If we told you’d be able to hear colour and see sound this Saturday night at fabric, we wouldn’t blame you for thinking we were a few nuts short of a fruitcake. That is until you witness the wonders of Crosstown Rebels' leading lady, Deniz Kurtel and her recently exposed 'creature of the night,' aka a self-made LED light installation that will ignite a sensory overload and take your dancing feet into a whole new dimension. Deniz’s LED artform first came alive in her secret workshop at Wolf and Lamb’s favorite hang-out, the Marcy Hotel in Brooklyn. Since then, her impressive artistry has been laying down technicolour spectacles that generate a raw flow of energy between the visual experience of colour, sound and emotion.
On a musical note, we are very happy to welcome Deniz into the labyrinth of fabric alongside her fellow rebel ravers, label boss Damian Lazarus, Parisian star Dyed Soundorom and the inimitable Jamie Jones, who are now taking on the European leg of their Rebel Rave Tour. Her smash hit 'Yeah' (feat Guest of Nature) has been denting dancefloors worldwide; not to mention her punk-funk techno remix of 'Fables & Fairytales' (by N/A featuring Rosina)...just two big reasons to get your hands on her hotly tipped debut album out this year.
Reminding us once again that the ‘future is rebel,' catch Deniz’s words on her LED mastery and some of her major influences here...
I've been involved with LED art for a couple of years before I started making music and it's a nice coincidence that these two art forms work very well together. When I was talking about the Crosstown Rebels tour with Damian, he encouraged me to build an installation for the tour and I wasn't so sure of it because it was going to be the first time I'm playing live and I felt like it might be too much to handle at once, but I'm very happy that I did. It's a big effort to travel with it and set it up, but it definitely adds a lot to my show and is worth the effort.
The first time I got interested in LEDs was in 2006 when I went to the Burning Man Festival for the first time with Zev and Gadi (Wolf+Lamb), and afterwords Zev gave me a bunch of his LEDs and I started making installations with those at Wolf+Lamb parties, and later at places such as 3rd Ward, School of Visual Arts, the Burning Man festival, The Rabbit Hole, and Communikey Festival of Electronic Arts.
I've also been inspired by the amazing LED artists Leo Villareal and Todd Polenberg from New York.
Visual element has always been important in music, in adding another dimension to the experience...In my LED projects before I started making music, I was preprogramming patterns, now I'm experimenting with connecting the lights with my sound, where the lights are responding to the data coming from my music. Right now I have a combination of patterns that are preprogrammed and ones that are feeding live from audio. It's a work in progress, and I'm constantly working on developing a more intelligent communication between the lights and the sound. The installation that I will have in my fabric show on May 22nd is what I built for the Crosstown Rebels tour back in February, and this will be my first show in Europe with it.
www.denizkurtel.com
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