Sunday 12 July 2026, 7.30pm
I-D.A Projects presents a three-night residency for members of The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) and Extended Organ:
Paul McCarthy / vocals and guitar
Joe Potts / “Chopped Optigan”
Rick Potts / electronic and customised acoustic instrumentation
Alex Stevens / processing and synths
Paul McCarthy is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking contemporary American artists. Born in 1945, and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he first established a multi-faceted artistic practice, which sought to break the limitations of painting by using unorthodox materials such as bodily fluids and food. He has since become known for visceral, often hauntingly humorous work in a variety of mediums – from performance, photography, film and video, to sculpture, drawing and painting.
McCarthy earned a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1969, and an MFA in multimedia, film and art from USC in 1973. For 18 years, he taught performance, video, installation, and art history in the New Genres Department at UCLA, where he influenced future generations of West Coast artists. McCarthy began collaborating with the LAFMS in the late 70s, and in 1995 was among the founding members of Extended Organ.
As part of a wider programme of visual and sonic art, on July 9 at the nearby Rio Cinema, Paul McCarthy will introduce a selection of his pioneering video performance works, from the early Black and White Tapes to the UK premiere of a new episode from the ongoing A&E project with Lilith Stangenberg.
Conceived as both a survey and an introduction, this one-night event offers a rare opportunity to encounter the groundbreaking video practice of one of the most influential and provocative artists of our time in a focused cinema setting.
Joe Potts was hailed by The Wire (UK) as ''something new and revolutionary".
Though he holds degrees in Fine Arts he studied electronic composition at the California Institute of the Arts dropping in on classes taught by Morton Subotnick and James Tenney and working in the Buchla equipped electronic music studios. He has composed electro-acoustic music exclusively since 1973 creating Art/Sound installations and performing in the U.S., Italy, Japan, Germany, Belgium and Norway.
A founding member of The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) and Extended Organ, he is also the “man behind the curtain” in Airway, an art/sound collective that combines walls of sound with subliminal treatments and treats live musicians as electronic signals which are processed and manipulated. For the past 25 years he has been composing for the “Chopped Optigan” a Seventies optical sampling console organ that he has customized and rewired in order to create dense undulating chords of up to 64 notes at a time.
Recordings of his music can be found on LAFMS, Birdman, Cause and Effect, Staalplaat, Organ of Corti, Boudisque, Vinyl On Demand, Important and other labels. Musical collaborators include Director David Blum, Chris and Cosey (Throbbing Gristle), Paul and Damon McCarthy, John Duncan, Mike Kelley, Thurston Moore, David Toop, Yoshihide Otomo, Don Preston and Bruce and Norman Yonemoto.
Rick Potts is an improviser and instrument maker who has been on the musical fringe of Los Angeles for several decades. A home-made sound scientist and founding member of the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) which was started in 1975. Rick produces sounds which are unique, alarming, and strange with custom hinge-neck guitar, musical saw and synthesizer. He has recorded and performed with Dinosaurs with Horns, Solid Eye, Airway, Le Forte Four and others. Solo performances and collaborations with other experimental musicians have taken him around Japan, Europe and the U.S.A.
Alex Stevens is a multidisciplinary artist and musician living in Los Angeles. He has collaborated with a wide variety of contemporary artists, performers and musicians including several projects with The Los Angeles Free Music Society. Stevens also performs in such acts as Extended Organ, The Bum Cheeky Bum Bums, Alexander and or the Xanders, No Hope, Carpet Thrower, P.C.D.C and any other group that will have him.
The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) is the seminal West Coast experimental noise cult and visual arts collective that formed in the mid 1970s as part of the international DIY movement in which artists developed systems for self-production and distribution of works. It was during this early period when members of the LAFMS had studios in what was at that time the derelict 35 South Raymond building in Pasadena where Paul McCarthy also had his studio. This proximity planted the seed for future collaboration.
Extended Organ was formed in 1995 by Joe Potts, Tom Recchion, Paul McCarthy and Fredrik Nilsen as an experiment in sonic interaction over a droning substate. Mike Kelley was a member of the group between 2000 and his passing in 2012. Alex Stevens has been a member since 2011.
Extended Organ takes its name from the titles of two sixties experimental music LPs, "Extended Voices" and "A Second Wind for Organ". Starting out as a description of Joe Potts’ self-engineered drone instrument, the "Chopped Optigan", it soon becomes apparent that the name describes Paul McCarthy's primal vocal utterances equally well. Just as the name suggests, the group aspires to straddle the profound and the profane.
