DeForrest Brown, Jr + Trevor Mathison
Assembly 2026 closes with two new performances exploring the intersection of electronic music and cultural, historical and technological critique.
Doors: 9.15pm
| Dates | Sat 28 Mar 2026 |
| Times | 9.30pm |
| Space | Lancaster Rooms, New Wing |
| Price | £20 (General) £15 (Concessions) |
DeForrest Brown, Jr: Synoptic Audio
Following his residency at Somerset House Studios in March 2025, Vancouver-based musician, writer, theorist and curator DeForrest Brown, Jr. returns for Assembly to present a newly commissioned performance, a unique live activation within his multi-media project and philosophical concept Synoptic Audio.
Informed by Brown Jr.’s research-based practice in live electronic improvisation, Synoptic Audio treats rhythm, spatial sound, and recording to examine cultural perception, the political economy of the music industry, and the platform conditions that shape how music circulates. The project functions as a sonic extension of Brown Jr.’s ongoing research initiative Rhythmanalytics—a work-in-progress and diagnostic exploration of electronic music at the end of the music industry.
Synoptic Audio’s presentation for Assembly takes shape through Brown’s palette of systems developed to generate distinct performances, an iterative process in which recordings are extracted, edited and recombined live. Here, electronic music becomes a form of real time inquiry, an improvisatory practice that reflects on how music is made and consumed, while suggesting new ways of listening and understanding sound.
Trevor Mathison
Artist and composer Trevor Mathison shares a new composition for Assembly 2026. Mathison’s new live performance brings together electronics, field recordings and fauna into a networked sonic system, to create an immersive ‘tone poem’, extending his long-standing exploration of sound as spatial, political and poetic material.
A pioneer of sound installation and a co-founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective (1982–1998), Mathison’s sonic practice has shaped the language of moving-image and gallery-based work for over four decades. His sound designs defined the Collective’s landmark film and installation works. Alongside ongoing collaborations with former Black Audio members including John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul and David Lawson, Mathison has also developed experimental projects through groups such as Dubmorphology, Hallucinator and Flow Motion.
Biographies
DeForrest Brown, Jr
DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-raised, Ex-American rhythmanalyst, writer, musician, and curator living within the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ /Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. His written works focus on a diagnostic exploration of electronic music through considerations of applied metaphilosophy. He has released three albums on Planet Mu that channel the African American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of techno-vernacular expression. Brown’s debut book ‘Assembling a Black Counter Culture’ was released on Primary Information in 2022. In 2023, he co-curated HOPE, an international group exhibition presented by Museion Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen as the final installment of the TECHNO HUMANITIES trilogy. He has performed or presented work at the Venice Biennale Musica 2025, HKW, Paris+ par Art Basel, Somerset House, Unsound Festival, Performa, and has also taught courses and lectured at Simon Fraser University, The New School, NYU, Harvard University, Brown University, and Princeton University, among others. Recent collaborations include metanarrative liner notes for Cybotron, Drexciya, and Dopplereffekt developed with Detroit techno pioneers Juan Atkins and Gerald Donald, with Berlin club/record label Tresor.
Trevor Mathison
Trevor Mathison is an artist, composer, and sound designer and recordist. His sonic practice centres on creating fractured, haunting aural landscapes and integrating existing music and has featured in over thirty award-winning films. Mathison was a founding member of the cine-cultural artist collective, The Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC, 1982-1998), where his body of sonic designs defined and situated the Collective’s film and gallery installations. Mathison has continued to work with some of his former collaborators from Black Audio (John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul and David Lawson) creating sound design for installations and feature documentaries. Mathison has also founded and been active in a number of other experimental sonic groups – Dubmorphology, Hallucinator and Flow Motion. He has also been a pioneer of sound installation work.