75 Dollar Bill + Paul Abbott / Ute Kanngiesser ( duo) + C Joynes

No Longer Available

75 Dollar Bill formed in New York City in 2012; the singular music of this instrumental duo draws various sources from around the world and across disciplines, everything from Mauritanian guitar to raw minimalism and blown-out urban blues, yet brings these sounds into something wholly their own.

“Chen has developed a kind of intuitive approach to Saharan guitar, playing a conventional electric guitar and another with frets adapted to play quartertones. The style he creates in doing so is all his own: fierce art-punk meets dirty blues meets African trance. Together the pair create a low-budget instrumental-music hoedown of unalloyed beauty and power, as heard on this year’s album Wooden Bag (Other Music) as well as a handful of great self-released tapes—they actually busked in their early days and have retained that portability and in-the-red fury.” – The Chicago Reader

Che Chen / electric guitar, quartertone electric guitar, alto saxophone
Rick Brown / percussion, alto saxophone

75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill was formed in 2012 in New York City by percussionist Rick Brown and guitarist Che Chen. Played on a deeply resonant plywood crate, Brown’s earthy, elemental rhythms are both the foundation and foil for Chen’s ecstatic, modal guitar style. The duo’s electric, richly patterned music can shape shift from joyful dance tunes to slowly changing trance minimalism, an uncategorizable hybrid which draws on the modal traditions of West Africa, India and the Middle East, early electric blues, Sun Ra’s space chords and the minimalist and No Wave histories of their hometown. While Brown and Chen are always at the band’s core, the duo frequently draws on an extended family of players, expanding into other configurations live and on record, from compact trios to their “little big band” to 25-piece marching band. 75 Dollar Bill has released a string of cassettes and three LPs. Their most recent record, the double album I Was Real, was released in 2019 (on Thin Wrist in North America, and on tak:til, a sub-imprint of Glitterbeat, in Europe and the UK) and was named #1 record of the year by WIRE magazine.

Percussionist Rick Brown has been in bands in NYC since the late 70s, including Blinding Headache, V-Effect and Run On. Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Che Chen is also a member of the band True Primes and has been an energetic organizer and improviser in the American underground since the mid-2000s. Andrew Lafkas is based in Berlin where he continues to develop solo music and music for large ensembles thru his Model Infinity Orchestra project. He is also a member of Oceans Roar 1,000 Drums, a trio with Todd Capp and Bryan Eubanks.

75dollarbill.bandcamp.com

C Joynes

Over the last decade, C Joynes has ploughed a singular furrow through solo guitar, with a body of work incorporating English folk-tunes alongside North & West African music, and lifting proto-minimalist and improvised techniques from the European classical and avant-garde traditions.

Joynes has released 10 albums to date, including ‘Poor Boy On The Wire’ (2021), his first solo album dedicated wholly to the electric guitar; ‘The Borametz Tree’ (2019), recorded with long-term fellow travellers Dead Rat Orchestra; and ‘The Wild Wild Berry’, a collaboration with singer Stephanie Hladowski (fROOTS Editors Choice Album Of The Year 2012, MOJO Top 5 Folk Albums 2012). He has recorded a number of sessions for BBC Radio 3. He has also played extensively across the UK, Europe and the USA, sharing bills with a broad range of performers including Shirley Collins, Martin Carthy, Marc Ribot, Richard Dawson, Alasdair Roberts, Jack Rose, Josephine Foster, Sir Richard Bishop, Six Organs Of Admittance and 75 Dollar Bill.

Shifting away from the electric guitar of his most recent solo activities, he’s currently exploring the uses of an amplified archtop guitar, exploiting the instrument’s potential for placing intricate parlour music alongside overdriven garage blues throw-downs and the brittle ringing tones of free improvisation.

“As much Conlon Nancarrow and Ali Farka Toure as Blind Lemon Jefferson, the compositional mind at work here can take apparently disparate threads of modernism and ethnic tradition and treat them as though they were all archaic blues styles learnt from dusty 78s.” – BRUCE RUSSELL, THE WIRE

“An inheritor to Davy Graham; a lone operator prone to unexpected collaborations, with a repertoire that crosses continents and timezones with consummate ease, and dashed off with a phenomenal, yet lightly applied technique.” ROB YOUNG, THE WIRE

http://cjoynes.tumblr.com/
http://cjoynes.bandcamp.com/

Paul Abbott, drum kit

Paul Abbott is a musician and drummer. He plays with real and imaginary drums, synthetic sounds, performance and writing.

Projects include: XT with Seymour Wright; XT+Pat Thomas; Kavain Wayne Space (RP Boo) Trio with XT; XT+Anne Gillis; X Ray Hex Tet; yPLO with Micheal Speers; F.R.David, very good* & Rosmarie with Will Holder; film sound for Keira Greene and The Creaking Breeze Ensemble with Nathaniel Mackey. Paul has performed at venues and festivals internationally. He was a co-founder and co-editor of Cesura//Acceso journal for music, politics and poetics, and resident artist at Cafe OTO 2015 & 2023.

Recent releases include: Slip; Strata, Act (Joy Contemporary)*; YESYESSPEAKERSYES; Knees, Elbow Bag; Deorlaf X; Fugitive Equation and very good*.

paulabbott.net

Ute Kanngiesser, cello

Ute Kanngießer is a London based cellist and composer from Germany. Over the years, she has carefully deconstructed her classical roots and almost exclusively performs unscripted, improvised music. Much of her work has evolved in relationship with other art forms such as film, poetry, dance and site specific work. She is interested in the vast expressive possibilities of her instrument in relation to body, space, and others, always looking to rediscover or redefine what is musical/lyrical in this moment in time.
Recent releases include Blue Monday - a collaboration with writer Zara Joan Miller - on New York label Reading Group.