austraLYSIS Information

austraLYSIS has developed unusual techniques for control of rhythmic, timbral and harmonic interaction, and since 1995 has used computer interactive and networked technology in the austraLYSIS Electroband. "Incredible interaction" said the Wire (UK); "eclectic and consummate" said BBC Radio 3. Formed by Roger Dean in 1970 as the innovative European group LYSIS, austraLYSIS has played in 30 countries, and made more than thirty commercial recordings. The Electroband repertoire is based around free and process/interaction improvisation and comprovisation, mainly using compositions of Roger Dean, many written in the programming platform MAX/MSP. Novel computer interaction, real-time computational sound processing and generation is used to complement and extend the acoustic instruments (primarily piano, saxophones), and often to form a complete continuum with them. A new electroband CD, History Goes Everywhere, has been recorded and mixed, and is in production for release in 2014. Members of the Electroband: Roger Dean (piano, computer); Sandy Evans (saxophones); Greg White (computer). austraLYSIS member Phil Slater often performs with the Electroband also. Australian novelist and poet David Malouf has written of austraLYSIS' Tall Poppies cd Moving the Landscapes: "Track after track commands our attention, not just with the drama of what austraLYSIS can do, but with the variety of means, instrumentally and rhythmically, and the degree of emotion they are prepared to risk. What I liked best of all was the inwardness these performers develop, the sense we get of their moving off alone, without compromising the drama of interplay; most of all, without ever releasing tension. This is improvisation that offers increased pleasure at every hearing... Moving the Landscapes is a real coup."