Hamerkop performs “Remote”

Annabel Alpers (Formerly Bachelorette) and Adam Cooke create a fully immersive, multi-speaker sonic experience.

For the past five years, Annabel Alpers, one of New Zealand’s finest exponents of electronic music, has been amassing a unique surround-­?soundscape designed to transcend traditional performance boundaries, from her adopted home base in Baltimore, Maryland. After extensive workshopping in Baltimore and New Zealand, Remote is now ready for its live premiere.

Remote is a fully immersive, multi-­?speaker sonic experience, which skillfully combines elements of electronica, pop and Alpers’ field recordings to dazzling effect. All carried along by the hypnotic backbeat of live drummer, Adam Cooke.

Freed from traditional performance cliches, it is the listeners who are at the heart of this show. Instead of being seated in front of the stage, they are invited into a shared space encircled by speakers with the performers, who remain largely hidden behind masks throughout the one-­?hour performance. Audience and music are one. A community bound by sound.

The impact on listeners is transporting. With all visual clutter removed, the remaining senses are, of course, heightened -­? free to roam and find fresh destinations in the heart and mind. Audiences report the effect is akin to an ‘out of body’ experience and that the show has changed the way they choose to listen to music.

This trans-hemispheric piece retains all the distinctive choral work, melody and invention that made Alpers’ pioneering work as Bachelorette such a standout. But, the constant triggering of senses from unexpected angles and algorithms has added a whole new dimension to her craft. This is a musician working at the peak of her powers

Remote is multi-layered and ever-changing. It has a kaleidoscopic, almost psychedelic, quality truly unique amongst contemporary music. It is vast in scope but intimate in nature. Genre-­?defying, but familiar; experimental, but accessible. It’s just two people, but it could be all of us.

Ideas about distance and ‘far-offness’ have often defined how New Zealanders see themselves, and the notion of “home” is an added cause for contemplation for those who find themselves living on the opposite side of the world. The genius of Remote is to reassemble all that strange isolation into something remarkably warm and personal. This is the soundtrack to the place we know, packaged up into one spellbinding, cutting edge feast for the senses.

TIckets are limited. $25.