Sunn O))) and Daughter.