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Hallo Nerdpunk!

Did you, as a child, enjoy the later episodes of the children series Hallo Spencer and grew up to be a geeky adult who listens electronica, reads speculative fiction and has an affection for house plants? If that's a pretty accurate description of you, I'm pretty sure you shouldn't miss the live streams of Ugress -  a music/storytelling project from Norway with the ruthless charm of Spencer (though, with only one character and songs instead of sketches), awesome music, self written stories and fun, interactive games, starring my dear friend and fellow book clubber, the unbearably congenial Gisle Martens Meyer.


Pictured: Gisle in the "Cyber Ship", a green screen generated location that marks his general headquarters for the youtube show - and there are many more of these locations. In fact, Gisle creates a new one for every occasion. There's a computer screen in the background featuring members of the audience (or participants) who decide to join him on zoom or facebook, although it's no problem if you just watch the show and not be featured - but in that case you can't join in on the games. The show basically consists of Gisle telling you stuff and playing music. He might talk about his shows, what's new, informing us on the technical sides of his work - and you can ask him questions too. In order to make the passage to music, he sometimes introduces and interacts with virtual characters, like a ghost, a robot ghost or a house plant, or sometimes he creates a modification of location or a little story that will link to the next song, featuring a selfmade music video. For instance, the cybership may crash and hit underwater and the following song will be about underwater life, with exotic underwater sea and ocean life forms dancing around.

Ugress is a great remedy to alleviate lonely Corona evenings and a fun substitute for a bar outing. Whether you might want to grab a drink and join the fun or just have it play in the background while doing other stuff - it is an incredibly original and creative show to look forward to on a monthly basis. And the audience is awesome too: from the collective clapping emojis that conclude each song to snappy comments, Gisle's audience is hilarious and definitely adds spice to the scrumptiousness.

Check out the last episode in which you can enjoy cybernetic forests, a duet of Gisle and his evil goth twin, a clarifying discussion between Gisle and his houseplant on its feelings about the green screen, autotune wolves and invisible cybersongs! Next Ugress Liveshow is on November 12th, I will keep you informed.

visit them: http://www.ugress.com/

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