I’m pleased to announce the next edition of Mercury Over Maps at Hill Station Cafe and Venue!
Please join us!
More information: http://billthompson.org/aka_prof_lofi/mercury-over-maps-27
Mercury Over Maps #27
Phil Durrant & Mark Hewins (Duo)
Phil Durrant – Amplified objects & electronics
Born near London in 1957, Phil Durrant is a multi-instrumentalist improviser/composer/sound artist who currently performs solo and group concerts. As a violinist (and member of the Butcher Russell/Durrant trio), he was one of the key exponents of the ‘group voice approach’ style of improvised music. In the late 90s, his trio with Radu Malfatti and Thomas Lehn represented a shift to a more ‘reductionist’ approach.
In recent years as an acoustic or electric mandolinist, he has been performing duos with guitarists Daniel Thompson, Martin Vishnick and Pascal Marzan, as well as saxophonist Christoph Gallio. He also performs regularly in a trio with Mark Wastell and John Butcher and has many ongoing projects with drummer Emil Karlsen including a trio with Maggie Nicols and another trio with< pianist Laura Cole.
As a semi-modular synthesist, Phil Durrant continues to perform with Bertrand Denzler and Burkhard Beins in Trio Sowari. The group celebrated their 20th anniversary in 2024. He also has a duo with drummer Mark Sanders.
He is also a member of the international electronic ensemble MIMEO with Keith Rowe, Kaffe Matthews, Thomas Lehn, Rafael Toral a.o. With Mark Wastell, Steve Beresford and David Toop, he is also involved in an audio/visual project celebrating the work of the celebrated Scottish artist, Alan Davie.
In addition, Durrant has many ad-hoc groupings with a wide variety of musicians including Dominic Lash, Andrew Lisle, Colin Webster, Tansy Spinks, Khabat Abas, Tim Hodgkinson, Bill Thompson, a.o. Phil Durrant has also collaborated and composed site-specific music for a wide variety of choreographers, including Maxine Doyle, Susanne Thomas, and Gill Clarke.
https://www.facebook.com/philsowaridurrant/
https://www.facebook.com/sowarimodular/
Mark Hewins – Guitar/electro effecta
Mark Hewins has worked extensively with various Canterbury scene musicians, including Elton Dean and Hugh Hopper. His collaboration with Dean continued when they both played as members of Soft Heap with Pip Pyle and John Greaves. He has also played with Gong Global Family which featured Hopper, Chris Cutler and Daevid Allen and was Gong’s guitar player on their 30th Anniversary tour. He has toured with Lou Reed and played guitar in the Bob Geldof band. In addition, he had a long collaboration with Casio USA, when he wrote software and sound samples for their professional and domestic music instruments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hewins
http://www.calyx-canterbury.fr/mus/hewins_mark.html
https://www.playback.co.uk
Ratdanger
Ratdanger is the freak-improv duo maintained by Audrey Cusack (Marienbad) and Ben Mason (whose body is this): formed on the south-coast in 2023, Ratdanger traverses a twisted gamut of experimental musics, from heavy computer electronics (Kerputterserlagick (2023)), to free-improv noise guitar (sharing a bill with Ryoskuke Kiyasu and appearing on the Outsider Art gig series), to live coded guitar and laptop jams (Death at 10 Paces (2026)).
Cementing themselves amongst Brighton’s rich experimental music scene, Ratdanger’s ethos is “doing what we want, when we want”, pulling inspiration from all improvised and extreme musics they’ve come into contact with. They look towards luminaries such as Derek Bailey and Keiji Haino, spending time listening on stage and off to each other and the sounds they make to form structure and phrase on-the-fly. The most explicit directions they have generated for performance are “start loud, end loud”.
Marienbad is the solo project of Audrey Cusack, sitting well comfortably within laptop and sampler drones and improvisation: “digital soundscapes are translated from the dark, musty basements she performs in, to gorgeous digital recordings that allow Marienbad to extend her focus in a controlled environment, to form beds of texture that mutate between swirling consonance and brutal low/hi frequency stabs.” – https://marryinbed.bandcamp.com/album/thanks-towers
whose body is this is the solo project of Ben Mason, existing anywhere between extreme computer music, industrial IDM and noise guitar, always with a laptop close by. Most recently, 2025 saw whose commit to the acid inspired techno that had been bubbling beneath the surface on HEX FUNCKING SYNTHESIS – https://evel.bandcamp.com/album/hex-funcking-synthesis.
https://ratdanger.bandcamp.com/
Yoni Silver & Bill Thompson (Duo)
Yoni Silver – Bass Clarinet
Yoni Silver
Yoni Silver is a bass clarinetist and multi-instrumentalist operating in-between the fields of free-improvisation, noise, composition, and performance. He has performed with artists such as John Edwards, Charles Hayward, Sophie Agnel, Tim Hodgkinson, Catherine Lamb, Thurston Moore, Angharad Davies, Toshimaru Nakamura, Steve Noble, Birgit Ulher, Stephen O’Malley, Oren Ambarchi, Ghédalia Tazartès, John Butcher, Ashley Paul, and many others.
Some of his current projects include Charles Hayward’s band Abstract Concrete, RAY with Ashley Paul and Otto Willberg, and Iancu Dumitrescu’s and (the late) Ana-Maria Avram’s Hyperion Ensemble which he has been a member of since 2011.
Yoni’s solo and collaborative work appears on labels such as Creative Sources, Editions Modern, Aural Terrains, Confront Recordings, Chocolate Monk, Shrike Records, Beartown Records, and Hideous Replica.
https://yonisilver.wordpress.com
https://yonisilver.bandcamp.com
BILL THOMPSON – Moog guitar and electronics
Bill Thompson is a sound artist and composer. He performs regularly as a soloist as well as in a number of groups including The Seen, zerøspace, and Airfield (with Ian Spink), and duos with Ian Stonehouse, Phil Durrant, and Yoni Silver. Past collaborations include performances with Keith Rowe, Faust, EXAUDI and others.
Although originally trained as a guitarist, Thompson has worked with live electronics for the better part of 15 years. In recent years he has returned to guitar using one built by Moog combining it with electronics with miscellaneous tabletop devices, found objects, flashing lights, and the occasional vibrator.
He has earned numerous awards and commissions including the PRS for New Music ATOM award, the GAVAA visual arts award, a PRS for New Music Three Festival commission, the 2010 Aberdeen Visual Arts Award, and was nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Award.
Mercury Over Maps is an extended residency by Bill Thompson featuring performances, installations and talks with various collaborators and guest artists.