Friday 11 July, 2008
RICHARD YOUNGS &
ALEX NEILSON
Alan Wilkinson / John Edwards / Steve Noble Trio
Phil Minton
Café Oto, Print House, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, E8 3DL (map)
Doors 8.00pm ~ £7adv/£8 door (get tickets here)
Richard Youngs & Alex Neilson
First ever live London blowout for the duo brings together Neilson's blistering omnidirectional percussion with Youngs' gorgeously e-bowed and distorted guitar work, which harvests a frantic energy that recalls Tony Iomi as surely as it does Sonny Sharrock.
Richard Youngs is a British musician with a prolific and diverse output, including many collaborations. Born in Harpenden, England, and based in Glasgow since the early '90's, Youngs plays many instruments, most commonly choosing the guitar, but he has been known to use a wide variety of other instruments and objects, including the shakuhachi, theremin, oven tray, dulcimer,and even a motorway bridge!
Already legendary free-drummer Alex Neilson has played with most of the musical underground’s heavyweights of this era. This one man folk renaissance movement has left a trail of recordings and thrilling live shows with Jandek, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Heather Leigh, Alasdair Roberts, etc in his youthful wake. As one of the most energetic and ‘in-tune’ free players around, Neilson has a better grasp than most on trying to get across the nature of improvisation.
Alan Wilkinson / John Edwards / Steve Noble Trio
'Wilkinson/Edwards/Noble are producing new, vital music of and for now. You need form to work at this level of spontaneity and certainty and any frequenter of the outer limits of the European music scene could vouch for the jazz porridge these three have put away. John Edwards is such a fixture around the London scene these days it's hard to remember who did bass duty before he turned up. Alan Wilkinson is a ferocious improviser, probably best known for membership of the demon Hession/Wilkinson/Fell trio; Flatouttakenoprisoners saxophonication, squeals, coughs, sustained improvisational experimentation and east London tribal chanting. Fierce and wonderful. Steve Noble is an upright drummer who reminds me of an old photo of Baby Dodds. Articulate, with a surgeon's accuracy, his crisp percussion work has accompanied dancers, funksters, poets and tuba players. But he's not played better than here: great power, allied to grace, a subtle touch and solid time - the drumming drives the music on to real heights. Obliquity: advancing obliquely; deviating from the straight; freedom from the humdrum constraints of time and place.' Bo Weavil recs.
Phil Minton
Minton is a highly dramatic baritone. He is perhaps best known for his completely free-form work, which involves "extended techniques" that are extremely unsettling. His vocals often include the sounds of retching, burping, screaming, and gasping, as well as childlike muttering, whining, crying and humming; he also has an ability to distort his vocal cords to produce two notes at once. As the DJ/poet Kenneth Goldsmith has described it:
Minton's range on this disc [A Doughnut in One Hand, FMP] runs from the sounds of a man choking on his own vomit to the sounds that grandpa makes when you finally decide to pull the plug on his respirator. Minton's like a little kid who's contact-miked himself playing yo-yo with his saliva; he's a baby drooling through his cries; he's mastered the art of the multiple burp; he's perfected the craft of goobering all over his finger and then running it over his lips while moaning. I'd hate to see what his mic looked like after he was done with it. ... Minton ... forces us to ponder the musical qualities of noises that we'd rather not deal with and for that fact alone, makes this an important recording.
Monday 14 July, 2008
OREN AMBARCHI web
Helm myspace
Nos Phillipé myspace
The Luminaire, 311 High Road, Kilburn, London, NW6 7JR web
Doors 8.00pm ~ £7adv/ £8 door (get tickets here)
Oren Ambarchi
Oren Ambarchi is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with longstanding interests in transcending conventional instrumental approaches. His work focuses mainly on the exploration of the guitar, "re-routing the instrument into a zone of alien abstraction where it’s no longer easily identifiable as itself. Instead, it’s a laboratory for extended sonic investigation". (The Wire, UK). Ambarchi's work on harmonics and resonance has led him to define serene spaces of fluid, shifting sound that is both fragile and extremely physical.
He has performed and recorded with a diverse array of artists such as Martin Ng (Australia), Sunn 0)) (USA), Christian Fennesz (Austria), Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Pimmon (Australia), Keiji Haino (Japan), John Zorn (USA), Rizili (Greece), Voice Crack (Switzerland), Sachiko M (Japan), Keith Rowe (UK), Phill Niblock (USA), Gunter Muller (Switzerland), Evan Parker (UK), Robbie Avenaim (Australia), Toshimaru Nakamura (Japan), Dave Grohl (USA), Damo Suzuki (Japan), Chris Townend (Australia) and many more.
Ambarchi is involved in many collaborative projects including the song-based duo Sun with Chris Townend (releases on Staubgold, Preservation, Textile & Important records), Burial Chamber Trio together with Greg Anderson of Sunn 0))) & Atilla Csihar of Mayhem (with a recent LP release on Southern Lord & an upcoming 10" release) and Grave Temple with Csihar and Stephen O'Malley of Khanate & Sunn 0))).
Nos Phillipé
..Looking at the instrumentation, it is quite natural thinking to certain names; but if you were expecting a cross of Keith Rowe and Philip Jeck, wrong turn.. “Shh…Camille” is in fact built upon haze and distance, metallic resonance and faraway echoes scarcely mobile in the dim light of a cold suburban winter evening. The record maintains the original intentions in its total length, with a few exceptions - the extra long distorted guitar cries starting halfway through the piece shed a modicum of clearing on the scene in the second half. A picture of thick grey where only lonely adventurous wanderers are seen walking around, without a clue about their destination. The whole sounds stirringly anguishing and rather intense. An interesting change from the interminable silences we’re accustomed to when visiting these lands. Massimo Ricci - Touching Extremes (review of “Shh…Camille”)