An evening of quietly experimental songform - with Ilyas Ahmed's hypnotic play on the raga/folk/drone axis and Ashley Paul's intuitive combination of striking, simple melodies and acoustic experimentation.

ILYAS AHMED

Portland based Ilyas Ahmed traffics a sound that has been called everything from "gone" to "darkly emotional and sweetly mournful". His often times simple play on a raga/folk/drone axis is nothing short of hypnotizing.

A string of self-released CDrs in 2005/2006 brought Ahmed immediate attention and he soon released landmark albums on Time-Lag, Digitalis, and Root Strata. In 2010 Immune gave Ahmed's first two albums Between Two Skies & Towards The Night a deluxe 2xLP vinyl release and issued his new album With Endless Fire in early 2012 - his first since the 2009 release Goner (Root Strata). It continues the much fuller sound presented there, giving us his unmistakable voice with a mix of acoustic and electric guitars, harmonium, organ, and drums.

brolbrolbrol.com/ilyasahmed



Photo by Megan Holmes

ASHLEY PAUL

Ashley Paul is a performer and composer based in Brooklyn, New York. She uses an array of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, guitar, bells and percussion, mixing disparate elements to create a colorful pallate of sound that works its way into her intuitive songs; free forming, introverted melodies. This blend manifests beautiful and simple musical forms against acoustic experimentation. Her solo albums have received high praise being chosen “Album of the Column” in The Wire, number one on Byron Coley and Thurston Moore’s “Tongue Top Ten” in Arthur Magazine and included on NPR’s All Songs Considered “Best of 2010”. She has been interviewed in the German magazine Spex, The Sound Projector magazine, Foxy Digitalis and on Rare Frequency.

Ashley has performed or recorded with Phill Niblock, Loren Connors, Aki Onda, C. Spencer Yeh, Anthony Coleman, Joe Maneri, Joe Morris, Seijiro Murayama, Greg Kelley, Bill Nace and Eli Keszler appearing on such labels as PAN, ESP-DISK’ and Tzadik. She received a Masters of Music from New England Conservatory in 2007.

ashleypaul.net