January 22nd, 8pm
Gang Clan Mafia creates improvised, live sound. It is a sound collage, landscape, journey and conversation. Video, installation, and performance actions are used as a visual Transportation Pod.
Gang Clan Mafia is:
Vela (turntable,samplers, knobs, transmissions, video.)
mrdirky (found sound, constructed sound, mic, effects, video)
Wednesday, December 15
8:00pm – 11:30pm
Memorize the Sky is a collaboration between reedist Matt Bauder, bassist Zach Wallace and percussionist Aaron Siegel. The three met and began playing music together in Ann Arbor, Michigan during the late 1990’s. Since then, they have performed together, touring around the United States and Europe, crafting their own brand of acoustic improvised music.
Their new album, “Creeks,” was recorded in Brooklyn, NY during the winter of 2008, and documents the trio continuing to explore their unique blend of textural improvisation and drone-based song forms. This time, the ensemble extends their instrumentation to include electronic manipulation of sounds as well as a farther range of the woodwind and percussion families. These experimentations led to a recording colored by dense percussion textures and ghostly flute ruminations; splintering bells and melodic echo chambers.
MTS is informed by the diverse musical experiences of its members, including performances and recordings with rock bands His Name is Alive, Neil Michael Hagerty, Tara Jane O’Neil, Saturday Looks Good to Me, and Low, and avant garde luminaries Anthony Braxton, Jim O’Rourke, Tony Conrad and Alvin Lucier. MTS has also collaborated with the best of the Chicago, New York, and Boston improvised music communities including Fred Lonberg-Holm, Greg Davis, Josh Abrams, Ken Vandermark, Jim Baker, Jeb Bishop, Rob Mazurek, Greg Kelly, Sean Meehan, Phil Minton Jason Roebke and Scott Rosenberg. As a long-lived, deeply collaborative endeavor, MTS holds a special place among Bauder, Wallace and Siegel’s many musical projects.
For more information, please visit memorizethesky.com
Spectactle
Saturday, October 30th 2010
END OF AN EMPIRE PRESENTS:
BENOIT PIOULARD (Kranky / Type / Ghostly International / Moodgadget || Portland, Oregon)
Benoit Pioulard is Thomas Meluch, from Portland, Oregon.
Kranky released his first proper full length, the breathtaking “Precis” in 2006. This has been followed by “Temper”, his second full length for Kranky and a number of 7″ releases on labels like Type. He is touring in support of “Lasted”, his latest full length on Kranky.
As Benoit Pioulard, Meluch creates hazy, atmospheric and somewhat lo-fi folk recordings. .. Meluch’s voice is not washed out by ambience and is usually the central focus of his recordings. Meluch’s marriage of intricate pop music writing, ambience and a particular sonic aesthetic make him a unique artist.
The Wire -”A remarkably effortless cohabitation between bedroom electronics and wistful songwriting…Pioulard has a knack for
embedding subcutaneous melodies well below the minor-key guitar strum.”
Pitchfork – “Temper is an artistically consistent, tonally temperate record…woven
[from] strands of instrument and machine, pop and art, beauty and noise.”
http://www.myspace.com/pioulard
http://pioulard.com/
ANIMAL HOSPITAL
Animal Hospital is Kevin Micka’s one-man musical recording/performance entity.
During performances, Micka buries himself in a pile of electronics-shelves of effects, mixing consoles, amps and delay units-while patiently constructing a layered nest of loops consisting of live drum beats, guitar chords, scrapes, chucks, chimes, and melodies resulting in anything from more conventional songs to meticulously crafted ambient movements on to full on improvisation.
http://animalhospitalmusic.com/
http://www.myspace.com/animalhospital
October 31 (aka HALLOWEEN) 2010
End of an Empire and Whitehaus Family Record Present:
FABULOUS DIAMONDS (Siltbreeze, Chapter Music)
…PIGEONS (Soft Abuse, Olde English Spelling Bee)
MANY MANSIONS (Whitehaus Family Record)
INVISIBLE CIRCLE (Moon Dollar)
All Ages :: Suggested donations $8 for the bands
Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm
“Adorably known to friends and family in Australia as Jarrod and Nisa, THE FABULOUS DIAMONDS’ beguiling truck is a mesmerizing mix of synth, dub, and percussion, woven around honey-ache vocal stylings recalling (in spirit) past Aussie noisemakers Scattered Order or Makers Of The Dead Travel Fast, as well as those of Augustus Pablo, Young Marble Giants, and Suicide.”
“Pigeons is the psychedelic pop project of married couple Wednesday Knudsen and Clark Griffin. They met in Seattle and, while living there, were part of The Sea Donkeys — a shambling anti-folk collective of freaks which released an LP on the Sun City Girls Abduction label in 2005. Pigeons formed later that same year when Wednesday and Clark relocated to New York. After releasing a string of micro-run cassettes and lathe-cut vinyls that explored noise and free jazz modes they turned their energies towards writing structured songs.”
Thursday, October 7 at 8pm.
Sublime Frequencies Film Screening
& Robert Millis Solo Performance
with vinyl interludes by Angela Sawyer
Presented by End of an Empire.
$5-$10 sliding scale.
Robert Millis is a founding member of the influential Seattle unit Climax Golden Twins and a frequent contributor to the Sublime Frequencies and Dust-to-Digital record labels. His previous films include Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan and My Friend Rain and he was the co-author of Victrola Favorites, released via Dust-to-Digital in 2008.
For his upcoming tour, Millis will screen a new film in progress about his recent trip to India..
This WORLD is UNREAL like a SNAKE in a ROPE.
