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photography by Nadine Oliver

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MICHAELBRAILEY

live set

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​MICHAELBRAILEY

`,-._”-,h_ ‘e_a,”rt;`_ ,-_- t“h,e _-s-_-i’-ze -_ / o,f_ ._a “_.—w,o_.-rl-,_-d`_.-_,-“ (2019)

 

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[INTERVAL]

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​Laurie + Suze

Coop (2019)

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[INTERVAL]

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Joe Snape

Joyrobix (2019, world premiere)

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performers:

MICHAELBRAILEY

Laurie Tompkins

Suze Whaites 

Jethro Cooke (Joe Snape)

Joe Snape

Louise Snape (Joe Snape)

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VIRTUALLYREALITY partners up with quintessentially un-British record label Slip for an opening night party featuring pop music for a restless generation.

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The night climaxes with the first tour date of 'Joyrobix', the live version of Brummy-abroad Joe Snape’s flooring return to Slip. Born of a complicated move to the US in 2015, Joyrobix pays weird homage to a musical America that doesn't quite exist. Part soft-rock guitars, part gospel grooves, part Broadway aria, this is music that's resolutely strange and oddly familiar at once.  

 

This suite of nimble, polychrome post-pop songs is arranged for chamber trio and set to a collection of ten absurdist films directed with Swiss artist Leonie Brandner.

 

The joy of 'Joyrobix' is channeled in the work of Slip label co-runners Laurie + Suze. Their audiovisual performance 'Coop' is a meshing of Tompkins' sonic negotiations of pop cultural trauma, ritual self-abasement, and gunky funk, with Whaites' illusive video renderings of the alien, microscopic, and fleshy.

 

VIRTUALLYREALITY's artistic director MICHAELBRAILEY's live set emblazons his body with projected watermarks as his fragile falsetto struggles through tech-indebted songwriting. His new work `,-._”-,h_ ‘e_a,”rt;`_ ,-_- t“h,e _-s-_-i’-ze -_ / o,f_ ._a “_.—w,o_.-rl-,_-d`_.-_,-“ is a moment of self-repair/disrepair held at distance by strobing tech, enabling internal narratives to privately and safely unfurl.