Tuesday,
May 18, 2010 @ Vox
Populi Gallery Toshimaru Nakamura Tokyo solo
and with: Gene Coleman in duo Philadelphia and with: Tim Albro, Ian Fraser, and
Jesse Kudler in quartet Philadelphia
One of our very
favorite improvisers and pioneer of the "no-input
mixing board," Toshimaru
Nakamura visits from Tokyo to join Philadelphia composer and
bass-clarinetist Gene
Coleman in duo and more. See Nakamura's work in this video
(his entrance begins at 4:40):
Vox Populi Gallery, 319 N. 11th St., 3rd Floor,
Philadelphia, PA,
$5-10, 8:30pm. (map)
Thursday, April 8,
2010 @ Vox
Populi
Gallery Corridors Byron Westbrook
NYC
Tandem Electrics
Richard
Kamerman and Reed Evan Rosenberg
NYC Ladies' Room
Alex
Nagle and Joe Lentini
Philadelphia
faryal maroof
Sunday,
March 21, 2010 @ Vox Populi
Gallery Lucre - Chris Cogburn/Bryan Eubanks/Vic
Rawlings New York/Austin/Boston Ian M. Fraser and Reed Rosenberg Philadelphia/NYC Tim Albro Philadelphia
Vox Populi Gallery, 319 N. 11th St., 2nd floor (right below Vox),
Philadelphia, PA,
$7, 8pm. (map)
Thursday, March 11, 2010 @
Pageant: Soloveev Gallery Sissy Spacek (John Wiese/Corydon Ronnau) Los Angeles Gerritt Wittmer/Paul Knowles Oakland, CA Rubbed Raw Baltimore/Philly FUN Philly
"Silence in
music was not the cessation of sound, or even a gesture: it was a
different sound, one with more
density than those sounds made by instruments." - Michael
Pisaro
Saturday,
October 17, 2009 @ Vox Populi Gallery PSF One Year Anniversary
Celebration!!
Brendan Murray and Richard Garet (Boston/New York)
audio-visuals Jim Haynes and Murmer (San Francisco and London)
audio-visuals Bee Mask (Philadelphia)
electronics, tapes Jesse Kudler and Ian Fraser (Philadelphia)
guitar, electronics, tapes, radios + laptop
Thursday,
May 14, 2009 @
International House Philadelphia Sons of God (Sweden)
noise and performance PIMA Group (Philadelphia)
movement and music Ghost Ship (Philadelphia)
harp, guitar, and vocals Ian Fraser (Philadelphia)
computer It's hard for us to talk about Sons
of God because we don't really know
what they'll do. Without getting too theoretical or attempting a
treatise on semiotics. . . well. . . sure, we can tell you
we've seen a video of the Sons "performing a miracle," but we aren't
sure what it would have felt like in person. We'll give you some
videos of their performances to watch, but will you have really
experienced their "investigation of a mental airspace, undertaken with
the aid of unconventional tools"? Our favorite kind of art is
that
which raises questions, and Sons of God certainly do that.
Perhaps it
would be instructive to relate some of the Sons' past work (together
and individually): the Royal Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, "the
largest – and most populous realm on Earth, incorporating all
boundaries between other nations as well as Digital Territory and other
states of existence"; the amazing, must be seen to be understood letter
series "Experiments
with dreams";
performances of snoring or laughter; recordings made in the mother's
womb; attempts to fly a carpet; amplified washing machines; and much
more. For this evening's performance, the Sons of God will bring
one
of their unique miracles to Philadelphia, using sound, bodies, props,
and projected images.
PIMA Group has been a key and stalwart connection between the
Philadelphia experimental dance and music scenes for years, plying
their unique trade in galleries, houses, historic buildings,
warehouses, basements, roofs, record stores, and probably outdoors
somewhere when we weren't paying attention. While too many dance
and
music groups seem to excel at one discipline over the other, PIMA
brings an unusual focus to not just both but to their union, to using
music to teach us something about movement and to using movement to
teach us something about music. PIMA uses pianos,
percussion, radio,
and electronics to create a noisy bed of sound while dancers seemingly
enter trance states to enact obscure rituals and/or secret
narratives.
While PIMA often employs myriad musicians and dancers, tonight it will
be stripped to its core of Melisa Putz and Thomas Clark.
