Table of the Elements – Drone x 4: Stephen O’Malley + Jonathan Kane’s February + Igor Cubrilovic + Tyler Hubby film with Tony Conrad / Gastr Del
Stephen O'Malley, founding member (with Greg Anderson) of Sunn O))) and Burning Witch
Stephen O’Malley is a founding member of Sunn O))) and Burning Witch, both with Greg Anderson. His record Keep an Eye Out was released as part of Table of the Elements’ Guitar Series Vol. 4 in 2008.
Jonathan Kane's February (Photo by Bridget Barrett)
Jonathan Kane’s February takes minimalism and blues to the crossroads with “the unadulterated thunder of a parched desert” (Time Out NY, 2009). The band recorded their first live album in a two-day event at ISSUE last year, to be released on Table of the Elements/Radium Records.
Tony Conrad teaches on the media study faculty of SUNY at Buffalo. Over the last twenty years he has been especially active in video. His work with music composition and performance started while he was a mathematics student, after which he was associated with the founding of “minimal” music and “underground” film. His movie The Flicker is one of the key early works of the “structural” film movement. His art videotapes are widely seen, and he has produced more than 250 programs for public access cable in Buffalo. Conrad performs his recent music regularly at festivals, clubs and new music venues in the US and Europe.
Igor Cubrilovic is a composer, producer, and a guitarist. Glacier Series is set of compositions which were composed over last 3 years, since he relocated from New York City to Geneva, Switzerland.
Igor was a member of Jonathan Kane’s February and produced both the luminous first and long awaited second albums. He was a lead guitarist in Rhys Chatham Guitar Army, and is now active in the European Improv scene with Duet/Duel Series, and composes for film and modern dance.
He studied architecture in Belgrade, sound technology in Stockholm, sound installation in London, and is now pursuing his interest in psycho-acoustics and traditional music of the Balkans. He does not like to record his work.
A BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FOR SUZANNE FIOL: Jonathan Kane’s February + Audrey Chen
Join us as we celebrate the birthday of our beloved founder, Suzanne Fiol, with some of her favorite musicians.
Before creating February in 2005, drummer Jonathan Kane was a co-founder of the No Wave legends, Swans and instigated their half time, slow rhythmic crawl. He played in LaMonte Young’s Forever Bad Blues Band, and is the only drummer in Rhys Chatham’s 100 electric guitar orchestra. He plays with a galaxy of downtown luminaries including Kropotkins, Transmission, and Elliott Sharp. As teenagers in the 70s, Jonathan and his brother Anthony took their freshly inked fake IDs to Chicago where they ended up opening for the likes of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and James Cotton.
Come dance, trance, and (most importantly) make some NOISE for the band that WFMU describes as “Avant Roadhouse, the music that makes me proud to be human”.
‘Wedding the brutal severity of Delta country boogie and Seventies German pulse rock – all dead-ahead motion and mounting detail…Epic.” – Rolling Stone
“Somewhere between Sonic Youth and Steve Reich is the drummer Jonathan Kane. Interested in the crossroads of new-music iconoclasm and experimental rock, he has a drummers sense of steady dynamic development and an unapologetic love of noise. Virtuosic.” – New York Times
“Intensely propulsive motorik blues…its muscularity and greased relentlessness is never less than exhilarating.” – Uncut
AUDREY CHEN is a Chinese-American musician who was born into a family of material scientists, doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. Parting ways with the family convention, she turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at 11. After years of classical and conservatory training in both instruments, with a resulting specialization in early and new music, she parted ways again in 2003 to begin new negotiations with sound in order to discover a more individually honest aesthetic.
Now, using the cello, voice and analog electronics, Chen’s work delves deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. A large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is extremely personal and visceral. Her playing explores the combination and layering of a homemade analog synth, preparations and traditional and extended techniques in both the voice and cello. She works to join these elements into a singular ecstatic personal language.
Recently, her primary focus has been her SOLO project but she is also involved in many various collaborations. Among musicians, she has worked with Phil Minton, Tetuzi Akiyama, Toshimaru Nakamura, Ko Ishikawa, Elliott Sharp, Aki Onda, Phill Niblock, Frederic Blondy, Jerome Noetinger, C. Spencer Yeh, Alessandro Bosetti, Mats Gustafsson, Mazen Kerbaj, Michael Zerang, Tatsuya Nakatani, Le Quan Ninh, Joe Mcphee, Susan Alcorn, Michele Doneda, Paolo Angeli, Gianni Gebbia, plus many more. Some current projects include: duos with Phil Minton, Frederic Blondy, Robert van Heumen, Katt Hernandez, Nate Wooley, and Id M Theft Able. Trio with Nate Wooley and C. Spencer Yeh. Plus three new quartet projects with Jeff Carey/Morten J. Olsen/Raed Yassin, Miya Masaoka/Hans Grusel/Kenta Nagai and also with Frederic Blondy/Michael Johnsen/Jerome Noetinger.
Chen has performed in Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan, Canada and the USA. She is currently based in Baltimore, MD USA but primarily maintains an active touring schedule throughout Europe.
On January 25, ISSUE Project Room will inaugurate its new space at 110 Livingston with Gaudeamus Muziekweek, a four-day festival celebrating groundbreaking and challenging new music by emerging composers from around the world. Working in partnership ...
ISSUE is starting off the New Year with a change of scenery. That's right, Issue Project Room is moving out of our space at the Old American Can Factory and into 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn. We've had a great run at the Can Factory,...