Saturday 9 January 2016, 8pm
London launch event for Heather Leigh's new album on Editions Mego, I Abused Animal. Joining her on the bill will be musician, songwriter, composer and producer, Simon Fisher Turner, in his first OTO appearance in over 5 years.
“All notions of the pedal steel’s laid-back, country harmony are shattered as Leigh extols jagged notes and blocks of electric noise that seem to rail against rock, jazz and other notions of freedom music.” – Dusted Magazine
The daughter of a coal miner, weaving a trail from West Virginia to Texas and now residing in Scotland, Heather Leigh furthers the vast unexplored reaches of pedal steel guitar. Her playing is as physical as it is phantom, combining spontaneous compositions with a feel for the full interaction of flesh with hallucinatory power sources. With a rare combination of sensitivity and strength, Leigh’s steel mainlines sanctified slide guitar and deforms it using hypnotic tone-implosions, juggling walls of bleeding amp tone with choral vocal constructs and wrenching single note ascensions. In recent years Leigh has been touring the world extensively as a solo artist following the release of her studio album, ‘I Abused Animal’ on Ideologic Organ/Editions Mego and in BRÖTZMANN/LEIGH, a duo with Peter Brötzmann, who have released 2 albums, ‘Ears Are Filled With Wonder’ and ‘Sex Tape’ on Trost. A new BRÖTZMANN/LEIGH studio LP/CD is forthcoming in 2018 and she’s currently working on a new solo LP for Editions Mego.
Where to begin with a figure like Simon Fisher Turner? From teenage stage and screen star to illustrious recording artist for Creation and Mute and score composer of Caravaggio (1986), Blue (1993) and The Epic of Everest (2013) - via a stint with The The and collaborations with Derek Jarman, David Lynch and Tilda Swinton - Turner embodies a distinctly modernist sensibility and boundless curiosity for sound. For A Colourful Storm, discovering Deux Filles, his devilishly intriguing, perfectly camp project with Colin Lloyd-Tucker, was a significant moment in shaping the label’s identity.
Caravaggio began Turner’s long relationship with the BFI, leading to the original score composition for restorations of three silent films, Un Chant D’Amour dir Jean Genet (1950), The Great White Silence dir Herbert Ponting (1924) and The Epic of Everest dir. Captain John Noel (1924, the latter winning an Ivor Novello Award. He has also composed film music for Mike Hodges, Michael Almareyda and Isao Yamada, while his collaborators over the years include Ryuichi Sakamoto, Gina Birch, Klara Lewis and The Elysian Collective. He returns to the stage for A Colourful Storm, following their Under the Arches release, Instability of the Signal (Mute, 2024) and ongoing missives for Touch’s sonic blog, Guerilla Audio.
