Unsound Festival New York Labs: Collaborations 1: HATI with Z’ev + MERCE (Shelley Burgon & Maria Chavez) + Anna Zaradny with Aki Onda
Photo by Szymon Roginski
Unsound New York Labs kicks off at ISSUE Project Room with a series of collaborations: HATI (PL) collaborates with Z’ev (US); MERCE, a collaboration between harpist Shelley Burgon & avant-turntablist Maria Chavez (US); and Anna Zaradny (PL) collaborates with New York-based Walkman manipulator Aki Onda (US). Unsound Labs comes from the idea of festival as laboratory, a place where artists are free to experiment and collaborate with their peers.
Frank Bretschneider + Yannick Franck
Frank Bretschneider works as a musician, composer and video artist in Berlin. His work is known for precise sound placement, complex, interwoven rhythmic structures and its minimal, flowing approach. Described as abstract analogue pointillism, ambience for spaceports, or hypnotic echochamber pulsebeat, Bretschneider’s subtle and detailed music is echoed by his visuals: perfectly translated realizations of the qualities found in music within visual phenomena.
Yannick Franck (b. 1981, Liège, Belgium) is a sound and visual artist. He lives and works in Gent, Belgium. He runs the independent label Idiosyncratics Records. He is the founder of electroacoustic project Y.E.R.M.O. (Venice Biennial 2009, Pavilion of Luxembourg) in which he’s active since 2005 with guitarist Xavier Dubois and drummer Jason Van Gulick.
Elliott Sharp & Friends at Our Current Space at the (OA) Can Factory
Elliott Sharp’s 60th birthday celebration continues with a collection of his long-time friends and collaborators performing his music at ISSUE’s current space at the Old American Can Factory. Among Sharp’s works to be performed are Flexagons (Orchestra Carbon), Octal (Elliott Sharp solo), Oligosono (Jenny Lin, piano), Bootstrappers (JG Thirwell, Anthony Coleman, Melvin Gibbs, Don McKenzie, & Sharp), Amygdala (Marco Cappelli, guitar), and an all-guitar version of Sharp’s SyndaKit. The celebration begins at 5:00 with an open Flexagons rehearsal and continues until late.
Admission to the Flexagons rehearsal and Q&A with ISSUE Board Member and longtime collaborator Luke DuBois is free and open to the public. Admission to the performances beginning at 7:30 will be ticketed ($35 / FREE for Members).
This is the second night of a celebration of Elliott Sharp, E#@60, which begins March 4 at 110 Livingston with the premiere of Elliott’s new work for double string quartet, Occam’s Razor. Join us to celebrate our friend and supporter at this special event.
Unsound New York @ Littlefield: CoH + Carlos Giffoni + Robert Piotrowicz & C. Spencer Yeh + Marcus Schmickler + Instant Coffee + Dawid Szczesny
Robert Piotrowicz, photo by Szymon Roginski
Unsound Festival has invited New York’s CARLOS GIFFONI – the man behind NO FUN PRODUCTIONS and the NO FUN FESTIVAL to co-curate an evening at Littlefield that explores the edges of electronic music with Russian CoH, experimental Polish artist ROBERT PIOTROWICZ in a duo with C SPENCER YEH, German MARCUS SCHMICKLER, Polish artist Dawid Szczesny, and experimental band INSTANT COFFEE featuring one half of the duo Matmos. Unsound Festival New York is presented by Fundacja Tone, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York and the Goethe-Institut New York.
SWANS + Baby Dee + Ben Frost @ The Brooklyn Masonic Temple
The Swans
Presented by ISSUE Project Room in collaboration with Haunting The Chapel and the Blackened Music Series
@ Brooklyn Masonic Temple
317 Clermont Ave (@ Lafayette Ave)
7:00pm Doors
7:45pm Ben Frost
8:45pm Baby Dee
10:00pm-Midnight Swans
Midnight-3am Afterparty w/ DJ Sasha Grey
ISSUE Project Room in collaboration with Haunting The Chapel and the Blackened Music Series is thrilled to present Swans’ first NYC show inmore than a decade. It will take place at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, the loudest venue in the city.
