Feral Bands

The duo Feral Bands, Nicolas Montgermont and Pali Meursault, uses radio waves and environmental electromagnetic interferences as the sole sources of its sound performances. Exploring the spectrum in order to unveil unexpected musicality, the resulting concert is specific to each place it is performed.

the research of Feral Bands relies on the recent evolutions of the electromagnetic landcape, which is determined by massive needs in bandwidth for smartphones, and by the abandonment of portions of the waves, which have therefore gone feral. These frequencies, such as medium and long waves (LW/MW), which use to host amplitude modulation radios (AM), now leave their whole space for phenomena not intended for human ears: interferences, “natural radio” events connected to climate and the Earth electromagnetic field, or the parasitic radiations of our electrical infrastructures.

Performances by Feral Bands build from these discarded radio waves going through the concert venue. Beats, rhythmic noises, pulsations, drones, or fragments of voices from the BBC are used as a source material. Emerging from this exploration of the spectrum, the musical performance is improvised by sculpting the encountered sonic matter: temporal envelopes, filters, distorsion, reverberation, equalisation are played as instruments in order to reveal the subtlety and complexity of these sounds.

To the electronic instruments a range of gestures is added. They confront the physical materiality of the electromagnetic waves, of which the scales range from milimeters to kilometers, and the power from the gigantic to the minuscule. Proximity, interference of the hands, movements of the musicians' bodies act as antennas and modulate the waves. Feral Bands materialises our immediate electromagnetical environement, through a sonic and acoustic as well as tactile and haptic apprehension. These performances by the duo have a filiation with magnetic experimentations ranging from the Theremin to Tetsuo Kogawa's radioart.