Ghost Ship is a new and ever-changing improvised music group focused
around the harp stylings of Mary Lattimore (veteran of the Valerie
Project). Dark improvised string tangles.
All this takes place at a new venue we are really and truly excited
about: the Ibrahim Theater at International House Philadelphia, a
gorgeous theater featuring newly refurbished comfortable seats and a
truly killer sound system (two sub-woofers!).
Friday, April 17, 2009 @ the Big Rock
Candy Mountain Ratatosk (Chicago)
electronics and drums Shattered Hymen (Chicago)
noise Breakway (Chicago)
jazz/electronics Bee Mask (Philadelphia)
electronics Dick Neff (Philadelphia)
drums/electronics A stellar line-up of noise in its
various incarnations, with some jazz and plenty of live drums sneaking
in. Should be a killer time! Ratatosk is our old pal Jason
Soliday, Chicago stalwart and veteran of such great projects as Coeurl,
Zeropoint, Gunshop, Medium, and a million more. His latest jam
has him spitting out harsh layers of detailed noise while young-un' Ben
Billington pounds the drums behind him. Soliday always reminds us
how great noise can be when played by a veteran who knows what he's
doing, so expect to be wowed.
Shattered Hymen is the harsh noise project of Vadim Spirkut. Name
aside, he informs us that "The motivation is not power, control or
violence but rather using volume, density and dynamics as a means to
alter consciousness. " Having seen Spirkut before, and having
listened to his myspace page, we believe him! Far from some lazy
harsh-noise by the numbers, Spirkut crafts cathartic, busy, full,
constantly-moving pieces of harsh noise excitement. A lot of
people attempt what he does, but few do it this well.
Breakway combines contemporary electronics and laptoppery with the
Chicago jazz tradition, harking back to Miles Davis or Herbie
Hancock. But the group updates their sound with a
contemporary/digital spin and an open-ness to noisier textures that
recalls Supersilent or the likes of Radian and Trapist.
Philadelphia is represented by Bee Mask and Dick Neff, two highly
personal solo projects. Bee Mask uses home-made synthesizers and
light-sensitive controls to concoct a slow-moving, hovering mass of
sound, while Dick Neff contrasts acoustic drum beats with swirling
electronics.
Friday, December 12, 2008 @ Vox Populi
Gallery Bryan Eubanks, Andrew Lafkas, and
Vic Rawlings (NYC, NYC, and Boston)
bass, electronics, and cello/electronics Jack Wright, Ben Bennett, and Jon
Barrios (Easton, PA, Columbus, OH,
and Philadelphia, PA)
sax, drums, and bass Tim Albro and Ian Fraser (Philadelphia)
guitar, electronics, laptop
A
real treat for those who love names; there's eight of them in this
show. Our most "improv-y" show yet has the potential to reveal
some
real surprises and some real gems.
Bryan Eubanks and Andrew Lafkas have been playing together for years,
not so much developing as honing a super-focused, minimal yet rich
wealth of electronic tones and bass bowings. It's held together
by
their impeccable taste, restraint, and sense of timing.
Local geniuses Jack Wright and Jon Barrios are to be joined my mystery
man Ben Bennett on percussion, but if their audio clip and past
performances of Barrios and Wright are anything to go on, this should
be fantastic. An acoustic counterpoint to the other two sets of
gritty
electronics.
Tim Albro are Ian Fraser are two Philly stalwarts who share an affinity
for surprise and constant tweaking of their set-ups.
Guitars?
Laptops? Electronics? CD players? Radios? Some
or all of the above
should appear, either in thick noisy bursts or in carefully doled out
filigrees of sound or maybe both or maybe neither. YOU HAVE TO
COME TO
FIND OUT.
Saturday,
November 22 @ Vox Populi Gallery Mattin + Margarida Garcia (Basque and Portugal via New York, NY)
laptop and bass Barry Weisblat + Michael Evans (New York, NY)
electronics and percussion Moss Forest (Zajack/Danges) (Philadelphia)
audio and video
Vox
Populi Gallery, 319
North 11th Street, Third Floor, Philadelphia, PA,
$5-10, 8pm. (map)
Saturday, October 18 @ Mascher Space
Co-op Alessandro Bosetti (Berlin, Germany; Milan, Italy; and
Baltimore, MD)
voice and laptop Corridors/Byron Westbrook (New York, NY)
audio and video projections "Meet" (Philadelphia)
Dancers: Nicole Bindler, Liza Clark, Shannon Murphy, Rebecca Patek,
Gabrielle
Revlock, and Michele Tantoco
Two acts who present "not quite music." Bosetti, from a
background in improvisation, has in recent years focused on the voice,
speech, text, and vocal abstraction, refracting language through
abstract sound and blurring the line between both. Situating the
voice amidst samples, musical instruments, computer noise, and
processing, Bosetti bends the tenuous line between representation and
abstraction, speech and sound.
