A rare duo performance from percussionist/composer Michael Zerang and guitarist/vocalist/banjo player Daniel Higgs (ex Lungfish) conjuring densely interwoven improvisations that draw on traditional forms but take them in defiantly unexpected directions. Both musicians will be familiar to OTO regulars - Zerang was here most recently last December with Joe McPhee's Survival Unit III alongside Fred Lonberg-Holm, and his gracefully rolling approach to the drums has provided a welcome, beatific contrast to PNLs full-on assaults in Peter Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet. Daniel A.I.U Higgs has also been responsible for some singularly memorable performances here alongside the likes of Maya Dunietz and Jennifer Walshe. His transcendental raga are sure to reach an even higher hypnotism in this pairing with Zerang.
DANIEL HIGGS
Daniel A.I.U Higgs is perhaps best known as the singer and lyricist of the now defunct band Lungfish. However, since that time he has carved out his own distinctive place as a solo artist with a number of solo records, that take in apocalyptic songcraft, raga banjo and hard to define artistry. Higgs is a prolific experimental songwriter, performer and poet, whose performances possess a unique essence of personal spirituality and create an ecstatic atmosphere which summons the audience to enter into the psychedelic world of his lyrics.
"Daniel Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs is a musician and artist from Baltimore, Maryland on whose behalf superlatives are destined to fail. It’s not that his artistic output – spanning three decades, numerous albums, books of poetry and collections of drawings – simply eludes classification, it defies it. Often we hear that a true work of art is meant to speak for itself, and with the work of Daniel Higgs the maxim rings truer than ever. His art is of the cosmos, we on Earth merely lucky that it happens to be confined to our atmosphere, in our lifetime." - Thrill Jockey
MICHAEL ZERANG
Percussionist, improvisor and composer Michael Zerang was born in 1958 in Chicago, Illinois. He has co-founded and performed with the musical groups Liof Munimula, The Neutrino Orchestra, Trio Troppo, The Wonderfuls, The Blue Angels, Sam Pappas' Tumbling Strains, Frozen Lucy, The Quirt Quintet, Musica Menta, The Vandermark Quartet, Dream Cheese, The Sputter Ensemble, In Zenith, and Broken Wire . In addition to these ensembles, Zerang currently performs with many innovative musicians including AACM co-founder Fred Anderson, Mats Gustafsson, Raymond Strid, Sten Sandell, Don Meckley, Jaap Blonk, Daniel Scanlan, Peter Brötzmann, Kent Kessler, Barre Phillips, Jim Baker, Hamid Drake, Ken Vandermark, Luc Hautkamp, and Fred Lonberg-Holm. He has recorded for Okka Disc, boxMEDIA, Kontrans, Southport, Quinnah, Eighth Day Music, Garlic, and Platypus, labels as well as many others.
"Michael Zerang is a genuine percussionist, his assured and energetic rhythmic sense couple with an ear for the melodic and coloristic potential of his instruments." - Julian Cowley, The WIRE
C JOYNES
“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
Joynes has released 6 albums to date, including, most recently, ‘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 played extensively across the UK and Europe, sharing bills with performers including: Shirley Collins, Comus, Alasdair Roberts, A Hawk And A Hacksaw, Alvarius B, Jack Rose, Josephine Foster, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Sir Richard Bishop and Steffan Basho-Junghans.
“His epigrammatic re-castings and re-readings of widely-travelled folk melodies and rhythms from a variety of traditions suggest shared memories that might be intensely universal while seeming strangely out of reach. " KEVIN MACNEIL BROWN, DUSTED MAGAZINE
"Dorset-based Michael Tanner is a protean musician with a rare facility for releasing albums and other miscellaneous sonic projects (under his own name, in various guises that include Plinth, The Cloisters, Thalassing, Taskerlands and Cat Lady, as part of the duo The A. Lords or the improvisatory ensemble United Bible Studies) with a jaw-dropping frequency whose quantity is, impressively, always matched by artistic quality. He has also recorded with and produced albums by cult 70s songwriter Mark Fry, Sharron Kraus and Noa Babyof to name but a few.
Michael's predilection for abstracted, psycho-geographic English folk-soundscapes, for dreamlike Mellotron woodwinds, plangent string drones, lambent field recordings and eerie Victorian dulcimers (not to mention the odd heavily deconstructed Fleetwood Mac song...) has inexorably evolved into a distinctive musical vocabulary." - David Sheppard
