Colour Out of Space
Schedule 17th - 19th April 2026
Friday 17th April 6pm – Midnight (doors 5.30pm)
The Old Market. 11A Upper Market St, Hove BN3 1AS
Hali Palombo / Fleshtone Aura / Absurd Cosmos Late Nite / Hexakaidecagon / Jo Morrison / Adam Buffington / Marc Matter
Artist Profiles
Hali Palombo
This Chicago-based composer works primarily with found sound and old media formats. What most people throw away or ignore — wax cylinders, shortwave radio, CB chatter, Midwestern field recordings — she treats as essential, profound, and as three-dimensional as a season pass to Journey to the Centre of Your Beak.
Chicago Reader – Composer and Shortwave Radio Enthusiast
Hali Palombo – FM radio host, composer, visual artist and filmmaker – will be artist in residence at the Rose Hill leading to the festival.
Fleshtone Aura
Absurd Cosmos Late Nite
Mark Groves of Melbourne, Australia, enjoys playing with his voice and tape, among other embarrassing pursuits. A good friend described Absurd Cosmos Late Nite as “a strange trip to somewhere in Australia most of us have experience with, yet (if you’re lucky) only in dreams we barely understand. Or perhaps our inner dialogue, set to an uneasy meter, critiquing and discussing, over and again.” In summary (perhaps): “Imagine Scott Walker fired by Macquarie Group.” What does that look and sound like in the context of Brighton’s social and physical landscape? Elbow your way to the front of the room and find out.
Absurd Cosmos Late Nite is one of many aliases occupied by Groves. Others past and present include Absoluten Calfeutrail, Arum Lilies, Resident Pissant, Von Einem, and even Mark Groves. Projects shared with others currently include Voice Imitator and Red Wine and Sugar. He also runs the Index Clean label
Jo Morrison
After practicing her yarl for some time, this Essex-based vocalist and sound maker (with an increasing penchant for costume) became a student at TOMA (the other MA), an alternative art school based in Southend. She’s also part of the Noisy Women Present collective, regularly plays with the London Improvisors Orchestra and the Lo-Fi Improvised Music Workshop, and created the 36-second viral Instagram reel which was filmed in a YHA dorm in Hexham, the one with an electric blue mattress that uttered things. The unconventional eros of the work yield an approving nod from a follower in need, while another observed that it’s what unemployment looks like.
Adam Buffington
Following the dissolution of Pennsylvania’s premier conceptual art collective Meat Locker Full of Christmas Ornaments, Buffington relocated to Reykjavik, where he specializes in contemporary Icelandic art and music with visual artist Tumi Magnússon via the Mumbling Eye label. His practice is rooted in musique concrète and the aesthetics of the DIY underground.
Performance Times
APPROX STAGE TIMES:
JO MORRISON 18:30-19:00
ADAM BUFFINGTON 19:20 -19:50
MARC MATTER 20:10 – 20:40
HEXAKAIDEECAGON 21:00 – 21:30
ABSURD COSMOS LATE NITE 21:50 – 22:20
FLESHTONE AURA 22:40 – 23:10
HALI PALOMBO 23:30 – 00:00
Saturday 18th April 10am – 12.00pm
The Rose Hill, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton, BN1 4J
Hali Palombo Residency Playback
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For all early risers, COOS / Rose Hill artist in residence Hali Palombo will be talking through and playing back her work in progress, recorded in and around Brighton over the past week.
Palombo is a composer, visual artist, FM radio host and filmmaker from Chicago, Illinois, whose work often weaves the absurdity and mundane beauty of Illinois into records, short films, drawings and paintings. She is an avid practitioner of “plunderphonics”: sampling existing musical/aural works and intertwining them into something new, whether it’s shortwave radio and CB radio samples, wax cylinder audio, and field recordings taken from Midwestern points of interest.
Free – limited space!
