San Franscisco's Barn Owl bring their dual guitar/tube amp worship strategies to Cafe OTO for an evening of transcendent sonics alongside shapeshifting Swiss composer/improvisor Antoine Chessex presenting a piece for Tape/Saxophone and the post-Takoma 12 string explorations of London guitarist Cam Deas.

BARN OWL

Formed in 2006 by Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti, Barn Owl use their guitars to paint broad musical strokes on a canvas stretched between the framework of ambient, drone, americana, and black metal. On record, Barn Owl combine densely layered electric and acoustic instruments and walls of melting amplifiers and feedback alchemy. The lines between strict structure and ordered chaos blur as third-eye opening e-bowed drones explode like beams of light and corrode into crumbling distortion, baking tones that sizzle like brittle bones left in the desert sun. An experience only intensified in a live setting

Between rhythmic, turning strums that recall Saharan twilight, radiant synth swells and choral clusters that echo the desolation of deep space, the duo’s sound has no doubt ascended from it’s desert-rock roots into a new, beaming realm. Evocative as they are, the sounds on their latest Thrill Jockey LP 'Lost in The Glare' aren’t easy to tie down to particular imagery. A myriad of influences from blues and raga to the guitar style most often associated with the Tuareg people meld into a new universal sound that can only be described as cosmic and sublime.



ANTOINE CHESSEX

Antoine Chessex is a composer and sound artist born in 1980 in Vevey, Switzerland, with a background as a saxophone player and performer. His sonic researches include compositions for ensembles, solo works, transdisciplinary collaborations and sound installations based on the exploration of the physicality of sounds and spaces.

His solo works feature dense layers of sustained pitches reacting with the architecture of the space or massive clouds of amplified sax resulting in intense live actions in total immersion in the sound. He has collaborated with musicians like Lasse Marhaug, Zbigniew Karkowski, Maja Ratkje, Chris Corsano, Ilios, Valerio Tricoli, C. Spencer Yeh, Axel Dörner, Hans Koch, Robin Hayward, Thomas Ankersmit, Lucio Capece and many more...



CAM DEAS

Cam Deas is a London based 12 string guitarist exploring the post-Takoma terrain through extended part-improvised, part-composed works. His last solo double full length, Quadtych, released on his own Present Time Exercises imprint, was called 'a major UK guitar statement' by David Keenan/Volcanic Tongue and 'a quantum step forward after a decade of Fahey acolytion' by Keith Fullerton Whitman. He has toured Europe extensively over the past few years with around 80 concerts in 2011 alone and has been seen to collaborate live and in the studio with the likes of Chie Mukai, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Ignatz, Jack Allett, C. Joynes, and Belgian free jazz group, Sheldon Siegel among others.



Supported by Mie Music


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