From my contacts at RPI: “Due to unforeseen circumstances, Thursday, May 5th’s performance of EUPHORIE has been cancelled. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. We are working to reschedule the performance for the fall.”

However, you can still enjoy the video clips and background on their work in this story.

These guys have updated something pretty simple in concept and put their own special stamp on it. Dueling neon guitars. With light show. Called Euphorie, it is a recent “add” to the Experimental Media Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at RPI. Not too many people beyond the university know about it, and there are only a few days to spread the word. The performance is coming right up, Thursday, May 5 at 8:00 pm.

Light shows and music are nothing new, in fact they likely go back to May 15, 1749 when fireworks and illuminations were sponsored by His Grace the Duke of Richmond to accompany the music of George Frederic Handel. Three spectators died when one of the fireworks landed where it shouldn’t have. To this day, The Royal Fireworks Music is one of the most spectacular things you can bear witness to.

It is also fascinating to see how Euphorie goes back to the fireworks and illuminations for its contemporary visuals.

Despite the passage of almost three centuries, there is a similarity between the Royal Fireworks Music and Euphorie.

In the mid 60′s and early 70′s “light shows” began to appear as part of the progressive music scene with as many as 70 projectors and 10 operators jiggling petri dishes of colored oil and water, and other devices trying to visually amplify the music on stage. Psychedelic drugs were often used to enhance the experience, since it tended to get monotonous without some sort of buzz on.

In Troy, you won’t need any drugs or earplugs to enjoy the program. The 1024 architecture company will provide all the interaction you could ask for, bending body, space, sound and visuals. To do it Pierre Schneider and François Wunschel, both co-founders of the EXYZT collective, will do it all using both high-tech and low-tech tools.

The instruments they play are sort of dueling neon guitars, and the sounds they coerce from them are both musical and a bit animal, with basal growls, wails, plucks and clucks that seem both random, and provoking. These days there is a growing audience as interested in new sounds as in new melodies. They flock to shows like Stomp, Fuerza Bruta and Cabaret Voltaire to hear sound art and what is sometimes called “noise music”.

The videos below captures only a bit of their Euphorie, and their body of work to date is truly mesmerizing. You can play any of 31 videos they have done to date on their Vimeo Page in high quality and without ads. They can be highly harmonic and melodic at times, in fact their range is astonishing.

What these forms have in common is a sort of architecture that pushes their sounds towards the ecstatic. And there are numerous geometric underpinnings in Euphorie.

Euphorie is produced by 1024 with the support of ARCADI. A coproduction between ELEKTRA and EMPAC with the help of ARCADI/Nemo.

Evelyn’s Café will open at 7 PM. Parking for this event is available in the Rensselaer parking lot on College Avenue in Troy, NY.