Saturday 18th April 1pm – 3.30pm
One Church, 20-22 Gloucester Pl, Brighton BN1 4AA
4046 Group / John Macedo /Regan Bowering / Lucia H Chung / Matt Atkins / Vicky Sparrow / James Shearman and Paul Margree (rotating improv set)
Panel Discussion with Duncan Harrsion
Artist Profiles
Saturday 18th April 2pm – 5.30pm
Gallery Lock In, Little Western Street,
Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 2PU
Julian Weaver: Cento (for Colonel Gouraud)
A participatory sound installation for [100] phones.
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This locale-specific work draws on plans of Colonel George Gouraud, erstwhile European director of the Edison Phonograph Company, to run for the Brighton Town Council in 1904 and have his election address simultaneously broadcast by 100 phonographs.
Cento assumes the form of an acceptance speech that takes full advantage of Gouraud’s shameless self-aggrandisement whilst recording the influencers of his day.
A poetical construct, the Cento is historically composed of verses or passages taken from other authors and disposed in a new form or order. It is thus a construct formed of odd fragments that speaks as much of the composer’s choices of as of its content
In this collective extension of the form, Cento aims to facilitate participants’ sonic preoccupations and personalities; skewing the cento with their own desires and techniques.
Saturday 18th April 6pm – Midnight (doors 5.30pm)
The Old Market. 11A Upper Market St, Hove BN3 1AS
Tongue Depressor / Shakeeb Abu Hamdan / BILLA ENSEMBLE / Chik White / Alice Kemp / Michael Barthel & Anna Schimkat / Augustė Vickunaitė
Artist Profiles
Chik White
Most of his two-dozen-plus albums centre on jaw harp, though he has also recorded with nose flutes, various horns, harmonicas, and guitars. Collaborations include Naomi McCarroll-Butler, Bill Nace, Xuan Ye, Sam Shalabi, Chad VanGaalan, and Colin Fisher. He has also created two musical short films under the Chik White name—Marshlands and Altered Voicing.
Performance Times
APPROX STAGE TIMES
SHAKEEB ABU HAMDAN 18:30-19:00
BILLA ENSEMBLE 19:20 -19:50
ALICE KEMP 20:10 – 20:40
MICHAEL BARTHELL & ANNA SCHIMKAT 21:00 – 21:30
CHIK WHITE 21:50 – 22:20
AUGUSTE VICKUNAITE 22:40 – 23:10
TONGUE DEPRESSOR 23:30 – 00:00
Sunday 19th April 12.30pm – 2pm
The Rose Hill, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton, BN1 4J
Sound Canvas Workshop with Sophie Cooper
For children under 5
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Sound Canvas is a playful new sound experience for young children created by artist and early years practitioner, Sophie Cooper. Children aged 5 and under, along with their grown-ups, are invited to take part in creative activities while enjoying a relaxed and beautifully lit immersive environment accompanied by the music of Raymond Scott and live improvised trombone by Sophie herself.
Free! Drop in, Stay and Play!
Please note: Children must be accompanied by adults at all times.
Sophie Cooper is a sound artist and crucial member of Yorkshire’s far-reaching experimental music scene. Sophie’s practice pivots around new presentations of acoustic instrumentation (primarily the trombone) with electronics, challenging conventions around composition, text placement and performance. In recent years, Sophie has been particularly interested in publicly engaged, site specific, audio work, often in collaboration with visual artists.
Sunday 19th April 1pm – 4pm
One Church, 20-22 Gloucester Pl, Brighton BN1 4AA
Marija Kovačević / Lonny Hoffmann & Zhao Ziyi / Rory Salter / Luciano Maggiore
Artist Profiles
Rory Salter
This resolutely humble sound worker from London spends time on both sides of the spotlight — as a maker of dramatic, intimate collages and as a sound technician for the new season of Panini Excellence on BBC Seven. Recordings are available via Index Clean, TEETH, Research Laboratories, Zoomin’ Night & others. A new album ‘a sky cold as clay’ is out now on Infant Tree.
