KlangHaus has been hailed as one of the most innovative art collectives in the UK, bold, courageous; socially and environmentally aware.
We will leap back onto the world stage of Edinburgh Fringe (in August) performing two extraordinary shows for which we need your help.
Show one is Darkroom, an intense, profoundly emotional and affecting climate-chaos wake-up call. It is a sound and senses show in complete darkness for one person at a time. This is a potent new way of climate messaging.
No maths, no data, no graphs, no stats…. Just music, sound, noise, space and silence. We took Darkroom to the COP26 climate conference and delegates thanked us for taking them from their heads into their bodies, to allow them to reflect and think in new ways.
Music and sound can do that, it can bypass conscious thought. We need new ways forward with the climate crisis and Darkroom could be a catalyst for change. We intend to perform this show to everyone, one person at a time.
Show two is InHaus, another leap in our mission to cook the rule book of gig-going. The audience is integral to the show, amongst the band, a heart beat away, seated, stood, immersed in the present, the sound, the lights, for a full-on, joyous experience in a home-from-home setting where, at times, all hell breaks loose.
Both shows celebrate what it is to be human - our relationship with each other and with our home, where we lay our heads and the earth we stand on; the depth of the shared experience and delight in music's power to shape, provoke, move is why we do this.
We continue to push boundaries and create work that is innovative and rooted in the live music experience. In order to be challenged and championed, we need new audiences.
Our domestic audience is at the heart of our making process, with both of these shows devised without language barriers, we want to use this opportunity to present these particularly accessible and timely shows internationally.
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the ultimate platform to test and crystallise work, generate discerning audiences and showcase to a host of international promoters and festival directors.
We need your help. Edinburgh Fringe is challengingly expensive and there are no publicly-available funds to support artists from England playing in Scotland.
We look to our shows to be fairly made and fairly paid, we endeavour to raise £15,000 so we can look at breaking even. We know this is hugely ambitious.
£5,000 will allow us to travel to Edinburgh with our band equipment for InHaus and black-out materials for Darkroom, to print up the beautiful posters designed by Paul Flack to advertise the shows and will allow us to present the shows safely under all safety licenses.
£10,000 will allow us to do all the above and rent 5 beds in a modest flat 15 minutes walk from the venue. Yes, accommodation is stupidly expensive.
£15,000 will allow all the above and cover our food for the month, rehearsal costs, vital audience access costs to the show and will help towards our get-in and get-out technicians and cover our iconic KlangHaus workwear, we need two sets for a daily one-on, one-off being washed, oh yes.
Our stretch target of an extra £2,000 will firstly pay for a friendly plumber to sort the loo and sink in our bit of the venue for wees and teas and secondly will buy time and expertise we so value to support us to turn those ‘hello, I love your show’ at Edinburgh Fringe, into actual international tours and high-profile shows. We want our work to make a difference and a good team with time to focus, can make that happen. Yes!
We thank you for any size of donation, from a fiver to 500, everything will help.
Photo credits: Gordon Woolcock: Norwich Arts Centre, Weronika Bachleda : Edinburgh Small Animal Hospital, Helen Maybanks: Royal Festival Hall roof