Monday 15 July 2019, 7.30pm
FPBJPC: the group's members are Peter Friel, Jonathan Gean, Michael Pollard, and Ben Schumacher. They will play effected and uneffected electric guitars at Cafe Oto for the third or fourth show of their European tour. Their last performance was at Sean McCann's Recital label event at the Ear Inn, New York, Earth Day night 2019. Friel matched with his guitar and crawled backward to the audience (he had played the role of an instrument before). Gean did anything (with a guitar). Pollard has a solo guitar album, They Don’t Have Cheeseburgers in Europe, on Friel’s Prestige & Poverty label. Schumacher was in Berlin. Loren Connors sat and watched. I dreamt that I was in an old house: At every dream-interval, it seemed one-quarter familiar, three-quarters strange. Someone was watching me from a gloomy bullseye. I had a feeling that I was not supposed to be there—yet, with the chance to escape, I drifted past the door and deliberately meandered to an armoire in a corner. Inside, I discovered a smattering of tapes which I imaginatively identified as related to the American underground label Spite. Was this about FPBJPC? Then the time slots closed. The guitars had been so much guitars. Some of the audience seemed to hang their heads in shame for having heard them as accordions, penny whistles, synthesizers, or pianos. Others may have relished the mishearing or felt free to get a drink or a burger downstairs.
- Aaron Kaplan, June 7, 2019
Brigitte Hart is an Australian sound artist working across performance and installation. Currently based in London, her practice explores relationships between voice, objects, histories and ecologies, often engaging text, environmental recordings, remnants and archives. She holds particular interest in exploring the art of small sounds, sounds that can be imagined, and the memory of sound. Brigitte has developed installations, performances, compositions and workshops for Supernormal Festival, CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice), Wysing Polyphonic x Somerset House Festival, Resonance FM, Soundcamp/Reveil, David Roberts Art Foundation, Tate Britain and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (Audiosphere. Sound Experimentation 1980-2020). Her work with sound design has been presented at the Venice Biennale Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival. In 2022, Brigitte is developing a series of experiments around the Thames, sound and listening as a recipient of the Develop Your Creative Practice funding (Arts Council England). She is also a member of the London Bulgarian Choir as well as Shortwave Collective, an international, feminist artist group interested in the creative use of radio.
Secluded Bronte - Richard Thomas, Adam Bohman, Jonathan Bohman - formed in London and launched in New York City in 2002. They released their first album, Secluded In Jersey City, on the Pogus label.
Secluded Bronte resist classification. They've been compared to This Heat, Wire, The Specials, John Zorn, Jean-Luc Godard, Ennio Morricone, Talk Talk, The Residents, The Fall, John Cage and Sun Ra. They sound like none of those artists. They sound a bit like some of them. But those artists sound like other artists too. Secluded Bronte have made radio dramas, performed sketches and plays and made visual art. Currently they're working on a feature film as writers, actors, producers and composers. Therefore trying to classify them is a waste of time, the only thing you can conclude is that elusivity is the aspect that best defines Secluded Bronte. But, if you really need a summary then a long time fan, the comedian Stewart Lee, has probably come up with the best appraisal so far:
“People who hate my stand-up often deny it even constitutes ‘comedy’. Doubtless many would wonder if the work of the veteran improvisatory trio Secluded Bronte should be considered ‘music’. Instruments may be involved, perhaps furniture, maybe even words, or all three in a chance collision of calculated heterogeneity.” - Stewart Lee.
https://fforddallan.bandcamp.com
