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History
History
“The beginnings of the EMOM movement was like turning over a stone and finding this whole new world of music making underneath. You have to understand that at this time acoustic singer songwriters and indie bands were the mainstream order of the day. Of course electronic music was everywhere too, but there was little in the way of grass roots happenings or opportunity to develop the craft. Playing live was a real challenge for electronic musicians.”
Martin Christie - founder of EMOM
EMOM is like fight club but with only one rule and we really want you to talk about it. Well, it's nothing like fight club, really, but that made a good opening sentence!
Started by Martin Christie in 2017 out of frustration at the lack of opportunities for the performance of electronic music, the movement has grown to be a global phenomenon with EMOM groups in Mexico, Sweden, Germany, the USA, Sydney, and Canada. There is no formal process or organisation and Martin has very generously gifted his IP on the events to the community. In the UK, there are regular groups all over the place - check the Calendar for details of where these are and when they are being held.
We never know what type of a night it will be. There is no typical EMOM event but each host city does tend to have it's own 'flavour'. A night could include techno, ambient, live coding, old cassettes, the odd gameboy, field recordings or industrial sounds, performed on lap tops, iPads, mobile phones, drum machines, synths, groove boxes, sequencers, samplers, modular set ups, keyboards, DJ decks... The event is open to everyone regardless of the style of electronic music being performed.
Oh, and the only rule?
No acoustic guitars unless they are being used to generate soundscapes or some other style of music in keeping with these nights.
Who we are in Birmingham
Who we are in Birmingham
As with all EMOM events, we welcome everyone. Birmingham is famously diverse and we really want to encourage people from all backgrounds to take part.
The Birmingham group started some time back and became another victim of lockdown: it was revived by Dauvit Alexander (The Justified Sinner) - at the moment, there is no core of organisers but Dauvit has enthusiastic support from whoever happens to be around at the time! (Thanks, Leon, Eoghan, James, Michael and Ian.)
Dauvit Alexander - The Justified Sinner
Dauvit Alexander - The Justified Sinner
Image by Hayley Salter for The Dual Works, 2024. Used with permission.
The reason I moved to Birmingham from Glasgow was to work in the Jewellery Quarter. I've been a jeweller all my adult life but my connection with the city has been long-standing and, largely, musicial. I travelled here for a number of concerts over the years: Bernard Parmegiani at BCMG; Messiean's Turangalila Symphony with CBSO; Stockhausen's Mittwoch Aus Licht with Birmingham Opera; events at BEAST. Since moving here, I've been excited by the range of music events happening here and barely a week passes without another gig to go to.
All my life, I've loved electronic music, cutting my teeth on Cabaret Voltaire and the Sheffield sound. A short while back, I had my "mid-life crisis" and bought a SOMA Lyra-8, as shown in the picture above. Other equipment followed, including a Landscape Noon passive anaologue drum machine, which I tried out in Elevator Sounds in Bristol. As I was experimenting with it, one of the staff produced a Microfreak and started to jam along. After about 20 minutes, I realised that we had an audience and I was hooked and started looking for supportive, safe environments to try playing live. It was disappointing to discover that there was no active EMOM group in Birmingham. I posted about this on Mod Wiggler and DivKid got back to me with an introduction to Leon Trimble, who connected me to all the useful people to enable the first event to happen.
More details about the team here to follow.
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