Brighton's peerless experimental international out sound and art festival Colour Out Of Space comes to Cafe OTO for one night only following its sixth incarnation the weekend before. Sets from cryptic LAFMS-related group Dinosaurs With Horns, NY-based visual/sound artist Gen Ken Montgomery, improv trumpeter Greg Kelley, and a duo of avant-garde performance artist Kenny Millions and incendiary guitarist Rat Bastard.

DINOSAURS WITH HORNS

“Since 1983′s self-titled cassette release on The Solid Eye label, Rick Potts and Joseph Hammer have delicately dispensed laughing-gas-balloon-animals-go-pop-music as Dinosaurs With Horns. The cryptic LAFMS-related group occurred during and in between periods of playing with Points of Friction, Steaming Coils and Solid Eye. Spencer Savage and/or Tom Recchion jammed with them in the mid ’80s and continued intermittently since. While a smattering of material has appeared on various compilations and very limited cassette and CDR releases, Return of the Disco-Aristo-Sarcophagus is the first full-length CD release. It was recorded November 2000 on KXLU radio and January 2007 at the LACE Gallery in Hollywood, CA.

Joseph Hammer cites AM radio station mixing (receiving more than one station at the same time) and an episode of the ’70s TV show Land of the Giants, where astronauts used tape loops to thwart alien tyrants as a couple of his musical influences. He has developed his own way of making music utilizing consumer audio technology, tape loops, samplers and analog synthesizers to create compelling and varied musical expressions. Since 1980, he has performed with Solid Eye, Points of Friction, Blue Daisies, Steaming Coils, Debt of Nature (which became Medicine), Vector 3 Niner, Paramecial Wedding, Kitten Sparkles and others. Rick Potts has been making unusual music for the last thirty years, starting with the forming of Le Forte Four and founding of the L.A. Free Music Society in 1973. Playing the electric guitar with electric toothbrush, street sweeper bristles, electric cocktail stirrer and other objects, and using musical saw and analog synthesizers, he has a talent for making familiar instruments and other implements produce sounds unique, alarming and enigmatic yet oddly cordial. Tom Recchion has been working with sound and music for over 35 years. Starting off as an accordion player then on to pillow cushions with cardboard sticks that transmogrified into a set of drums. From there on, playing anything he could get his hands on, guitar, pianos in garages, found and invented instruments, tapes, keyboards, paper, fans, synths, radio, records and finally computer. Spencer Savage began playing live music with numerous groups in Los Angeles in 1983, primarily as a percussionist, vocalist, and noisemaker.” - Forced Exposure



GEN KEN MONTGOMERY

Ken Montgomery is a New York-based visual artist and "sound/composer" whose involvement in the cassette-culture and mail-art movements of the late seventies led to the creation, in 1989, of the first and arguably still the most important sound art gallery in New York City: Generator. Located first in the East Village and later in Chelsea, Generator's wide scope and novel approach toward audio art made it a vector-point for some of the most interesting and important artists from around the world. Ken was also the founder of A.T.M.O.T.W.— Art is Throwing Money Out The Window — and Generator Sound Art Inc., and he co-founded the seminal experimental labels Generations Unlimited and Pogus Productions. As a composer in the early eighties Ken was creating multi-channel sound works often performed in total darkness. More recently Ken has been focusing on visual art, collage, bookmaking, and international correspondence art. As The Minister of Lamination (a.k.a. Egnekn) he is the world's foremost practitioner of sonic Lamination Art. Montgomery has collaborated with a wide variety of artists including Conrad Schnitzler, Andrea Beeman, David Lee Myers (Arcane Device), Zoe Beloff, Michael Zodorozny, and Ishtvan Kantor (a.k.a. Monty Cantsin).

As a sound artist Ken Montgomery finds novel ways to work with sound. He has created an audio-only CD-ROM (Inner Eye / Outer Ear), a record label for experimental music (Generations Unlimited), the first sound art gallery in NYC (Generator), and a Ministry devoted to conducting one-on-one listening rituals (The Ministry of Lamination). Since 1985 he has been performing multi-channel sound concerts in intimate settings, often in total darkness. Montgomery began creating soundtracks for non-existent films in 1979 and distributed them on cassettes through what became known as the International Cassette Network. In composition and performance Montgomery has employed an ice crusher, an aquarium, a refrigerator, a hand massager and a laminator, to name a few.



GREG KELLEY

"Trumpeter Greg Kelley in an improviser whose work, both in solo contexts and with his main group nmperign, usually features quiet explorations of the extended technique of his instrument. Often, his playing sounds so alien that it's hard to tell he's playing a trumpet at all. After studying at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Kelley moved to Boston, where he made his recording debut with nmperign in 1998. Nmperign's second CD followed in 1999, and in 2000, Kelley began releasing a series of recordings for solo trumpet, including Trumpet and Empty Gestures. Since 2000, he has performed with Masashi Harada, Anthony Braxton and James Coleman. In 2001, Boxholder Records released The Ilya Tree, a quartet disc that featured Kelley playing extroverted free jazz with the fiery saxophonist Paul Flaherty. Also in 2001, he performed on an album by nmperign and a duo record with electronic musician Jason Lescalleet. His 2002 releases included a solo album entitled If I Never Meet You In This Life, Let Me Feel The Lack, a trio disc with Flaherty and Chris Corsano, and a series of albums with both nmperign and fellow trumpeter Axel Dörner. Throughout 2002, Kelley continued to tour as a solo artist and with nmperign." - Allmusic

Bill Nace and Greg Kelley from Susanna Bolle on Vimeo.

KENNY MILLIONS & RAT BASTARD

Kenny Millions (aka Keshavan Maslak) is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, avant-garde performance artist, poet and restaurateur. Having played with the likes of Sam Rivers, Sunny Murray, Peter Brötzmann, and Derek Bailey, Kenny Millions now enjoys a resurgence of his solo career with the incorporation of the hum ha guitar joined in performance with noise things and abuse-rap. A mini guitar is altered using cheap electronic instruments such as a radio/CD player and on-board DJ effects box during which, in a performance, verbal insults directed at the audience occur. The provocative and offensive music he now creates is exclusively performed in a solo context since he attempts to reinvent the physics of music in a psychological and philosophical performance art setting this result can only be achieved in a soloist format as the concept has become a totally subjective experience for both K.M. and his perversely entertained audience he believes that genre classification is negative insofar as it assumes a single ground by which both artist and audience might began to derive meaning from nothing for poetry to exist K.M. strives to transcend the limitations of genre, group participation and other B.S.

"Rat Bastard came on resplendent in wooly black hat, big black shades and just a guitar plugged into an amp – with which he proceeded to fast strum and flat pick a gathering wild dissonance that was held together by open strings ringing throughout. Sort of drone crossed with metal replete with many of the stage gestures of that genre thrown in. Guy has a sense of humour. Joined by two young women with hand-held gizmos to throw electronic splatter across like acid, bumping and grinding in a stage mashup complete with hair-flailing which was extremely funny. Mock the rock, hey geezers?" - WORDSANDMUSIC (review of Rat Bastard at Colour Out of Space, 2008)