Rashad Becker

Becker is a shadowy figure, generally more comfortable behind the scenes of Good Music (TM) and as an engineer at Dubplates & Mastering where he is widely considered to have some of the most finely tuned ears in music. He describes his music as “playing the traditional music of imaginary species”

“Becker’s name will be known to a lot of people – indeed it appears on many, many records – but his music won’t be. His day job is as the mastering and cutting engineer in Berlin’s world-famous Dubplates and Mastering, where his role involves entering into a creative dialogue with the music of others, helping them to achieve what they set out to with their compositions in the final product. Before he got the D&M gig, he was originally a musician in his own right, and he continues with this as an irregular sideline, making and manipulating loops and electronic sounds. What wasn’t a surprise about his performance at Cafe Oto was how precise it all looked and sounded as he carefully twisted dials to produce a sequence of very crisp and discrete tones, sparse and improvisational (if you had to pick something from Becker’s other work to compare this to, it sounded like an early, experimental, Mego, a less harsh Pita or Hecker). What was more unexpected was just how conversational it all sounded. Aside from the samples of human voices that he dissected and looped, most of the other frequencies used were within the range of the human voice – it sounded like a long stream-of-consciousness sentence made up short syllables, electronic oohs and wahs, sections of muttering, and occasionally bickering. Whatever he does, it seems Becker has the knack of giving sound its voice.” – The Liminal

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Terence Sharpe

Terence Sharpe is an Irish sound artist and composer living in Edinburgh, Scotland where he is currently completing an MSc in Digital Composition and Performance. Owing to a background in art history, his work is interested in exploring aesthetics traditionally associated with visual culture through sound. His sound work is concerned with physicality and presence, affect and sensation, and presents these ideas through harsh, reduced noise that interchanges with moments of restrained minimalism. He is currently working on his first album as well as installation work.