Randy's Sonic Expeditions

Protaanta

Get the whole recording (total length: 0:47:33) on Bandcamp now:
https://randyedgewood.bandcamp.com/track/expedition-16-ultratech-chaos-lab-10-local

Here is the recording of an ephemeral liveset I created for Ultratech Chaos Lab 1.0, the first instalment of a party series dedicated to experimental music and digital art. The event took place at le Local Bar, a great venue located in Strasbourg, and well known for its crafted beers and rock concerts. Even if there were few people, the vibe was great, and I remember very well this special feeling of complete freedom I had during my performance. Hence the last part that wasn't supposed to be that long initially.

Special thanks to the Local Bar team for hosting this event, and big up to all the other artists involved: Comtesse du Ghetto, Coloscope, and Crash Server.

Live setup: Reason + MIDI controllers
Recording: Zoom H5

Photo credit: Alice Dirwimmer

Expedition 16: Ultratech Chaos Lab 1​.​0 (Local) [Intro]

Get the whole recording (total length: 0:48:15) on Bandcamp now:
https://randyedgewood.bandcamp.com/track/expedition-17-ultratech-chaos-lab-20-diamant-dor

Here is the ephemeral liveset I performed at Ultratech Chaos Lab 2.0, the second instalment of a party series dedicated to noise, livecoding, and other experimental stuff. This gig was a little special as it was the first time I played at the Diamant since Exploration 1 which took place something like 5 years ago. It was also the first time I used a random notes generator (you can hear it in the first part). I really enjoyed the 'melody cascade' feeling it gave to the whole piece. Will definitely reuse this kind of technique in the near future.

Special thanks to the Diamant team for hosting the event and 520Still for the awesome visuals he illustrated my liveset with, and big up to all the other artists involved: Azertype, Ralt144mi and Leon Denise from the Cookie Collective, Papirove Houby, Jules Cipher, Coloscope, William Stone, and Crash Server.

Live setup: Reason + MIDI controllers
Recording: Zoom H5

Artwork based on a photography by Alice Dirwimmer

Expedition 18: Ultratech Chaos Lab 2​.​0 (Diamant d'Or) [Intro]

Get the whole recording (total length: 1:30:43) on Bandcamp now:
https://randyedgewood.bandcamp.com/album/expedition-18-unleash-kulture

Ok this is a special one. When Canine invited me to her Unleash residency at la Kulture, she proposed me to warmup the party from 11:30pm to 1am. It was the very first time I had to create an ephemeral piece more than an hour long so it was a little challenging, especially because I design each of these ephemeral pieces to be like one, continuous, giant escalation. The fact that this liveset was so long did create some very interesting moments in my opinion, especially in the beginning, like if all these synth arps were diluted in some ethereal space or something.

Believe it or not, someone even told me that this performance would fit in a contemporary art museum. Don't know how to take it really, so let's say this is an awesome compliment.

Thank you very much Canine for inviting me, it was a great night. I would also thank Zoe and Laurent for the beautiful conversation we had together after the bar did close its doors. Good and powerful memories.

Live setup: Reason + MIDI controllers
Recording: Zoom H5

Expedition 19: Unleash (Kulture) [Intro]

Get the whole recording (total length: 42:52) on Bandcamp now:
https://randyedgewood.bandcamp.com/track/expedition-19-sxb2-next

This is maybe the most unexpected show I performed so far. The Next is a little nightclub located in the middle of the historical centre of Strasbourg. It's a neat venue, with a nice staff and a good sound-system, but one can say it's very mainstream music-driven, so the odds to hear experimental, or even electronica stuff there is near zero.

Actually that was quite a challenge for me to adapt my style to this peculiar place. I had to find the right balance between my usual weird no input sounds, and some more musical/danceable elements, so I wouldn't lose the whole audience instantly. Turned out it worked pretty well, as people looked like they were really enjoying the moment. Interestingly, the most receptive were the younger part of the audience. I remember that the deeper we went into the expedition, the larger was the physical separation between the older ones, chatting and smiling in the background, and the younger ones, nervously dancing and headbanging just in front of me.

