A hypnotic symphony of nostalgic sounds
Sell-out shows and winner of the Best Music Award at the Melbourne Fringe
Old Tech New Decks is about creating new music using old technology, and has performed to sell out crowds at both the Melbourne and Adelaide Fringe festivals. Clacking typewriters, bleeping DOS games, screechy dial-up modems and melodious Nokia ringtones are just some of the sounds which weave their way through this blast from your aural past.
With new music from living Australian composers written especially for this ensemble of out-dated tech, woven together with digital DJ decks and some audience participation, Old Tech New Decks brought new music out of the concert hall and into the Fringe.
WINNER – BEST MUSIC AWARD
2015 MELBOURNE FRINGE FESTIVAL
The Composers
Vanessa Nimmo
Composer, Performer, Producer, Teacher
Vanessa never could stop singing, so its fortunate that these days its part of her job. After finishing her composition degree she worked with Diana Nixon producing music theatre shows with young casts, and has also written and performed music for various cabarets in Canberra and Melbourne.
Her multi-faceted arts career has included dance performance and teaching, music arrangement for film, new music composition and performance and instrumental and vocal teaching. Her current Melbourne work is focussed on bringing experimental music out of concert halls and into chilled out venues where it can have a beer and a bit of a chat. Or is it the audience that gets to do that?
Matt Rankin
Composer, Arranger, Keyboardist, Software Engineer
Matt spent his youth learning piano, playing too many video games and transcribing the music from those video games into MIDI files. At some point he ran out of tunes to midify and started writing his own.
Later he earned degrees in composition and computer science. As a composer, he spends a lot of time with electronic instruments and fake orchestras. As a composer-programmer he has conducted research into algorithmic composition and live-coding performance, and has begun taming the Schillinger System of Composition using a node-based model. In order to fool people into thinking he’s a normal grown-up he also works as a developer writing mobile apps for grain farmers.