Michael Gira has handpicked performance artist, harpist and accordionist Baby Dee to open the show, this time featuring keyboards accompanied by cello.
Formed in 1982 and led by Gira, a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Swans instigated and heavily influenced New York’s NoWave scene. They are considered one of the most influential post-punk bands to date, often incorporating droning vocals, thunderous rhythms, and varied, complex instrumentation.
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Merzbow + MV Carbon and Philip White (First Set)
Masami Akita, born in Tokyo in 1956, performs under the name Merzbow. Taken from Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau, or “Merz building,” the name refers to a building created with rubbish. Merzbow made his earliest music from tape loops, combined with creatively recorded percussion and metal, after which he began cutting up his old recordings in search of new methods of creation. He released his music on cassettes through his own label, Lowest Music & Arts, which was founded in 1979.
ISSUE Artist-in-Residence MV Carbon and Philip White will be opening for Merzbow before both performances.
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Bram Stadhouders+ Audrey Chen, Nate Wooley, Gill Arno trio + Kenta Nagai
BRAM STADHOUDERS (NL)
Bram Stadhouders (b. 1987) is a freak/free ambient jazz guitarist and composer from Tilburg, The Netherlands, currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. Playing the guitar from age 6, he won several classical guitar competitions during his childhood years and got the chance to play with his rock and jazz groups on major Dutch festivals. His own talent, both in playing the guitar as in improvising music was recognised in 2008 when he was elected the most promising improvisation talent of The Netherlands, a very prestigious price for up and coming musicians. His music is very atmospheric, meandering in between free jazz, ambient and classical composed music. (http://www.myspace.com/bramstadhouders)
Audrey Chen/ Nate Wooley/ Gill Arno Trio
Audrey Chen
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. www.myspace.com/audreychen
SOLO sound on myspace and: http://download.yousendit.com/FC35C831016A0A28
Gill Arno
Gill Arno was born in Italy and lives in Brooklyn, NY. His work explores areas where sound and image overlap, and is often constructed with found objects and found sound. In the project /mpld/ he utilizes two old modified slide projectors to create performances where static images become pulsating and fade continuously into one another. The projector’s mechanical sounds are tapped and manipulated to reveal their musical potential. Other activities include performances with the New York Phonographers and in various other collaborative and improvised settings. He publishes books, recordings and other multiples via his own imprint, Unframed Recordings, and runs Fotofono, a small studio in Brooklyn where sometimes public events are held.
www.m-i-c-r-o.net/mpld
www.unframedrecordings.net
www.fotofono.net
Nate Wooley
Nate Wooley (b. 1974) grew up in a Finnish-American fishing village in Oregon. He has spent the rest of his life trying musically to find a way back to the peace and quiet of that time by whole-heartedly embracing the space between complete absorption in sound and relative absence of the same. He began playing trumpet professionally at age 13 with his father, and after studying he moved to Colorado where he studied more with Ron Miles, Art Lande, Fred Hess, and improvisation master Jack Wright. His tenure with Jack began to break Nate out of self-imposed molds and into the sound world that he has embraced as his own.
Nate currently resides in Jersey City, NJ and performs solo trumpet improvisations as well as collaborating with such diverse artists as Anthony Braxton, Paul Lytton, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Marilyn Crispell, Joe Morris, Steve Beresford, Akron/Family, David Grubbs, C. Spencer Yeh, Daniel Levin, Stephen Gauci, Harris Eisenstadt, Taylor Ho Bynum and Peter Evans.
Kenta Nagai
Kenta Nagai crafts sound and vision from his base in NYC and Princeton, NJ. His fretless guitar playing is featured on Eugene Chadbourne’s “Guitar Festival Summer 1999”. On shamisen, a traditional Japanese string instrument, Nagai has performed widely including the Sculpture Center in Long Island City and Carnegie Hall. From 1999 until 2002 he was a composer in residence at The Cave Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
SOLD OUT! Glenn Branca Ensemble – THE ASCENSION: THE SEQUEL
SOLD OUT
From left to right, guitars: Evelyne Buhler, Eric Hubel, Reg Bloor and Greg McMullen, conductor: Glenn Branca, drummer: Libby Fab, bass: Ryan Walsh (photo by Tony Cenicola)
The new Glenn Branca Ensemble will be performing the entirety of the soon to be recorded album ”The Ascension: The Sequel” at Issue Project Room on Oct. 17th.
