INTERNATIONAL artists and musicians will come together in Barrow for a three-day festival, getting under way on Friday.

The Octopus Collective curate the Fourth Full of Noises festival, bringing new music and sound art together in the form of live performances, talks, installations, film screenings and other surprises in a variety of venues around the town.

There will be return visits to St James Church, with its superb acoustics, Barrow Park, the screening room and installation space at the Cooke's Studios building, and a first encounter with Barrow’s international arts research and production centre Art Gene, who will host a "Festival Hub" in the Nan Tate Centre, where artists and audiences will be invited to eat, drink, mingle and meet between performances, talks and other events.

This year’s line-up will present the accustomed wide range of international performers and new work, including concertina player Stuart Estell, violinist Alison Blunt, and the extraordinary violin, drums and electronics trio Oscilanz. 

There will be a special open air performance of John Eacott’s Floodtide, and from the first-ever FON, guest curators Helen Frosi of SoundFjord and long-standing FON associate Ryoko Akama will introduce sound poet Simon Pomeroy, vocalist Ingrid Plum and composers Aine O’Dwyer, Andie Brown, audio installation artist Leslie Deere and new work from Japanese artists Minoru Sato and Kanta Horio.

Several artists have an established relationship with Octopus, and are making return visits, including violinist Laura Cannell, whose Medieval Uprising event at Wray Castle, was one of the highlights of 2014. 

Radio artists Mark Vernon and Jenn Mattinson, who recently worked as creative practitioner at Theatre By The Lake, in Keswick, present an exploration of the possibilities of multi channel, ambisonic sound, a process by which sound can be directed around a given space. Work has involved making recordings with circular connotations around the county, including Workington Speedway Track.

The Octopus Collective's John Hall says: "We began in 2009 by presenting installations and live broadcast pieces from resident artists alongside live performances, which gave us a lot of satisfaction and established FON as something special. 

"We've often been disapointed by events that simply present a conveyor belt of performers, however varied, and so in recent years we've begun to provide context in the form of films, lectures, talks on work in progress, along with some historical background to show where this idea or that approach has it's roots and where it might go.

"The scope of the Full Of Noises festival gets broader and deeper with every edition. Always shapeshifting, always innovative, stimulating and entertaining, it continues to reflect the many directions in which new music and sound arts are currently travelling."

Tickets and weekend passes, as well as a detailed programme including times and prices, are available from  fonfestival.org