Corridors is Byron Westbrook, who augments his live drone pieces with
multi-screen projections that probe the relations among the senses
while they create an immersive environment of both sound and
light. Rich drones shimmer as abstract patterns flicker.
Sink in.
Friday,
October 17
@ Circle of Hope Broad Street Brendan Murray (Somerville, MA)
laptop and electronics Mike Shiflet (Columbus, OH)
laptop and electronics Trig (Philadelphia, PA)
laptops, electronics, vocals
Two geniuses of the drone attack from different angles. Shiflet's
shifting, crunching, pulsing laptop and electronics reveal a wealth of
tiny details subsumed into a river of flowing sound, evolving
majestically. Murray provides pure, deep beauty: a heavy, heady,
and physical soup of tones and grit that lulls even as it
exhilarates. Paradoxical? That's all the fun!
Like Sarah
Palin, Trig (Alex Nagle and Joe Lentini) choose life. But not the
simple
life of moose-hunting,
forced teenage motherhood, snow-mobiling championships, secret pregnancies,
lies about earmarks, "spiritual warfare," media sequestering,
"troopergate," and unalloyed support for oil drilling. No, Nagle and
Lentini prefer to get messy and hands-on, mixed up in the guts and innards of
that most common yet inscrutable piece of hardware: the
computer. Writing custom patches long into the night, tweaking code and parsing
syntax: this is the life of *our* Trig. Not that the audience
would know, as screamed vocals and visceral noise textures should
carry the day. What, you expected gentle mousing and pecked
keystrokes? These pushup-enthusiasts will have none of that.
Friday,
October 3, 2008
@ Slought Foundation Polwechsel (Vienna, Austria)
Werner Dafeldecker - double bass
Martin Brandlmayr - percussion
Michael Moser - cello, electronics
Burkhard Beins - percussion Will Guthrie (Nantes, France)
percussion, electronics, microphones, and gadgets
An
evening of
fascinating approaches to percussion. Polwechsel, the
long-running
Austrian group, has been at the forefront of new approaches to both
instruments and sound arrangement since their landmark 1995
debut.
After several lineup changes, the group has now coalesced around two of
the world's most fascinating drummers: London phenom Burkhard Beins and
Martin Brandlmayr, best known for his contributions to the seminal
electronic/noise/post-rock/? group Radian. Carefully layering
sounds
using
precise starts and stops, Polwechsel lets us hear the grit and friction
of contrast, deceptively masked behind a "cool" exterior.
Somehow, Will Guthrie has discovered the perfect intersection between
noise, electro-acoustic improvisation, musique concrete, and his own
background as a jazz drummer. Using an array of cheap microphones
and radios to amplify and augment his simple percussion setup, Guthrie
evokes a world where all your home electronics might come alive and
then have the good taste to just sound right. A busy, shifting,
textured, yes-maybe-even-with-a-bit-of-"swing", one man band.
Wednesday,
October 1, 2008 @ The Marvelous Jason
Kahn and Jon
Mueller (Zurich,
Switzerland and Milwaukee, WI) percussion, tapes,
and electronics HZL (Jesse Kudler and Tim
Albro) (Philadelphia, PA)
guitars, electronics, radios, and tapes Using drums more
as resonators than as struck instruments, Kahn and
Mueller both use microphones, electronics, and feedback techniques to
slowly build complex textures until they fill a room. A
previous Philadelphia concert found the two working up a
fascinating, detailed, and tough wall of layered sound, rendering any
attempts to relate sounds to percussion sources useless. Simply
thrilling.
Local favorites HZL will give their first concert since May, 2007
(!). Their rare performances are justifiably highly-regarded and
have become, at this slow pace, something of events. The
group performs with the audience in the round and speakers surrounding
them, turning concerts into complex
collaborations with the acoustics and ambiences of a given room.
Don't wait until 2010 to see them again!