The set will be about an hour and will include three world premieres***:
1. “The Tone Row That Ruled The World”***
2. “Carbon Monoxide”***
3. “Quadratonic”***
4. “The Blood”
5. “Lesson No. 3 (tribute to Steve Reich, 2006)”
The show will open with excerpts from the Ericka Beckman film
“135 Grand Street 1979″
including the only known footage of No Wave bands: Theoretical Girls, The Static, Ut and Youth In Asia.
For more info or photos contact: glenn@glennbranca.com
Share – all night A/V openjam
what is share?
SHARE is first and foremost a platform to explore expression, in a variety of artforms. Through its weekly open jam sessions, SHARE.nyc engages its participants and spectators in a continually changing dialog on art and culture. As such, SHARE represents an ongoing exploration of collaborative performance as cultural exchange. It mines the relationship of artistic practice to cultural identity, remapping a multiplicity of cultural discourses. The act of creating artistic content in a multicultural collaborative context is a fascinating and natural extension of the SHARE concept.
Share is an open jam, not just for digirati, but for all new culture lovers. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. We furnish the amplification and projection. Share happens every Sunday.
open jams and walk-in sets — Bring your equipment/instruments/gear etc. to join the jam!
audio jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.
video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join
8pm, free —
Share @ Issue Project Room
The (OA) Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215
http://www.share.dj/share/event_info.php?eventID=579
direction/map:
http://issueprojectroom.org/contact
http://is.gd/ljow
SHARE is always 100% FREE!! (no admission!)
Show up early!!! and stay late!!
Deflag Haemorrhage/Haien Kontra + Pink Reason
DEFLAG HAEMORRHAGE/HAIEN KONTRA
First North American tour coinciding with their new release:
“Humiliated” CD Tochnit Aleph (Berlin)
And a reissue of their first work
“Luxury” CD Tochnit Aleph (Berlin)
“Defusing preconceptions of what a live event should be and degrading its components – the sound, the performance, the audience – without imposing aesthetic or moral limits: this is the reason for being of Deflag Haemorrhage/Haien Kontra, the project born in 2001 from the minds of two of the most
unpredictable and ‘conceptual’ contemporary sonic activists: Mattin and Goldie. Ferocity and immobility, instruments abused and unused, musicians zombiefied in their ‘stage persona’ and in general the sense of psychosis, of necessary superfluousness that gushes from every gesture, from each
decision taken by this anglo-basco duo make their live event an experience that is all but impossible to relate to, at least until they’ve stripped you of the costuming of dominant culture.
Goldie is one of the most original noise musician/performers on the European scene. His double album “ABJECTOR”[sic] is a violent and considered examination of the fragmentation of language, the de-composition of instrumental research and the painful suffering that accompanies it. Far from any current or cultural influence, Goldie’s work places itself in a unique conceptual universe, and its cruel voice warbles a mix of agony and ecstasy. Netmage Festival, Italy 2009″
“The most abject music ever made against the reproduction of stereotypes. When noise becomes impotence, when impotence becomes a weapon. Noise and improvisation never done before, including elements of performance and conceptual art. Overdose of meaning, sucked into vacuum of dissolution. You never know where your are.
DEFLAG HAEMORRHAGE/HAIEN KONTRA formed in 2001 in Hackney, East London. Noumenal power improv where anything can happen. The improvisation is no longer happening just with musicians and their instruments but on the head of the spectator. Frustration as psychological danger. We all are spectators: appearance of dissolution mirroring the averageness of our lives. Something must be done.” Mattin 2009
DEFLAG HAEMORRHAGE/HAIEN KONTRA collaborated with some of the most radical and legendary musicians in the avant-garde such as Eddie Prevost (AMM) and Philip Best (Consumer Electronics, ex-Whitehouse).
