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In a special Unsound commission and Sonar Festival co-production, British artist Lee Gamble collaborates with Spanish choreographer Candela Capitán to bring his new album Models to the stage in a double bill performance joined by Catalonian composer, vocalist, and pianist Marina Herlop.  

Exploring mimicry and simulation, Models (released by Hyperdub in 2023) works with a set of simulated voices singing in an almost wordless, AI-generated, and synthetic language that reverberates across the last few decades of pop history. Through embodiment, repetition, mechanisation and the sharing of physical signals, the piece creates a liminal space between the eerie sonics of its voices and the uncanny movement of performers, mobilising it against limitations imposed on the body by contemporary technologies. Measuring the IRL experience against the mediated experience via technology, the performers stream their close ups throughout the piece via Instagram live.  

Marina Herlop’s vibrant, polymorphous album Pripyat (released by PAN, 2022) rendered her environment in posthuman form, drawing inspiration from Carnatic music of southern India to create sumptuous, chimeric compositions. On October 27, 2023 she brought these gestures full circle with the release of her critically lauded LP Nekkuja (PAN). 

In this double bill, both musicians will bring their cutting-edge creations to the Barbican stage for a night of boundary-pushing electronic music.  

Credits for Models  
Concept and art direction, music, and sound design: Lee Gamble 
Performance direction and choreography, staging: Candela Capitán   
Performed by: Julia Romero Soriano, Mariona Moranta Capllonch, Virginia Martin Mateos    
Costume concept: Candela Capitán    
Dramaturgy assistance: Joan Morey    
Harnesses: Josep Pagà Lleixà  

Models is commissioned by Unsound and co-produced by Sonar.  

Produced by the Barbican 

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