Preview: Atom™, Safety Scissors at GAFFTA
This Saturday, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) is excited to present the SF debut of Atom™. He has prepared a live A/V set and will be supported by Safety Scissors, an ex-SF resident who will undoubtedly serve as a great complementary act for a night of deep and pleasantly strange techno.
Atom™
Uwe Schmidt, who is known by a number of monikers including Atom Heart, Atom™, CMYK and Señor Coconut, has led a busy career in production for over twenty years. Born in Frankfurt, Germany Uwe Schmidt’s first productions were mostly aligned with acid house and techno styles. After feeling restless with electronic dance music, a trip to Costa Rica turned Schmidt on to the rhythms of Latin dance music. Using synthesizers and samplers, Schmidt attempted to learn and perfect this style of dance music and caught the public eye with the release of his Kraftwerk covers. Eventually he began playing shows with a live band as Señor Coconut Y Su Conjunto covering popular songs from a variety of artists. All the while, Schmidt pushed forward-thinking electronic music to the public with the creation his own label Rather Interesting, which was formerly a sub-label of Pete Namlook’s FAX label. Now, he continues to test the waters in experimental electronic music while creating his A/V productions.
Safety Scissors
Safety Scissors is Minneapolis born producer Matthew Patterson Curry. Art school brought him out to San Francisco where he joined the Belief/Context Records collective. There, he became acquainted with fellow leftfield minimal techno producers Kit Clayton, Seth Horvitz, aka Sutekh, and Twerk. Shortly after these introductions he shifted his career focus to making music leaning toward danceable pop-influenced techno, releasing on notable labels such as ~scape and Bpitch Control Records. In 2000, he moved to Berlin and from 2001 to 2006 he ran a label called Proptronix, a label he claimed concentrated on phony electronics. Through Proptronix he released his own material, such as his Pigeon Funk project with Sutekh and Kit Clayton, along with works from others such as Frivolous and [a]pendics.shuffle.
To round off the bill, there will be DJ sets from locals Christina Chatfield, Cullen Miller and Atish. All in all, it’s the perfect recipe for a truly unique event for experimental electronic and dance music lovers alike, so don’t hesitate to come out and enjoy the sounds from the stacks in GAFFTA’s cozy rave cave!
Atom™ plays with Safety Scissors Saturday at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. Tickets are available through purchase of a membership at $30 and can be found here.