Thank you very much Nico, Mich-Mich and all the Kollectiv Wolfgang for trusting me and making this weird crossover of genres happen, thank you Ricardo for the great conversation, thank you Flipper for hosting the party, and thank you Crash Server for recommanding my name to the team. It was both a fun and interesting project to work on.

PS: The water sound you can hear in the beginning comes from the entrance of the Next.

Live setup: Reason + MIDI controllers

Expedition 20: SXB2 (Next) [Intro]

Get the whole recording (total length: 49:00) on Bandcamp now:
https://randyedgewood.bandcamp.com/track/expedition-20-molitor-elastic

This live was created for Molitor 3, an electronic music event organized by my friend Marti.B at Elastic bar which is one of the most famous venues of Strasbourg nightlife. Unfortunately the event didn't have much success, but it didn't stop us to share a beautiful moment with Marti and his two other guests: Canine who invited me few weeks earlier, and Brian Burger, an electronic music producer close to the German techno scene.

Thank you Marti.B for involving me in this project, and big up to Canine and Brian Burger for their music performances.

Live setup: Reason + MIDI controllers

Artwork based on the event visual created by Marti.B

Expedition 21: Molitor (Elastic) [Intro]

Drummax, Sytrus, Fender Squire Mini guitar , Yamaha Tenor Saxophone

Artwork-photo of some homegrown olives curing in the kitchen.

Yep, Sure, 100%

What is there to describe, the song title tells you plainly and simply - don't obey. I've used art made by the awesome Alec McKenzie to make the thumbnail, and the music video as well !

Don't obey

ROCK

🚀 Digital Highway – Steven Francis

Cruise the 432Hz sonic motorway with “Digital Highway,” an immersive soundscape crafted by Steven Francis, UK keyboardist with perfect pitch and a passion for healing frequencies. This 3-minute track blends atmospheric drones with subtle rhythmic pulses, creating a journey that’s both grounding and transcendent.

🔊 Designed for ambient lovers, meditation moments, or chill background vibes 🌐 Connect with the flow of thought and energy as you travel this digital route 🎹 Featured on 432Hz Relax 2 — part of Steven's evolving catalogue of sound healing

432HZ RELAX 2

DIGITAL HIGHWAY

This one—whoo boy. One of my oldest songs, made around 2014.
It’s one of those “cursed” tracks—but in a good way. The more I tried to perfect it years later, after learning all kinds of new tricks in Fruity Loops, the more it lost that certain magic I tapped into when I was younger. That raw energy is gone now, and while I can improve the song with better mixing, bass, synths, programming, and sound quality, every “improvement” risks erasing that special something—that je ne sais quoi, that zazz.

It’s like a reflection of me, frozen in time inside an MP3 file. The spirit of these early works is more important to preserve than to sacrifice in the name of perfection. Sure, it takes skill, dedication, and time to create a masterwork—but I also believe there’s genius in capturing a unique feeling with as little effort as possible. Kakaphoney is an album where I try to balance both philosophies, though most songs fall into the “finished, not perfect” category. My next album, after sharing Kakaphoney, will be an album I currently call "Tracks back from high school when I had no clue what I was doing", and it will feature all of the tracks I actually shared on Myspace, my edgy solo noise project "Spinal Menstruation", and yes I was a one man Myspace noise band. So, this album is a collection of my earliest works that embrace this "save the vibes fuck mastering" mindset and take it to another level - because i did not even know what mastering was back when I made those tracks ! 
Anyway, I did not listen to these primordial melodies (most of them made in High School) for many years, and once I did go over it finally relatively recently - I was stunned. Why did I just make so much music and then just forget about it ? And how the hell did I manage to stuff so much soul into every track with such little experience. I realized that the vibe these old tracks portray is unique and nowhere to be found in any of my newer, fancier tracks (Here’s one example from that project—a song that perfectly captures the weird energy that animated me when I was young : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_R022SObfk
 
But yes - Nee-Cola was one of those tracks I dug out of those ancient folders, and when I found it and listened to it again after 10 000 years I remembered everything about it. It actually started out as something completely different—until I realized I’d accidentally programmed the main synth to sound like it was calling my name (Nikola). My original concept was to create a song that felt like a stage performance, with different synths and samples taking turns. But this main synth refused to just play a simple tune and stop—it fought to stay on stage and sing (the song was also named "It's my turn" back then). The other synths, including a deep bass, seemed to try to pull it back and silence it. As the track progresses, the main synth goes haywire, growing louder and more chaotic, eventually overshadowing everything else.

