WATER

 

Enter the ritual; hear the waves crash as you're dragged into the undertow of bass, hear the wail of the sirens who await you there. Let instinct be your guide. Swim with us at your peril.

Water are a six-piece sonic and visual group that formed in Manchester in March 2015, now based at Islington Mill, Salford. They comprise a heady mix of artists, poets and musicians and performers who've come together to create ritualistic encounters which engulf the senses. Water have left audiences with a feeling of being part of something magical, intense and sometimes bewildering, but always powerful. Water embodies and projects an invitation for self-interpretation, free from the shackles of stratification and perverted knowledge. Political in its resistance to ‘structure’ as socially acquired, acknowledged as divisive and oppressive, and articulated through the spirits and shadows of ‘living purgatory’ that are summoned in in its séance.

 

Water have played some the most accomplished audio-visual experiences at Fat Out’s Burrow (Islington Mill) for Gesamtkunstwerk (entitled Water’s Concrete Seance) and for Lydia Lunch’s Halloween Seance where they shared the bill with Big Sexy Noise, PINS and ILL. These shows have seen collaborations with dancers (Gwen Osmond, Sophie Gardner) and visual artists including KHOM (Gnod, IMPA TV) among others. Water also play intense spoken word focused performances, most recently at The Eagle Inn, Salford for Locean’s Tesla Tape release, Train. Mill residents Gnod have been keen supporters of Water, they are currently recording a Tesla Tape release (with Kris, Gnod & Kaskie, Death of Her Money) and are honoured to be invited to play at The Gnod Weekender in London, April 9-10th.

 

Quotes:

Micheal O'Neil (Tesla Tapes, creator) on Water:

The ‘Will to Power’ appropriated for inclusive collective empowerment and the rejection of hierarchical form in its entirety. Water embodies and projects an invitation for self-interpretation, free from the shackles of stratification and perverted knowledge. Political in its resistance to ‘structure’ as socially acquired, acknowledged as divisive and oppressive, and articulated through the spirits and shadows of ‘living purgatory’ that are summoned in in its séance. There is something wrong. Their dateless wails of human energy, abrasive crashes and clashes, project the locked box of collective cultural potential. It is rejection of classification and the misery of its cage. There is a primal darkness which comes haunting out of their communal subconscious, murdering ‘objectification’, material form, and all of its evil deception. They force a critical reflection on ‘what is’ and our passive desire for form and familiarity, both musically and socially. With no exacting repetition, motif, phrase or hook, all modern mechanisms become exposed, and are unpicked through a creative shift where ‘intuition’ supersedes the ‘learnt’. Be ‘Water’...