Sunday 20 September 2009, 8pm
ES
Sami Sänpäkkilä aka Es lives and works near the forests of Tampere, Finland. He is a musician, film-maker and the head of Fonal Records. To date he has released five full lenght releases under the name Es. Sami has made short films and music videos which have been screened in various museums, art galleries and film festivals around the world. The films and the music are experimental moodscapes that explore the themes of melancholy, pathos and hope.
Sami is one of the key players in the Finnish underground, spearheading this extraordinarily rootless but cocooned scene that includes artists like Paavoharju, Islaja and Kemialliset Ystävät.
"Sänpäkkilä has achieved what can only be described as musical perfection... This is highly, highly essential!" - Bryon Hayes / Foxy Digitalis 10/10
"A stone cold, quiet classic." - Boomkat.com
"...most profoundly psychedelic mesmerism to come out of the scene to date." - David Keenan / The Wire
CHRIS FORSYTH
The raw power and intuitive delicacy of guitarist Chris Forsyth’s music eludes easy categorisation. He is a founding member (along with Jaime Fennelly and Fritz Welch) of the iconoclastic American group Peeesseye, a transcontinental amalgam of minimalist rock, noise, folk, drone, psych, improv, sound poetry, and absurdity that has produced seven CDs, one 7-inch, over 145 concerts in Europe and the US, and untold blown minds since forming in 2002. With increasing frequency, he performs solo on both electric and acoustic 6- and 12-string guitars.
His first solo CD 'Live Journal at the Mice Machine VIP Dance Floor' was released in September 2008 on Jozef Van Wissem's Incunabulum label. A slew of solo/collaborative releases on Chocolate Monk, Giant Tank, Goldenlab and Ultramarine followed/are scheduled before September. He is the caretaker of Evolving Ear and recently relocated to the city of Philadelphia from Brooklyn, NY, USA.
"A destructible charm teetering on violence and elegance" - Eric Weddle (Family Vineyard), Signal to Noise Magazine
"This is the best solo guitar record since Donald Miller's A Little Treatise on Morals. Keep your eyes on this guy." - David Keenan, The Wire
"Chris Forsyth is a wild card, excelling at both exploratory electric improv and sensuous acoustic textures. Coffeeshop folk this isn't, but you can expect a similar sort of intimacy" - Hank Shteamer, Timeout NY
http://www.thechrisforsyth.com
IGNATZ
Bram Devans beams in blues from another planet, incorporating detuned guitar, slap back echo, howling vocals and swathes of feedback. Otherworldly psychedelic/noise music in which the ghosts of Mississippi John Hurt, The Dead C and Kevin Shields all figure.
A lo-fi fetishist who used to put tapes out in the rain as a child to hear the effects of decomposition, he sings like a vintage '78, crackly and distant, over an acoustic guitar accompaniment that's spat out and decimated live by his bank of samplers and pedals. Every piece is a one-off, improvised and recorded in one take. The results are moving, melancholic and totally out there.
With two albums out on superb Belgian label Kraak, he has toured Europe with Jack Rose, Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat and Greg Malcolm, and regularly collaborates with Sunburned Hand of The Man's Paul Labreque. New LP on Not Not Fun records. Previously toured the UK with Arrington de Dioynso.
"His voice - when it intermittently appears - is disembodied by distance, by distortion and by echo. Its reedy quaver sounds barely conscious of its own presence, let alone an audience. it recall the lo-fi contrariness of Alastair Galbraith and even the inscrutable shadings of Mississippi John Hurt or Bascorn Lamer Lunsford on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music" - Sam Davies, The Wire