‘His work is formed through experimentations with acoustic & electronic instruments, faulty & functional technologies, cassette tape, feedback and walking; motivated by exploring relationships to environment, work/labour & craft; It is rooted in practice and documentation. He has performed and worked with Derek Baron, Phil Julian, Sun Yizhou, Mark Peter Wright, Regan Bowering, Li Song and others. He co-runs the record label and mail-order distribution Infant Tree with artist Ben Victor Waggett and curates a series of concerts in London between Cafe OTO, Dalston and Spanners, Loughborough Junction.’ Hundred Years Gallery
Performance Times
Lonny & Ziyi 1.15 – 1.45
Rory 2 – 2.30
Marija 2.45 – 3.15
Luciano 3.30 – 4
Sunday 19th April 5.30pm – 11.00pm (doors 5.00pm)
The Concorde 2, 286A Madeira Dr, Brighton BN2 1EN
Aaron Dilloway / Chop Shop / CIA Debutante / Zheng Hao / Suppwiyah / Shit Creek / Ypsmael
Artist Profiles
‘Hailing from Michigan, Aaron Dilloway was a founding member of formidable trip metal gods Wolf Eyes. Since he left that band a decade ago, he’s delicately extended his exploration of tape manipulations and found sound appropriation, simultaneously bringing warmth and acidity, high-end assault and dreamy dislocation.’ Wavering Forms
Since 1987, the recordings and installations of Scott Konzelmann have featured his speaker construction assemblages and tape music compositions. His sound and noise are intrinsically connected to sculptural objects. Forged from re-purposed junkyard fragments fitted with functional loudspeakers and fed by prepared recordings, they articulate particular frequencies into hissing static, jet-engine drones, and noxious rumbles — all of which retain a metallurgist residue.
Zheng Hao
Born in Wuhan; based in London. Mostly uses electronics for solo and group improvisation, while other times also makes computer dance music. Enjoys gritty and gnarly textures as well as delicate, amorphous qualities in different sound and space. Irrefutable evidence that a re-calculation of the optimum broken-eggs-to-omelette ratio is due.
‘In Hao’s practice, conventional relations between performer and sound sources are twisted. Sound becomes malleable. Graspable without the obstructions and limitations of a conventional instrument or a DAW. Sounds that are typically discarded or avoided are held onto for their affective, textural and interactive possibilities. The unfamiliar sensations residing in unconventional sound sources are embraced.’ Bezrick Tapes
Performance Times
Ypsmael 5.45 – 6.15Suppwiyah 6.35 – 7Shit Creek 7.20 – 7.45Zheng Hao 8.05 – 8.30Chop Shop 8.50 – 9.20CIA Debutante 9.40 – 10.10Aaron Dilloway 10.30 – 11
Saturday 25th April 10am – 12pm
The Rose Hill, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton, BN1 4J
COOS EXTENDED
Experiments in Sound with Iain Paxon
Live Soundtrack Workshop for Young People
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For an extended COOS session, Lewes based visual and sound artist Iain Paxon will lead a sound making workshop to explore exciting ways of coaxing interesting and unusual sounds from familiar instruments and objects such as prepared piano, bicycle, drums and household percussion. These will be arranged into a composition which, following the workshop, will be performed to a short film.
Iain Paxon has made over 20 albums with the lo-key am dram experimental pop group Hamilton Yarns as well as numerous solo projects, such as his bicycle-based album Inside the Wheel. He has a background in youth work and extensive experience overseeing workshops with children. He’s a sound and visual artist with an interest in the use of story-telling, visual narrative and free improvisation.
Age range 12 -18 year olds
Spaces limited! Tickets Available HERE
Iain Paxon Bandcamp
Saturday 25th April 12pm – 2pm
The Rose Hill, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton, BN1 4J
Better Listening – COOS Finale – Experiments in Sound Performance
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No.9 – Hali Palombo. Artist text – S.Glass