“XOXO is creepy and wonderful. It may sound like a gross exaggeration, but we are wondering if this CD might not just be the Sgt. Pepper's of noise records.” -Soundohm
“The music moves with velocity and direction revealing surprises at every turn. The resulting sound is ominous, humorous, harmonious, chaotic and at times quietly erotic. This is abstractly powerful music.” -Boomkat
David Toop has been developing a practice that crosses boundaries of sound, listening, music and materials since 1970. This encompasses improvised music performance, writing, electronic sound, field recording, exhibition curating, sound art installations and opera. It includes eight acclaimed books, including Rap Attack (1984), Ocean of Sound (1995), Sinister Resonance (2010), Into the Maelstrom (2016), Flutter Echo (2019) and Inflamed Invisible: Writing On Art and Sound 1976-2018 (2019). Briefly a member of David Cunningham’s pop project The Flying Lizards in 1979, he has released fourteen solo albums, from New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments on Brian Eno’s Obscure label (1975) and Sound Body on David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label (2006) to Entities Inertias Faint Beings (2016) and Apparition Paintings (2021). His 1978 Amazonas recordings of Yanomami shamanism and ritual were released on Sub Rosa as Lost Shadows (2016). In recent years his collaborations include Rie Nakajima, Akio Suzuki, Tania Caroline Chen, John Butcher, Ken Ikeda, Elaine Mitchener, Henry Grimes, Sharon Gal, Camille Norment, Sidsel Endresen, Alasdair Roberts, Lucie Stepankova, Fred Frith, Thurston Moore, Ryuichi Sakamoto. Curator of sound art exhibitions including Sonic Boom at the Hayward Gallery (2000), his opera – Star-shaped Biscuit – was performed in 2012.
Nik Colk Void is a UK-based electronic musician and artist known for her experimental approach to sound, collaboration, and live performance. With a background in visual arts, she has become a key figure in contemporary electronic music through her work with Factory Floor, Carter Tutti Void, and as a solo artist.
Void’s practice explores the relationship between analogue and digital tools, using voice, guitar, modular synthesis, and extended techniques to create a distinctive language of sound. Her work moves between techno, noise, experimental and abstract composition, often through improvisation, manipulation, and cut-up sampling. As a member of Factory Floor and Carter Tutti Void, Void has developed a reputation for bold sonic experimentation and uncompromising live performances. She has released numerous albums through labels including Mute, DFA, Industrial Records, and Editions Mego. Through her collaborative project NPVR, Void worked with Peter Rehberg, creating improvised live performances at venues including GRM Paris and Tresor Berlin. She also collaborated with Klara Lewis and visual artist Pedro Maia on Full-On, a project developed over three years and released via Alter Records. The work was performed internationally at venues and festivals including Sónar, Dark Mofo, and the Centre Pompidou. As a solo artist, Void approaches each live performance either as a completely improvised and fresh experience or as a continuation of an ongoing process. Often working with the idea of ‘now’, she creates work that is deeply personal, rooted in the present moment, and constantly evolving. Void’s debut solo album, Bucked Up Space, released via Editions Mego, established her as a solo artist with a distinctive voice. The album was mixed by Marta Salogni and mastered by Rashad Becker, receiving widespread critical acclaim for its innovative approach to electronic composition. It reflects both the adaptability of her performance set-ups, designed to resonate within diverse spaces, and her commitment to challenging conventions and creating new dialogues through sound. Nik has presented live performances at international festivals including Mutek, Sónar, Primavera Sound, and Dark Mofo, and has presented installation works at institutions including the Barbican Centre, Tate Modern, and the Centre Pompidou. Nik Colk Void’s work continues to explore the space between sound, technology, and performance, creating an evolving practice rooted in experimentation, collaboration, and transformation.
https://www.instagram.com/nikcolkvoid
https://nikcolkvoid.com/
https://nikcolkvoid.bandcamp.com
National Rails are a cat-punk family band. They mostly write songs about their fluffy feline, Myshkin. Other topics include disliking eggs and bad schools.
Charles Bullen was a member of timeless pre/post-everything trio This Heat. He grew up in Liverpool and after moving to London in the early 70’s he formed the improvising duo Dolphin Logic with Charles Hayward, which later, with the addition of “non-musician” Gareth Williams, became This Heat. After releasing two seminal albums the band split in 1982 and Bullen made an album the following year under the name Lifetones focusing on repetition and a more syncopated dub influenced sound. Between 2016-2019 Bullen and Hayward formed This Is Not This Heat which toured the UK, Europe, USA and Japan performing expanded versions of This Heat’s oeuvre to unfaltering critical acclaim. Bullen also reformed Lifetones in 2023 for a short run playing Café Oto, Haus Der Kunst, Munich, and for the Pinault Foundation, Paris.
