Live @ LOW END | The Turntable Trio

Maria Chávez + Victoria Shen + Mariam Rezaei aka The Turntable Trio

Pioneers of New Turntablism, Maria Chávez, Evicshen (aka Victoria Shen) and Mariam Rezaei come together in this historical, head-scrambling, boundary-shattering trio. The group weave together elements of musique concrète, free improvisation, noise, techno, and hip-hop with instrument building and modification. Each artist has a wildly different approach to turntablism. Techniques deployed to create their dizzying sets include scratching, beat-juggling, sampling and looping, while the technologies include double-needle-head shells and acrylic needle nails. The trio’s compositional aesthetics combine sound sculpture, maximalism/minimalism and sonic destruction. Together, they show that New Turntablism is beyond technique, genre or compositional theory; it’s about the unknown. This important project represents the first time three female turntablists of colour have come together in this way.

Maria Chávez, born in Lima, Peru and based in NYC, is best known as an abstract turntablist, sound artist and DJ. Coincidence, chance and failures are themes that unite her work across mediums, including improvised performance, sound and marble sculpture, visual art, book objects and an extensive history with multi-channel installation. Her approach is rooted in Deep Listening, a form of embodied listening developed by her late mentor Pauline Oliveros. Chávez’s practice is profoundly expansive, responsive and curious. Her work has been featured and supported by a myriad of institutions over the past decades including Rewire Festival, Counterflows Festival, Donau Festival, MoMA PS1, The Getty, The Wire Magazine (Cover, April 2023), DOCUMENTA 14, the JUDD Foundation, Cambridge University Press and many, many more. Chavez’s 2012 book, Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable, has garnered a reputation as both an academic resource on turntablism and a foundational text for a new generation of turntablists.

Evicshen is the nom de guerre of San Francisco-based sound artist, experimental music performer, and inventor Victoria Shen (she/her). Shen's sound practice is concerned with the materiality/physicality of sound and its relationship to the human body. Her music features analogue modular synthesizers, vinyl/resin records, and self-built electronics. Shen's music eschews conventions in harmony and rhythm in favour of extreme textures and gestural tones. Notable for her Needle Nails, Shen uses modified acrylic fingernails with embedded turntable needles, allowing her to play up to five grooves of a record at once. Her DIY approach extends to hand-made resin records embedded with found materials. Each piece functions not only as playable music media but a unique art object.

Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award winning composer, turntablist and performer. She previously led experimental arts project TOPH, TUSK FRINGE and TUSK NORTH, and in November 2022, she received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation #AwardsForArtists, in recognition of her contribution to music composition. Her music has recently been described as “genuinely groundbreaking” (London Jazz News, 2022) and “high-velocity sonic surrealism” (The Guardian, 2022). Recent release BOWN (Heat Crimes) charted No. 6 in The Wire and No. 10 in The Quietus’ Best Albums of 2023 and was The Quietus Album of the Week. Boomkat described it as “harnessing extreme technical prowess—phenomenal stuff.”

Admission is free; ticket reservations are encouraged.