OULAN is Una Lee and Loula Yorke: an improvised sonic collage of live poetry and electronic processes.

OULAN combines the sonic forces of Loula Yorke (electronics) and Una Lee (vocals), co-recipients of the Oram Award 2020. This exciting collaboration inspires the two artists to bring their best elements to the improvisational table: Lee’s sublime vocal work navigates in real-time through her diverse musical languages, arriving in an eerie envelopment of Yorke’s ephemeral, aleatoric electronics, producing a dynamic, colourful yet intimate soundscape.

Watch the OULAN improvise live at Sonic Arts Research Centre below. The text used in this performance includes short excerpts from Água Viva by Clarice Lispector, A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems by Raymond Queneau and The Glass Menagerie by Tennesse Williams.

About the artists –
Una Lee is an artist working with sounds, stories and sensations. As a trained composer, she seeks innovation in storytelling through her practice consisting of music, sound, textual & performance art and digital interaction. She’s interested in exploring human condition, memory, time, and our relationship with art and ecology, enveloped in multiple layers. Often drawing from her own experiences and life events, and identity as a non-native in her current habitat, she is in perpetual pursuit of alternative storytelling. She is a recipient of The Oram Awards 2020, and has received support from Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council England, PRS Foundation and New BBC RadiophonicWorkshop. She holds a MA and PhD in Sonic arts from Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, at which she’s a current visiting scholar engaging with work on narrative in sound arts.

Loula Yorke is an Oram Award-winning composer and live synthesist who uses electronics and participation to create noisy artworks. When performing her trademark improvised hardware-only live sets, Yorke brings her experimental take on vocal sampling and processing, blending it with vintage drum sounds and improvised Minimalist synthesiser music: building up from abstract soundscapes into powerful beat workouts backed by kaleidoscopes of interlocking and repeating patterns. Yorke has played live in support of The Orb and Talvin Singh, had radio play on BBC Radio 3 and BBCR1 & 1XTRA, and had coverage in DJ Mag, The Wire and Bandcamp Daily.