Rik Rue Explained

Rik Rue
Birth Name:Richard Banachowicz
Birth Place:Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Alias:Richard Banachowicz
Occupation:Experimental musician
Instrument:sound collage, soprano saxophone

Rik Rue (born Richard Banachowicz)[1] is an Australian experimental musician,[2] and sound artist, known for his audio collages[3] in recordings and live performance.

Biography

Born in Sydney in 1950 [4] to Polish refugee parents, Rue began constructing sound collages on tape from the age of 15,[4] later encouraged by Australian painter and collage artist Carl Plate.[4] He studied part-time at the Slade School, Camden Art Centre and Royal College of Art in London.[4]

He first performed on saxophone with a number of prominent Sydney improvisers including Serge Ermoll, Jon Rose and Louis Burdett[5] [4] before switching to live mixing of sampled and pre-recorded sound on audio cassette recorders including the TASCAM Portastudio, describing the relationship between the two instruments, 'The tape is improvised in a sense, by equalisation, adding timbres, adding pitch controls, the various combinations of mixing. All those areas give you a sort of phrasing not unlike saxophonists altering their embouchure, and I approach the tapes in this manner.'[6]

After releasing material on the Fringe Benefit label, in 1983 he created his own label Pedestrian Tapes,[7] releasing his own and works by Michael Sheridan, Jim Denley, Jo Truman, John Gillies, Ian Hartley, Ernie Althoff and others.[4] [8] In the 1980s he was a member of the group Mind/Body/Split with Jim Denley, Sherre de Lyse, Jamie Fielding, Graham Leake and Kimo Venonen,[4] and in 1989 he co-founded the performance ensemble Machine for Making Sense with Chris Mann, Amanda Stewart, Jim Denley and Stevie Wishart, first performing at Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria.[9] [10] Later he worked with performance group Gravity Feed[11] on over 20 projects between 1994 and 2007 in Australia and Germany,[1] [12] Urban Theatre Projects,[13] dancer Tess de Quincey, the group Social Interiors (with Shane Fahey and Julian Knowles),[14] musicians David Moss, Eugene Chadbourne,[15] Ikue Mori[16] and released recordings on Extreme Records.[17]

In 1995 his recordings were included in the exhibition Sound In Space: Adventures In Australian Sound Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney.[18] The major sound work Things Change, Things Remain The Same commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Commission, was exhibited as part of the major contemporary art exhibition Australian Perspecta 1997: Between Art and Nature. It has been described as an 'outback road-trip of the mind'.[19] His video and sound work Fire and Water was shown at SNO Gallery Sydney in 2014.[20] A number of Rue's early cassette recordings were re-released by Shame File Music from 2014.[21] In 2018 the exhibition In-Formalism at the Casula Powerhouse, included a survey of his tape works.[22]

Rue suffers from multiple sclerosis and is now no longer active in performing or recording.

Discography

Radiophonic Works

Compilations

with Social Interiors

with Mind/Body/Split

with Machine for Making Sense

External links

Notes and References

  1. Jon Rose and contributors, "Rik Rue, Sound Collagist" http://www.realtime.org.au/rik-rue-sound-collagist/, retrieved 14 June 2017
  2. Warren Burt, Web site: Some Musical and Sociological Aspects of Australian Experimental Music : Feature Article: Australian Music Centre. www.australianmusiccentre.com.au.
  3. Shannon O’Neill, "Copyright Doesn’t Mean Shit to Me: sampling and appropriation in Australian Experimental Music and Sound Art", in Gail Priest (ed), 'Experimental Music: Audio Explorations in Australia', UNSW Press, Sydney 2009,
  4. John Jenkins, 22 Contemporary Australian Composers, NMA Publications, Brunswick, Australia, 1988
  5. Web site: Towards a relative music : contemporary spontaneous music. Jon. Rose. Performer.), Jo. Rose. Performer.), Pete. Kelly. Performer.), Ro. Reid. Performer.), Ri. Rue. Performer.), Loui. Burdett. Performer.), Joh. Clare. Performer.), Ton. Hobbs. 7 June 1978. Trove.
  6. Roger Dean, "assembling...improvising: Rik Rue", Sounds Australian, No. 32 Summer 1991-92.
  7. Shannon O’Neill, "Copyright Doesn’t Mean Shit to Me: sampling and appropriation in Australian Experimental Music and Sound Art", in Gail Priest (ed), 'Experimental Music: Audio Explorations in Australia', UNSW Press, Sydney 2009
  8. Web site: Pedestrian Tapes. Discogs.
  9. Web site: Machine For Making Sense. Discogs.
  10. D. Bechtloff (ed.) 1989, Kunstforum International 103, Im Netz der Systeme, 'Jim Denley/Rik Rue: Passives/Aktives Weshelspiel: Zwei Burschen aus dem Busch'
  11. http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue24/4277 accessed June 16
  12. Web site: AusStage. www.ausstage.edu.au.
  13. Web site: UTP.
  14. Web site: Australia Adlib - Ehm Ehm. www.abc.net.au.
  15. Web site: Eugene Chadbourne / Jon Rose / David Moss / Rik Rue - Country Music Of Southeastern Australia. Discogs.
  16. Web site: David Watson / Jim Denley / Rik Rue / Amanda Stewart / Ikue Mori - Bit-Part Actor. Discogs.
  17. Web site: Rik Rue - Sample/Shuffle/Interplay - Extreme Music.
  18. Web site: Sound in Space: Adventures in Australian Sound Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.
  19. Web site: From the Vault: Things Change, Things Remain The Same. 2016-03-10. Radio National. en. 2019-02-18.
  20. Web site: 109. Sydney Non Objective. en-US. 2017-11-12.
  21. Web site: Rik Rue cassette archive. www.shamefilemusic.com. 2019-02-18.
  22. Web site: Centre. Casula Powerhouse Arts. 2020-04-08. In-Formalism. 2021-08-13. www.casulapowerhouse.com. en.
  23. Web site: Rik Rue. www.kunstradio.at. 2019-02-18.
  24. Web site: From the Vault: Things Change, Things Remain The Same. 2016-03-10. Radio National. en. 2019-02-17.
  25. Web site: Rik Rue cassette archive . www.shamefilemusic.com . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20170222061844/http://www.shamefilemusic.com/ruetapes.html . 2017-02-22.
  26. Web site: Rik Rue. Discogs.

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