I was fascinated by what I’d made, but it felt a bit ridiculous to name a song after myself. Still, it fit perfectly with the Kakaphoney theme—synths that sound like voices, and non-voice synths manipulated until they seem to speak, as if they’ve gained a voice of their own. That’s the ultimate goal here, as it is in my “Suck On These Tears” track from the same album.

So instead of making it about me, I invented a fake cola drink with a name that sounds like mine—easier to explain, and far less narcissistic. So drink up bitchezz

Nee-Cola

dm for booking & inquiries

https://randyedgewood.bandcamp.com

ephemeral live music
& contemporary dance
improvisation project

synth/drone/ambient/noise/techno

music: randy edgewood
dancer: elisa loréa
guitar: @almone_silice

every expedition
is a new sonic journey

neither of us can tell
what will happen

member of @ultratechrec

curator of Chaos Lab with @crashserver

places already explored:  Autre Sens Festival (Lac Blanc), Diamant d'Or (Sxb), Liebe (Paris), Maison Rose (Sxb), Molodoï (Sxb), Péniche Loupika (Lyon), Péniche Mécanique (Sxb), Shadok (Sxb)...

NEXT EXPEDITIONS
31. 06/09: I'm not a DJ @ Péniche Mécanique
with Elisa & Almone Silice
32. ???

PREVIOUS EXPEDITIONS

2025
30. 03/01: Shônagon's Residency @ Z.est Radio
with Almone Silice

2024
29. 10/08: L'Autre Sens Festival @ Lac Blanc
with Elisa & Almone Silice
28. 17/05: I'm not a DJ @ Péniche Mécanique
with Almone Silice
27. 27/04: Soutien à la Palestine @ Molodoï
with Elisa & Almone Silice

2023
26. 22/11: Ultratech Chaos Lab @ Perestroïka
25. 10/11: Sublime @ Liebe, Paris
24. 04/11: Ultratech Chaos Lab @ Diamant d'Or
with Elisa, William Stone, @france-travail
23. 25/06: Nervure @ Péniche Loupika, Lyon
with @lordjalapenos, @lostinmaterial, @solidsld
22. 23/03: Ultratech Chaos Lab @ Local
21. 17/03: Molitor 3 @ Elastic
20. 10/03: SXB 2 @ Next
19. 24/02: Unleash @ Kulture
with @canine666

2022
18. 29/10: Ultratech Chaos Lab @ Diamant d'Or
17. 16/09: Art Residency @ secret place
16. 29/07: Ultratech Chaos Lab @ Local
15. 26/03: Private party @ J.'s basement
14. 05/03: Back2TheStream @ Crash Server HQ

2021
13. 02/12: Ultratech night @ Kulture 
12. 17/09: Bitte Acht Bits IV @ secret place
11. 03/07: Hyperstatik Koncept @ Molodoï
with Sonic Area (@arco-trauma)

2018
09. 19/11: 7ème Ciel @ Radiocapsule
08. 18/10: UTR Afterwork II @ Studio Saglio
07. 02/06: Katharsis @ Elastic Bar
06. 26/03: 7ème Ciel @ Radiocapsule

2017
05. 23/11: From dB to lumens n°2 @ Elastic
04. 26/10: Bal de la Bidouille @ Shadok
03. 12/10: Bock-Too-Beer Fest @ Mimir
02. 12/07: Opus IV @ Coloscope's basement
01. 08/06: From dB to lumens @ Diamant d'Or

avatar and header based on a photo by sixclochettes

Expedition 20: SXB2 (Next) [Intro]

Randy Edgewood