Originally written for the Tramlines Times
Nestled between industrial buildings in the shadow of Bramall Lane football stadium lies the Audacious Art Experiment, a shared art and music space that has become something of a jewel in the steel city’s cultural crown.
There, just after Saturday midday, was to be found a performance of ‘Immersive Cleaning with Slug Milk and Sleepsang’, one of the suitably more avant-garde offerings of the Tramlines weekend’s fringe offering.
Toying with the themes of cleansing as an act of catharsis and metamorphosis, this intriguing conceptual piece was ushered in with a solo set by Slug Milk, who fashioned a haunting wall of spiky ambient energy punctuated by looped modulated synthesisers, with a GameBoy serving as percussion.
Around the midpoint of the performance, and without any kind of ado, two additional performers entered a bathing circle marked out by candles, dousing each other with soap and water as they added another display of purification.
Some time later, Slug Milk himself stripped down and joined the circle, as producer Sleepsang saw the performance through to its conclusion with an injection of hypnagogic music, characterised by its sampling of the dialogue of various noughties-era computer games.
All this, too, while several of those in attendance continued to recover the cans and general detritus of the night before. Seek and thee shall find, Sheffield.
benedict tetzlaff - deas. 