DEFLAG HAEMORRHAGE/HAIEN KONTRA performed in European festivals such as Netmage (Bologna), Abject Music (Berlin), MEM (Bilbao) and TheErrorIsMedia (London). They recently depleted a residency at Worm (Rotterdam).
Mattin is performing at No Fun Fest this year and he just finished the Whitney Independent Study Program. Among his projects include: Sakada (with Eddie Prevost) and the avant-punk group Billy Bao . Mattin has collaborated with musicians such us Junko, Radu Malfatti, Matthew Bower & Drunkdriver. He has toured Europe, Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand and North America. He has over 50 releases in different labels around the world and with Anthony Iles he has edited the forthcoming book Noise & Capitalism.
Carlos Giffoni & Okkyung Lee + Oneohtrix Point Never + Religious Knives
Carlos Giffoni
Carlos Giffoni – Bio
Carlos Giffoni is a prolific Venezuelan electronic musician who resides in the New York City area since the year 2000. Currently using modular synthesizers, hand made custom instruments, and various types of analog and digital synthesis in the composition of electronic music pieces, as well as improvising live with local and international musicians. His recent solo work has focused in live analog synthesizer pieces that put his style in a line with early Brian Eno, Cluster and Conrad Schnitzler while maintaining the harsher edge of his previous noise works. Carlos remains a major figure in the US and international experimental music scene, performing live in New York and in a number of tours and festivals in the US, South America, Europe and Japan. He is the curator of the No Fun Fest, a yearly event in Brooklyn bringing together a wide variety of international experimental musicians as well as running the No Fun Productions label. His work has been featured in many publications including The New York Times, The Wire, Pitchfork, Art Forum, Tokion, Signal to Noise and many others. He also holds an MFA in design and technology from Parsons School of Design, where he occasionally teaches classes and workshops.
Recent live and recording collaborations include:
-In the US: Jim O’Rourke, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Nels Cline, Chris Corsano, Peter Rehberg, Chuck Bettis, Nautical Almanac, Smegma, Yasunao Tone, Emeralds.
-In Europe: Gert-Jan Prins, John Duncan, Rudolf E.ber, Lasse Marhaug, Z. Karkowski,
-In Japan: Merzbow, Astro, Solmania.
Selected Discography:
-Carlos Giffoni “Adult Life” (2008)-Full Length CD on No Fun Productions.
-Carlos Giffoni “Arrogance” (2007)-Full Length CD on No Fun Productions.
-Carlos Giffoni “Welcome Home” (2005)- Full Length CD on Important records.
-Merzbow/Carlos Giffoni “Synth Destruction” (2007) CD on Important Records
-Smegma,Carlos Giffoni,Metalux- LP collaboration on LAFMS/No Fun Productions
-Carlos Giffoni/Lee Ranaldo/Jim O’Roruke “North Six. -3” CD on Antiopic Records
-Carlos Giffoni, Nels Cline, Chris Corsano “Graduation” LP- Benefit for free 103.9
Website: http://www.carlosgiffoni.com
Oneohtrix Point Never
Daniel Lopatin is the American-born son (b. 1982 in Boston, Massachusetts USA) of Leonid Lopatin (former member of The Flying Dutchmen) and Susanna Lopatin (musicologist and piano teacher). He attended Hampshire College where he studied aesthetic philosophy and electronic music, later releasing his senior thesis recording on Naivsuper under the alias Dania Shapes. Utilizing freeware audio editing programs in conjunction with synthesizers, the Dania Shapes sound was a neo-romantic derivation of glitch music that opted for an ornate, hands-on melodic approach rather than systematized processes of degradation.
