Graham Dunning

Living in London sometimes I feel spoilt by the amount of music, art and performance on offer. It’s often more a case of choosing what you have to miss out on than struggling to find good things to see. There are loads of venues that support experimental and electronic music of different shapes and sizes, from international touring artists to local free improv linchpins to wild DIY noise. One venue hosted all of the above, and has been central to various scenes for a decade. But sadly, Iklectik Art Lab, at its home near Waterloo anyway, closed its doors for the last time at the start of 2024. The former hospital building on the edge of parkland has gone the way of many before it and been sold off for development. Despite a well supported petition and even requests to the Tory cabinet, which at one stage seemed promising, the site owners refused to renew any of the businesses’ leases, and the land will now be unoccupied and unused until development begins. 

Undaunted, Isa and Edouard have big plans to set up a new Art Lab, and are crowdfunding for their first six months’ rent on a new space, plus soundproofing and other setup costs. If you can spare a bit of money, even a few pounds, the crowdfunder page is here. The new project sounds really ambitious and exciting, so I hope they can make their (equally ambitious) target – they’re currently ⅔ of the way there which is a good sign.

Iklectik really felt like a central hub for various interconnected groups or scenes of experimental music. Longstanding events, sometimes based around a concept, other times around a group of people, which found a home at the venue and built a community around them. As well as advertising the crowdfunder I wanted to talk a bit about some of my favourites.

Apologies in Advance is Tom White’s event series, with the explicit aim to give artists a platform to try new ideas, take risks and push their work. Although some of the shows happened  at other venues, Iklectik felt like the series’ home base. I took students from my old Experimental Sound Art evening class to one edition in 2018, including  many people who had never been to any sort of experimental music gig before. A huge highlight was Lia Mazzari & Sholto Dolbie’s set which took place outside the building, the artists behind a fence just inside the neighbouring park. Sholto moved air pumps around blowing reed pipes, whilst Lia made sharp cracks with a whip, the sounds ricocheting off the neighbouring buildings. With a minimal turntable set from Hannah Dargavel-Leafe, featuring field recordings from aboard a ship from her Fore Main Mizzen release, and a chaotic, noisy collage-improv set from I DM THEFT ABLE, stopping off on an international tour, it’s fair to say that minds were blown. The students got loads from the event and it really showed in the work they made later in the course. Seeing artists taking risks and exploring new ideas in a positive and receptive setting really set the students up to confidently push themselves too. 

Boundary Condition is an ambitious audiovisual event ran by Alaa Yussry, aka Cerpintxt. With some events running all day, the lineups were often huge, ranging from film screenings and live soundtracks to improv sets, live electronics and dancefloor focused stuff. As such the event reflects Alaa’s own interests and approaches, and indeed she often performed at the night. Again, as a prolific promoter, she programmes shows at various other venues, but the large and bright projector with its full-wall resolution, plus the full surround soundsystem gave lots of options for AV works to be presented in a great context. An edition I attended in 2023 featured performances by nine artists including: the premiere of a film shot in remote settlements in Tajikistan by Carlos Casas, live soundtracked by Cerpintxt (who also did a completely different collaboration with pianist Rueben Sonnoli later); a chaotic improvising electronic quartet Infinite Monkeys, whose all-round-the-table setup felt like a surreal conference meeting; and Robin The Fog‘s live set as Howlround, coaxing drones, screams and throbbing bass rhythms from old BBC tape machines.

Hackoustic is a showcase of instrument makers, hardware hackers, installation artists and other musical experimenters, brought together by Tom Fox and Tim Yates. Another event series which very much feels like a community, it’s not unusual to see previous presenters amongst the audience. Hackoutik feels like the sort of event which has the capacity to facilitate real-world meeting of people from an otherwise fairly online scene. As a maker it can sometimes feel quite isolating putting together a project. The hours spent in the workshop are usually alone, compared to, say, a band working on new material. Using the instrument at a gig, or exhibiting an installation, or whatever, doesn’t always afford the opportunity to share the thinking behind the work and connect with people in that way. We’re all busy squirrelling away in our workshops and chatting online but rarely meet in person. I’ve been pleasantly surprised several times to see familiar faces at the events. Arlene Burnett came down from Birmingham to show her sound-generating plants modular system; Gordon Charlton presented his compositions based on sonifying various mathematical formulae. Both people I’ve encountered over the years but not been in regular contact with, lovely to see them again in London.

This post is getting somewhat long now so I’m not going to go into too much more. I wanted to talk about The Horse improvised music club, Robin’s annual Fog Fest, Club Integral, Exploding Cinema, Sonic Garden… the list goes on. Not to mention all the labels who launch releases at Iklectik, events by affiliated uni courses, one-off shows by promoters like Baba Yaga’s Hut, and all the in-house events too. On a personal level Iklectik has meant a great deal to me. In the spirit of the above nights I’ve tried loads of new ideas and debuted new projects at Iklectik, including: 
— playing halflife with all the sounds replaced with rave samples (for Apologies in Advance) [video]
— turntable and electronics duo with Cath Roberts (for Overtones & Undertones) [video]
— modified turntable duel with DJ Food (for Fog Fest) [video]
And loads more.

It’s really sad, then, that Iklectik has closed its doors for good at the Waterloo space. But hopefully Isa and Eduard can move on to bigger and better things and continue to maintain the various communities they’ve worked so hard for. If you can, please contribute a few quid to their crowdfund.