"One moment you hear John Coltrane playing a volcano, the next you hear a string section being squeezed through a toothpaste tube" - The New York Times.

"Lucas is just captivating. It's incredible how he can flip the feeling of a room upside down & sonically there’s just no other sound like his" - Zach Hill - Death Grips

"the most exciting performer I have seen in the last three years – in fact, since I first saw Iggy Pop" - Bruce Russell - WIRE magazine.

Maverick electro-acoustic free-noise improviser Lucas Abela, whose performances playing shards of amplified, broken glass across the globe is the stuff of legend, will be installing an unforgettably unique, in the round sonic performance at Navigate Arts in the Old Tanja Church on Saturday 5th February as part of his Same but Different 21/22 Summer Tour- supported by DRON SKOT & DJ Ruinned my Wedding Day.

Lucas Abelas ecstatic performances with shards of amplified glass emerged within the noise underground, where the glass evolved from a means to create free-noise cacophonies into an oddly versatile instrument producing an organic form of outsider electronica. Played somewhat like a bellow-less electric reed instrument, Abela subtly vibrates their lips against the shards edges to transmit micro-sonic vibrations into the pane. This single source of audio feeds a complex array of processing giving the instrument the illusion of ghostly accompaniment to form dense layers of anomalous music. Such an unorthodox approach to music creation has attracted the attention of some of the worlds most adventurous musicians sometimes resulting in serendipitous collaborations with the likes of; Lou Reed, Yamatsuka Eye (Boredoms), Dave Grohl (Nirvana), Flaming Lips (Peel Session), Trey Spruance (Mr Bungle), Deerhoof, Merzbow, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, Senyawa, Death Grips etc.

When COVID struck and their international commitments evaporated, Lucas hunkered down at home to reinvent how the glass is processed and with a new modular workflow has converted the normally mono glass into a quadraphonic instrument. Using positive and negative envelopes, gates and triggers all derived solely from the glass signals dynamics and frequencies Lucas synchronises changes in a myriad of audio parameters simultaneously while triggering additional sounds all in response to performance techniques. The results produce a range of parallel audio chains accompanying or even replacing the origin signal that’s not sequenced, sampled or looped but played in unison, adding significant layers of depth and character to their glass playing, which you might say is same but different.

The Same But Different Tour is supported by Australia Council for the Arts.

Lucas Abela http://dualplover.com/abela

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