55 minutes.
A collage of sights and sounds from the eternal never-ending collage that is INDIA: Hindu trance ceremonies, free jazz nagaswaram improvisations, impossibly loud cities, processions, devotion, color, abstractions, music and more. India is impossible to know, but offered here is one perspective, subjective and flawed, as it should be, hanging by a thread, captured live and in the moment. Not quite ethnography. Not quite documentary.
Here’s a preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iIpPPccNVc
Additionally, Millis will perform solo, airing old murder ballads, free hillbilly field recording, confused raga guitar meandering, half remembered drones, suspended animation and more!
www.etuderecords.com/robertmillis.htm
www.climaxgoldentwins.com
www.subimefrequencies.com
Spectacle
17 Edinboro Street #3
October 5th 2010, 8pm.
Suggested donation $4
This program features three filmmakers whose respective works explore a variety of environments as well as the formal properties of the film medium. Though working independently, their films culminate in an examination of the film material as a true document of past and present. Each artist calls attention to the process of separation and recombination through the use of discarded View-master cells, appropriated 16mm nature footage, and a kaleidoscopic amalgam of the new and old world.
Steve Cossman
“HHOOWWLL”, 16mm, color, sound, 7 min, 2010
Shot on a Kodak Cine II special effects camera, a collection of recognizable masks are captured and layered on film. The screaming colors fuse together in a choir of haunting forms, slipping and melting on the screens surface.
“CRUSHER”, video transferred to 16mm, silent, 11 min, 2010
An unabridged photograph translated from its still print. Read left to right, pixel by pixel, CRUSHER mechanically sequences single color as single frame creating organic waves of color.
“TUSSLEMUCLE” 16mm, color, sound, 5 min, 2007-2009
The work presented is a reflection on humanity’s ecological relationship and the ritual of restoration. The violent pulse speaks with a sense of urgency and chaotic struggle while the hypnotic arrangement keeps us in blinding awe us to its condition. TUSSLEMUSCLE is composed of 7,000 single frames, which were appropriated from view-master reel cells. Each frame was hand-spliced to create a linear film-strip.
Ross Nugent
“tonal tide”, 16mm, color, sound, 9 min, 2009
This camera-less film was conceived as a darkroom performance to expose the potential and vulnerability of the color film stock at hand. Both the image and sound were created by flashing raw stock; a peculiar pattern emerged in the soundtrack area as light was scattered by the edge of the film base.
“Spillway Study/ Carpe Diez”, 16mm X 3, b&w + color gels, sound, 8 min, 2010
This three-projector piece was created as a color separation project using 16mm Kodachrome nature photography footage from the late ‘70s as its source. The original was optically printed onto three strands and arranged to simultaneously abstract and call attention to the forces at hand. Using a primary color filter on each projector (R-G-B) and some precise hand-jiving, I combine the images and tease out a range colors.
Fern Silva
“Sahara Mosaic”, 16mm, color, sound, 10 min, 2009
An orientalist kaleidoscope that constitutes a geographically complex yet cinematic whole. From Egypt to Las Vegas: the old and the new world are reflected and doubled in this experimental travelogue.
Bios
Steve Cossman received his BFA in Sculpture from Albright College and went on to study Animation in the Czech Republic at FAMU. After returning to the United States, he worked as artist assistant to John Chamberlain from 2006-2009 during which his focus turned primarily to film and video work. Currently he lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. There he is founder/director of Mono No Aware, an ‘annual exhibition of expanded cinema’ showcasing contemporary artists who incorporate live projections as part of their work. Cossman believes that ‘time is constantly moving within a framework of units and that this irrepressible motion is the nexus of human experience’. Working to create a resonating interval, he often re-structures a familiar sequence within a patterned visual language causing the viewer to give thought to established perceptional relationships. Recent film screenings of his work include Ann Arbor Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, and VideoEx in Zurich. His work can be found in the collections of the University of Seattle, WA, University of Hartford Art School, and The Len Lye Foundation, New Zealand. A solo show of his video works will be held in March 2011 at Trinity College, CT.
Ross Nugent hails from wilds of Western Pennsylvania. He earned a BA in Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and studied film and video production at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, where he began working in media exhibition in 2003. Ross served as the Exhibition Coordinator from 2005-2008, and matriculated to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to pursue an MFA in Film. He is also the Program Manager of the UWM Union Theatre, the Faculty Advisor for the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, and an instructor in the Film Dept.
His film, video, installation, and sculptural work is rooted in using process-oriented techniques of film production, including contact and optical printing, and examines nostalgia and decay as mediated through cinema. Poetic gestures emerge through hand-manipulation of film material, which serves as the impetus for many of his artistic endeavors. His current work includes live cinema projects. Exhibitions of these multi-projector performances include The Museum of Modern Art (NYC) as part of a group show utilizing Analyst projectors, Mono No Aware (NYC), and recently at the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival (Chicago).
Since 2005, Fern Silva has been an active filmmaker whose personal journeys and impulsery disposition give rise to his visionary process. He has created a body of film, video, and projection work that conveys a congruent existence through the aesthetics of reflections and detriments within controlled microcosms. His work has been screened and performed at various festivals, galleries, and cinematheques including International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, Images Festival, IndieLisboa International Film Festival, Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Biennale Bandits-Mages Festival, Roulette Gallery, Millennium Film Workshop, White Box Gallery, 119 Gallery, and P.S.1. Fern Silva is from central Connecticut, he received a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and his MFA from Bard College. Fern will be screening two works as part of this years Views from the Avant-Garde.
