MUTEK
Unsound Festival
Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Toronto
and
The Polish Cultural Institute New York
present 

T’ien Lai: North American Premiere

Saturday, June 4, 2016 
NOCTURNE 4: In collaboration with Bloc 

Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC)
185 Rue Ste-Catherine Ouest
Montréal, Canada 

Tickets: $25 PURCHASE ONLINE 
Rooted in underground DIY music scenes ranging from metal and hardcore to jazz and folk, T’ien Lai turns a trancelike krautrock chug into minimal techno or a synth line textured in reverb and distortion. Polyrhythmic percussion fills out drones and melodic psychedelia, approaching a raw, hypnotic club music. Live, the band digs into its collectively vast improvisation background in jazz, rock, punk, post-industrial and electronic music, unearthing a cosmic multitude of sound. The name T’ien Lai comes from a Japanese brand of cigarettes smoked by the main character in a Philip K. Dick novel it roughly translates to “celestial or heavenly music.”

T’ien Lai was founded in 2012 by prolific musicians Lukasz Jedrzejczak (So Slow, Alameda 5) and Kuba Ziolek (Stara Rzeka, Innercity Ensemble) as a result of their search for new forms of meditative electronic and electro-acoustic music. Since the beginning of 2015, T’ien Lai has played as a quartet: Rafal Kolacki (Hati, Innercity Ensemble, Mammoth Ulthana) and Mikolaj Zielinski (Alameda 3, Alameda 5, Rara) have now joined the lineup on drums and percussion, adding to a rhythmic tumult bordering on genre-hopping chaos, conjured from vintage and cracked effects, synthesizers, guitars, percussion instruments, scratched and sampled vinyl, and radio frequencies. 

T’ien Lai is a 2016 participant of the SHAPE platform for innovative music and audiovisual art, which is supported by the Creative Europe program of the European Union. Presented in collaboration with Unsound Festival with the support of the Polish Cultural Institute New York and the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Toronto.

MUTEK Festival
Unsound Festival