Mats Gustafsson (1964, Umeå) is a Swedish saxophone player and a stalwart on the Scandinavian free jazz scene with activities in jazz rock and punk units since the early 80`s. He first came to the attention of lovers of improvised music as part of a duo with Christian Munthe (started in 1986) and the band Gush (started in 1988). He has later played widely with musicians such as Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, Paul Lovens, Barry Guy and Derek Bailey. Since the early 1990s, Mats Gustafsson has been forming a particular affinity with Chicago musicians such as Hamid Drake, Michael Zerang, Ken Vandermark, David Grubbs, Jim O’Rourke and Thurston Moore. Mats Gustafsson has worked extensively with artists from the worlds of dance, theatre, poetry and painting.

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Evan Parker (born 1944) is a British free jazz saxophone player. He has recorded dozens of albums solo or as a group leader, and has recorded or performed with Peter Brotzmann--including Brotzmann's epochal "Machine Gun" in 1968, Derek Bailey, Keith Rowe, Joe McPhee and many others. In recent years, Parker has expanded beyond free jazz, working with the dub music oriented Jah Wobble and the adventurous drum n bass duo Spring Heel Jack. Parker is one of rather few saxophone players who has extensively recorded and performed unacompanied, and has developed a unique, idenitifiable approach. One critic has written that Parker's solo performances "reveal also the mechanical possibilities for the instrument that weren't even considered before he came along - things like playing in all three registers of the instrument at the same time.

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Roger Turner grew up amongst the Canterbury musical life of the 1960’s with a strong jazz foundation. Since 1974 work he has been concentrated on exploring a more personal percussion language through the processes of improvisation. Solo work, collaborations with experimental rock music, extensive work with dance, film and photo-projection, involvements in numerous jazz-based ensembles & workshop residencies have formed part of that development. The pleasures & discoveries have been in music-making with many of the finest European & international musicians in ad hoc & group improvising collaborations. He is currently working in Konk Pack (with Tim Hodgkinson & Thomas Lehn), duo w/ Annette peacock, the Recedents (with Lol Coxhill & Mike Cooper), the Phil Minton Quartet and more.

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Pat Thomas started playing at the age of 8 and studied classical music and played reggae. He began playing jazz at sixteen after seeing Oscar Peterson on television then listened to snatches of jazz on the radio before, in 1979, playing his first serious improvised gigs. From 1986 he played with Ghosts which was Pete McPhail and Matt Lewis. In addition to programming his keyboards, Pat Thomas also utilises prerecorded tapes. He says he "picks them at random and see what happens and is as surprised as anybody else at what comes out". In 1988 he was awarded an Arts Council Jazz Bursary to write three new electroacoustic compositions for his ten-piece ensemble, Monads, which includes UK artists such as Roger Turner, Phil Minton, Phil Durrant with the intention to feature different aspects of electronics using improvisation. He has played with Derek Bailey, Tony Oxley, Mike Coopoer and Steve Beresford.

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Folke Rabe was born in Stockholm in 1935. He studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm in 1957-64 where he had, among others, Valdemar Söderholm, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Ingvar Lidholm, György Ligeti and Witold Lutoslawski as tutors. Apart from his composing Rabe has been interested in music ethnology, making field recordings in e.g. Bosnia and South America. Rabe’s voyages of discovery as a composer took him to rebellious cells with no respect for established boundaries. Rabe was considered an avant-gardist in the 1960s and from 1983 to 1997 he was a member of the intermedia group, The New Culture Quartet, mixing electronic and live music with film projections and other visual elements. His electronic work What??, composed in 1967, became better known after being reissued on CD, while Håkan Hardenberger’s recording of his trumpet concerto Sardine Sarcophagus won a Swedish ‘Grammis’ award in 2000. It is with extreme honour that we present Folke Rabe’s first UK appearance at the ICA for a performance of 3 works, including What?? and a screening of Ships of Fools with The New Culture Quartet.

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Tape is a trio from Stockholm, Sweden which music (including tape recordings, double bass and computer improv) moves between experimental music and pop without effort and has been recognised internationally for it's particular sound where electronics blend with all sorts of acoustic and electric instruments. Tape was formed in 2000 by brothers Andreas and Johan Berthling together with Tomas Hallonsten. Their first recording Opera came out in 2002, the second - Milieu in 2003, both released on the fabulous imprint Häpna. Their third and latest album, Rideau was produced by Pluramon's Markus Schmickler. They have played once the UK as a [no.signal] production and this performance will be to launch their new album out on Hapna.

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Carl Michael von Hausswolff (born 1956 in Linköping, Sweden) is a composer, visual artist and curator based in Stockholm, Sweden. His main tools are recording devices (camera, tape deck, radar, sonar) used in an ongoing investigation of electricity, frequency, architectural space and paranormal electronic interference. Major exhibitions include documenta X (1997), the Johannesburg Biennial (1997), Sound Art - Sound as Media at ICC in Tokyo (2000), the Venice Biennale (2001, 2003 and 2005) and Portikus, Frankfurt (2004). Hausswolff received a Prix Ars Electronica award for Digital Musics in 2002. He is an expert in the work of Friedrich Jürgenson, electronic voice phenomena (EVP) researcher who detected voices of the dead hidden in radio static. Hausswolff's own sound works are pure, intuitive studies of electricity, frequency and tone. Collaborators include Erik Pauser, with whom he worked as Phauss (1981-1993), Leif Elggren and John Duncan. Hausswolff is also co-monarch (with Elggren ) of the Kingdoms of Elgaland- Vargaland (KREV), all areas of no-man's land, territories between national boundaries on both land and sea, digital and mental spaces. This nation has its own national anthem, flag, coat of arms, currency, citizens and ministers.