At the same time, Lopatin began recording as Oneohtrix Point Never, abandoning the glitchwork of DS for a more open-ended approach to recording and live performance. Using a variety of synthesizers, sequencers and loopers, Lopatin employs a technique he refers to as “grid layerage” which abstracts the organizing elements of automated synthesizer arpeggiation via “blurring, decay and melancholic repetition.” He often frames his method around aesthetic motifs associated with the Berlin School of Cosmic Music, 80s new age, darkwave, b-film scores, fusion, minimalism and contemporary noise, but rather than focus purely on sentiment or style alone, the promise of OPN is found in his ability to rethink and retool ubiquitous sonorities into something engaging and personal. Lopatin’s longstanding fascination with the old teutonic masters of the sequencer and their ensuing private press diaspora, his ability to underscore with tact and subtlety the lines of sympathetic resonance between the Berlin school and Giorgio Moroder, John Carpenter, and the tearstained pillows of the polysynth epoch remain entirely his own.
Lopatin is also member of Infinity Window with Taylor Richardson of Prehistoric Blackout and Black Egg. He is currently living in Brooklyn, New York.
Maya Miller and Michael Bernstein met in New York a decade ago, and began making music together as half of sturm und drone quartet Double Leopards a few years after that. Religious Knives came later still, away from the road and the rehearsal space, borne and nurtured in cramped apartments throughout Kings County. Beginning in 2005, the pair released a string of CD-Rs and cassettes, both on their own Heavy Tapes imprint and through the labels of kindred spirits. Steadily moving away from the psychedelic tone baths and modern industrial scrape for which the Leopards had become known, Religious Knives coursed through minimal synth oscillations and spare Kraut repetition.
Mouthus’ Nate Nelson joined the pair in 2006, lending a powerful presence behind the drums that shaped Religious Knives’ rudimentary jams into rough-hewn, long-form paeans to tar-blackened bummer psych. Soon after that, old friend Todd Cavallo completed the quartet on bass, adding a sturdy low end and dubwise groove that lifted Religious Knives from cellar murk to black cloud puffs of bone deep alarm.
An active four-piece for a little more than a year now, Religious Knives have presided over a pair of twelve-inches, a couple of collections of out of print singles and long gone burns, and one full-length. All throughout, these four have traced a path away from the clamour they once knew, bathing slight guitars, interlocking vocals, and solemn basslines in reedy organs and recalcitrant modular synths. The seemingly tin eared would call it noise, but in these eight hands such a set plays as anything but, instead a (cough) syrupy stroll in search of the ghosts of rock’s classicist past.
With The Door, Religious Knives have not only found those bygone days, but broken them apart. There are bookmarks to be found here, pages creased in well-worn chapters. But make no mistake – theirs is a sound tied to the here and now, a summer record for those dread days when the heat holds low and skin sticks to cheap car seats and old patio furniture. These six songs are brighter, sharper than anything that has come before, locking in tight on jugular rhythms. It’s the score for disappearing neighborhoods and crumbling buildings, a hope of holding onto the past as those around us move fast to forget it. It is scent as sound, the stench of smog and sickly smoke spiraling towards the sky. It is Brooklyn, July of 2008. The sun has left us in the East, disappearing somewhere behind Jersey, leaving our borough to find the pulse of another night deep with the city’s streets.
Glenn Branca + Neg-Fi + Paranoid Critical Revolution
GLENN BRANCA
NEG-FI
In addition to PCR, Guitarist Reg Bloor has been playing with Glenn Branca (to whom she is married) since 2000. She played in Branca’s Symphony No. 12, Lesson No. 3, his rock band Branca/Bloor, in his trio, eventually becoming Concertmaster for his Symphony No. 13 for 100 Guitars. In the late 90′s she was a founding member of the Boston-based band TWITCHER, who released the self-produced CD “Leg of Lamb of God” in 1999 and appeared on the soundtrack for the Troma film “Terror Firmer”.
Prior to joining PCR, drummer Libby Fab studied electro-acoustic music and music composition at Trinity College Dublin, where she completed an M.Phil in Music and Media Technology. Libby became part of the Glenn Branca crew in 2006 as technical director, rehearsal drummer and assistant engineer for Symphony No. 13. She has worked on Branca’s shows in Montclair (New Jersey), Ghent, Dublin, London, Minehead, Rome, Seattle and St. Louis. She also performed in Branca’s Lesson No. 3 in London and Minehead.
http://www.theparanoidcriticalrevolution.com/
http://www.myspace.com/theparanoidcriticalrevolution
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,...