“ON Location” is a new, immersive micro-festival, coming to Ainslie Arts Centre this weekend as part of its Ainslie Salon series.

The brainchild of recent APRA-AMCOS award-winner Sia Ahmad, who looks after live music programming at Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres, its focus will be on electronic and improvised music, using field recordings, sound art and electronic music.

Featuring Del Lumanta, Leah Blankendaal, Lydian Dunbar and “Melt” on Friday (September 23) then Ben Marston, Lisa Lerkenfeldt, salllvage [Rowan Savage] and “trm-b” on Saturday, the mini-festival will be accompanied by projections and hands-on sound sculptures around the building to enhance the art experience.

Ahmad puts me in touch with Ben Marston, best-known in Canberra as a trumpeter, but who changed musical course when in 2014, armed with an ArtsACT grant, he travelled to Norway to study with Norwegian musician and record producer Jan Bangs, known in his home country as the top electronics guru .

“As a trumpet player when you progress from Miles [Davis] and the ’60s, ambient music is the logical place to go,” Marston says.

Bangs co-founded the “Punkt Festival” in Kristiansen, southern Norway, and there Marston got to follow him around —” I would play, and he would remix me – it was a surreal experience,” he says.

Marston, by day director of bands at Radford College and who also teaches a course in New Orleans jazz rehearsal basics for the ANU’s Open School of Music, has been working with drummer Chris Thwaite, and in “On Location” he will use some of his drum parts and configure them for electronic music. There’s be a cinematic element, too.

Next I speak to First Nations artist Rowan Savage of “salllvage,” who lives in in Ashfield and wasn’t brought up on Country, but  is a Kombumerri man from the Nerang area on the Gold Coast who  goes back there every couple of months to make field recordings.

“I go looking for sounds, especially basic sounds from nature like bird calls and the ocean, but sometimes I make sounds out loud, tapping rocks together,” he tells me. “Once I get back to my desk, I have a whole library of sounds – I guess it’s my way of connecting to country.”

“I grew up not knowing my culture, so I have had to make my connections as an adult,” explaining that his cousin up there is the head of an Aboriginal organisation and has greatly helped him.

Savage sometimes gets unexpected sounds such as cars passing on the bridge or people speaking and tries to incorporate them with the sounds of nature, but the piece he will to perform for “On Location” is all about that most intelligent of birds, the crow.

“’Wagahn’ is the word for Crowe in our language. I listen to crows a lot and there are lots of crows around my house in Sydney and this piece was created for reacting to them.”

Finally, I meet Leah Blankendaal, a composer and performer of electro-acoustic sound art who also works in Canberra for Musica Viva.

“My private practice is using loop pedal work, but not in the traditional way. It’s very meditative in the space about being present with the audience and being still,” Blankendaal says.

In “On Location,” she’ll perform a  new work  and a piece from her 2020 album, “Alongside, Amongst And Against.” That, she says, could be alongside a piece of art, against a piece of architecture, or among an audience, depending what the setting is.

Ainslie Main Hall, Ainslie Arts Centre, Braddon. 6.30pm, Friday and Saturday, September 23 and 24. 

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