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Wildbirds & Peacedrums are charismatic singer Mariam Wallentin and drummer Andreas Werliin. Together the Swedish duo have forged an extraordinary hybrid of spiritual pop, primal blues and ecstatic soul music. Seesawing between pagan rhythms and sparse, bewitching ballads, their self-produced debut is a declaration of intent: immediate, exhilarating, and just plain new. Wildbirds & Peacedrums was born of a desire to break free and return to music that captures pure feeling. Mariam’s uninhibited, skin-prickling vocal expressions invoke vintage blues performers like Bessie Smith through to the spookily evocative folk singing of Mary Margaret O’Hara. They will be doing a few shows in London in the weeks prior to the [no.signal] event but this will be the occasion form them to explore different sound

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Hans Appelqvist's music blends a highly accomplished grasp on song structure with a unique ear for peculiar sound designs. Appelqvist plays a handful of traditional acoustic instruments and even sings on occasion, but the defining characteristic of this album has to be the implementation of field recordings, which are made up of wildlife sounds, thunder storms, children's voices and an awful lot of tinkering around with a kazoo. There aren't a great many people who can get away with the use of a kazoo, but Appelqvist carries it off as well as anyone's ever likely to. It all meshes together in a pleasing mosaic of sounds from the natural world and an instrumental prowess that suggests a classical background. At times, it's all about the soundscaped ambience, with woodpecker noises and cuckoo calls (sounding as it might should anyone give Chris Watson a radio show for kids), while at others, piano or guitar takes centre stage. Either way, Appelqvist is certainly out on his own, fashioning some highly unusual compositions. This will be his first UK appearance.

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Johan Berthling was born in Stockholm 1973. After studying at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Stockholm (1996-1998) he has worked as a freelance with jazz, improvised music and more. Berthling is currently working in these groups: Animes (David Stackenäs - guitar, Raymond Strid - drums), LSB (Fredrik Ljungkvist - reeds, Raymond Strid - drums), Sten Sandell Trio (Sten Sandell - piano, Paal Nilssen-Love - drums), Sandell - Ljungkvist - Berthling and Christer Bothén Acoustic Ensemble.

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With his acoustic sound and his percussive energy Stackenäs clearly is Swedens most interesting guitarplayer nowadays. Stackenäs was in 1999 and 2001 on tour with swedish reedist Mats Gustafssons´ «NU-ensemble» (with Günther Christmann, Carlos Zingaro among others) In october 2000 he did a week of concerts in Ystad, Sweden with the members of Sonic Youth, Loren Mazzacane Connors and Jim O´Rourke. David Stackenäs has released the critics´ claimed solo record «the guitar» on Häpna. Mats Gustafsson's words on Stackenäs: "..his wide open way of listening to others is worth checking out for anyone interested in creative music"

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Phil Durrant is an improviser/composer/sound artist who devises his own virtual performance instruments using Reaktor software. As a violinist (and member of the Butcher/Russell/Durrant trio and Chris Burn Ensemble), he was one of the key exponents of the "group voice approach" style of improvised music in the 1980s and 90s. In the late 90s, his trio with Radu Malfatti and Thomas Lehn produced 2 albums which were influential in the development of a more "reductionist" approach to improvisation. His exploration in the use of live electronics to expand the timbre of the violin and amplify it's hidden sounds, has evolved into the creation and building of self made virtual instruments. His live sampling/treatments duo with John Butcher and his work in MIMEO, have seen Durrant move from the use of hardware electronics to the use of a laptop in live situations. He is keen to transfer the flexibility of playing an acoustic instrument, into his laptop performances.

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Joe Williamson is a double bass player living in London. He has performed numerous concerts and festivals both as soloist and in diverse ensembles of Improv and Free Jazz, including the trio Trapist with Marting Brandlmyar and Marting Siewert. He has played with Sven-Åke Johansson, Olaf Rupp, Tony Buck, Rhodri Davies, John Edwards, Steve Noble and many other improvisers. This will the first UK performance of the trio with David Stackenas and Phil Durrant.

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Henrik Rylander is an artist, composer and photographer. He has performed in several festivals, including NOtCH Festival (China), The Stockholm New Music Festival, Impakt Festival (Holland), GAS (Sweden), Sonar Festival (Spain). As an artist he has done nine solo exhibitions of his installation work and participated in several group exhibitions for which he has received awards and recognition for his work, including STIM (The Swedish Performing Rights Society) grant, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and The Robert Frank Scholarship. He has performed in a trio with Pan Sonic, and as part of the improv jazz project Space Is The Place with Mats Gustafsson, Ken Vandermark, Lasse Marhaug, David Stackenas and Paal Nilssen-Love. Rylander also is known for being the drummer and co-founder of the rock combo Union Carbide Productions (1986-1993). He is a founding member of The Skull Defekts. Rylander lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden. It will be his first UK performance.

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