J.WLSN & LIAM KEENAN with Seaworthy and Matt Rösner

A very special one-off atmospheric show next month as we welcome two of Sydney’s most brilliant creators of electronic soundscapes to the Republic, joining us to launch their debut album together, with some very fine guests in support!

J.WLSN & LIAM KEENAN
with Seaworthy and Matt Rösner

SATURDAY July 18th at 7 p.m. [doors at 6.30]

Based on Dharawal Country, Sydney, Liam Keenan and J.WLSN create atmospheric sound fields that orbit the outermost reaches of post-rock, ambient electronics and minimalism. Their work, which draws breath from leaning into the murkier and low-end heavy aspects of these worlds, is densely textured and creates a sense of constant folding and deepening.
In 2026 they offer their first recording, Country/The Country, which catalogues their pre-occupations with place, sound and resonance.

Liam Keenan is a Gomeroi guitarist and curator who released in 2024 a collaborative album with American indie-rock experimentalist David Grubbs, and his new work explores the sonic depths of improvised acoustic guitar feedback in real time.
“Here is an artist whose thinking has more in common with a Tibetan monk or a particle physicist. Time in the ether with J.WLSN reveals to me that everything matters, down to the smallest detail, yet at the same time, nothing matters in the ways we think it does.” – Liam Keenan

A note from J.WLSN
In late 2024 my good friend Liam Keenan and I recorded a short session with our friend David Akerman at his studio Lost Sound in Marrickville. We had been working as art and music curators at a major art museum in Sydney, Australia. We both make music separately but had neglected making a record together for too long.
Country/The Country is the first of our combined love of all things longform, expansive, distorted and it’s filled with reverberations. Built on subtle guitars, modular synth pads and sample-based loops, the record is us exploring our experience growing up in similar regional and rural settings.
The music represents parts of the country in Western Sydney and further west in regional NSW where we both grew up across different periods of time. These places are drifting plains, scowling mountains and at times, simply rolling suburbia. The music is a score of sorts for these meshing places, a way of us decoding these shared geographies, outside of time. You could almost say, it’s a music of place, out of time.

Seaworthy is the project of Cameron Webb, musician and environmental scientist. Since 2000, Seaworthy has explored melodic and experimental approaches to the construction (and unraveling) of minimalist musical soundscapes from looped guitar, warm drones, piano, electronics and field recordings. 
Matt Rösner is a sound artist from Western Australia.  The open spaces around Rösner’s home infuse his work with an organic sense of space and time, constructed using various acoustic instruments, custom build software patches and detailed field recording studies.

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NOTE THAT THIS IS STILL A CASH-ONLY EVENT SO PLEASE BRING ALONG A FULL WALLET