Independent artists Mito Elias, Ashley J Higgs and Abe Dunovits unite this April for AUNAI: First Encounter.
Fresh from releasing his fourth solo album Charango Unchained late last year, Melbourne musical melange, Argentinian-born songwriter Abe Dunovits has continued to remain inspired, creating and performing his unique fusion of triumphant music, literature and art, which has been described as unconventional, inspired, avant-garde, luminary and memorable and above all, mestizo.
“Since last November I have been busy with different projects. One is Dunobeats, my original band. I put that together late last year and have been rehearsing for shows, such as Charango Unchained launch in late Dec 2022 and a recent show at Bar Oussou,” Abe Dunovits tells us.
“I have recorded a couple of singles in collaboration with two different singers, an electronic style one with Naarm-based artist Little Chilli, a track called ‘Migrant’s Cumbia’ released late March 2023 and another track ‘Don’t Talk to Me’, a mix of Pop, Rock and Rap with NZ performer Rochelle O’Reilly.”
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With such clear ambition and spontaneity, Dunovits continues to inspire, joining forces with two incredible multidisciplinary artists, Mito Elias (Cape Verde) and Ashley J Higgs (Melbourne), for one special evening this April at Kindred Studios in Footscray.
Coined AUNAI: First Encounter, the event will see the three artists come together to celebrate a meeting of sounds, words and culture in an experimental music night on Friday 14th of April.
“I met Mito Elias some years ago through the poetry group A Voz Limpia and through some workshops I did for MAV. I watched him and heard him performing at the poetry nights and I liked what he does, in writing, visual arts and performance. He is truly a unique artist, with a distinctive voice and a deep perspective on many things,” Dunovits explains.
“I also connect with Mito because we both come from colonised countries and we have converged here, in this country, which has also been colonised. I always thought that what Mito does is in the same vein as what Ashley and I have been doing for the past 25 years. I’ve been wanting to collaborate with Mito but due to Covid restrictions has been hard to organise in person. Funny thing is that Mito and Ashley met before, so when I introduced each other it was like (squinting) “I know you…” Mostly, I think both these artists need to be seen and heard more, they are my favourite avant-gardists.”
Each artist comes from different artistic and cultural backgrounds but they coincide in the spontaneous, improvised sound-making process. Sound Art is often a difficult proposition for mainstream audiences. However, these three sound adventurers allow for poignancy, empathy, respect and humour to filter through their respective
Mito, Ashley and Abe will each showcase in short solo performances culminating the night with a collaboration that will include the incorporation of custom-found instruments, synths, drums, string instruments from different cultures, voices and samples to create imaginative, avant-garde cinematic soundscapes, imaginative song cycles, improvised songs with a backdrop of images.
“All of us are self-contained artists who manipulate several instruments, both in analog and digital form. Mito uses found objects to produce sound cycles that are otherworldly, he also used instruments like the saxophone, both analog and digital, to create music that is akin to Free Jazz,” Dunovits says of Mito.
“Ashley manipulates language and sound to create layers of meaning in free-flowing sounding note-scapes, at the same time as playing percussion or instruments he might not be familiar with but with a sense of purpose and determination.”
Making music for a few decades now, Dunovits, however, tends to use unusual instruments or ethnic instruments to transform the obtuse into the familiar, be it sounds or words.
“What unites us is the way we combine sounds and musical structures into what people might call “songs”, “sound poems”, “sound pictures” with a beginning, middle and end, taking and transforming all of our musical and artistic notions and distilling them through the use of instruments to create sounds,” Dunovits says of the three artists and the forthcoming show.
“The term “tabula rasa”, clean slate, applies every time we start something. We don’t think in terms of “genre” but it could be interpreted as such. What sets us apart is that we come from disparate places and traditions.”
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With three incredible musicians uniting for one night only, the night of experimental music is spawned from an improvised album the three recorded together earlier this year. Due to be released later this month, and (available on Bandcamp here), the show in Footscray will be a chance to witness the album in a live setting, albeit, improvised for an incredible unique ‘jam’.
“Personally, the difference between a “jam” and our performance style is purpose. To me, a jam can happen between musicians but has no purpose other than to pass the time, practice your chops or try new things and have a good time. In our case, our purpose is to create a work of art on the spot, form a statement that can transcend space and time, something that can be recorded as a sound piece but surely we are trying new things and having a good time also,” Dunovits says.
“We don’t take the time we spend making music together lightly but we don’t have academic pretension either. We are playing as if we have been rehearsing all our lives for this moment. It’s a moment to be felt. We are visualizing what we do as we do it in a way that an artist might play something that was written out or rehearsed. People improvise for a lot of reasons. I have improvised to work and survive many times. I do it daily.
“We got together early this year to meet each other and we recorded it. To me, those recordings sound as if we rehearsed them, but as I said before, it’s a lifetime of rehearsal to culminate at the moment we are together in a room. Knowing how music works also helps in forming musical pieces in a way that sounds rehearsed and professional, even though it’s improvised.”
With a mesmerising night of improvised experimental music, this is a must-attend event for anyone who wants to be inspired by independent artists, sound making, unusual soundscapes and poetic originality.
AUNAI: First Encounter takes place at Kindred Bandroom in Footscray on Friday, 14 April 2023. Tickets are on sale now here or can be purchased at the door on the night.
Purchase the collaborative album on Bandcamp here.
