Dean Roberts
Red Memory
A rare opportunity to experience Dean's work in New Zealand. For the MAUForum he will present 'Red Memory' which will feature collaboration with a cast of local musicians to realize a piece that employs a mixture of song and unorthodox musical instrumentation and strategies.
In recent years Roberts has embraced song, lyric and voice, and is working in a realm he describes as extrapolating on the song-cycle or neo-operatic form, where complex narratives and cross reference occur through threads and themes in the lyrics and instrumentation. In his work the songs often become vessels for topographic and psychoanalytic tracings of the impacts of territory and nomadism on the subject. This is reflected in a shape-shifting nature of the vocals, the worm-turning arrangements and unorthodox juxtapositions of sound and text. His work often carries a dark humour and is littered with references to popular music of the past, literature and folk song traditions.