Spatial Sound Performances: Signal Dreaming

Grey Streak, Wendy Smith and coby o·bi play FACT on Thursday 3 December, part of a new sound art and performance series called PEARL, run by Lola de la Mata and Jon Davies. The night is built around IKLECTIK's custom immersive spatial audio system, one of the few grassroots setups in the UK working with multi-channel and three-dimensional sound. It's not stereo — the artists compose in space and move sound through and around the audience, so instead of listening to a mix from the front, you're inside it.

The three performers bring very different starting points. Grey Streak is the recording project of Seb Westwood, who samples online ephemera — ASMR, TikTok trends and livestreaming — and works them into glitching bedroom pop. He co-founded SINK Recordings, and his project Transport for Liverpool City Region was commissioned by Mark Leckey and Tate. Wendy Smith is an electroacoustic composer who centres her work on forgotten, marginalised and underrepresented voices. coby o·bi combines contemporary classical, avant-jazz, musique concrète and noise. Hearing them back-to-back on the same system should give a good sense of how differently three artists can use the same spatial tools.

PEARL is a new series, and this night sits alongside a two-day Spatial Sound Lab masterclass run by IKLECTIK on 1-2 December, so the performance is part of a wider focus on how this kind of audio works. The night starts at 18:00 in The Box, on the ground floor of FACT at 88 Wood Street, L1 4DQ. Tickets are £12 and booking is required.