9–11 July 2024
Cafe OTO presents a three-day XT residency with the long-term collaboration of Seymour Wright and Paul Abbott.
XT is a duo experiment now in its second decade, but also involved in a series of extended, on-going collaborations with Anne Gillis, Kavain Wayne Space/RPBoo, and Pat Thomas.
In 2021 XT released Deorlaf X on Otoroku.
This residency will present an entirely new body of work developed specifically for these three nights at Cafe OTO. A unified entity, a 72-hour structure: unfolding, grow(i)n(g) and mutating over the course of three interconnected evenings at OTO.
Opening possibilities of language and learning from below, XT bounce questions of the specific material conditions, histories and logics of the saxophone and drum kit in a flexible, manifold process of collaboration, augmentation, bifurcation, antagonism and technological and somatic feedback. Increasingly they plug in, using synthetic and amplified saxophone and drums to extend magnify and delay what they do.
The project explicitly folds together their overlapping interests in language, learning, politics and an investigative ethics of emancipation.
Seymour Wright is a saxophonist. His work is about the creative, situated friction of learning, ideas, people and the saxophone – music, history and technique – actual and potential.
Seymour's solo music is documented on three widely-acclaimed collections - Seymour Wright of Derby (2008), Seymour Writes Back (2015) and Is This Right? (2017).
Current projects include: @xcrswx with Crystabel Riley; abaria with Ute Kanngiesser; [Ahmed] with Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Pat Thomas; GUO with Daniel Blumberg; XT with Paul Abbott; The Creaking Breeze Ensemble; a trans-atlantic duet with Andy Guthrie, and, with Jean-luc Guionnet a project addressing an imaginary lacunae in Aby Warburg's Atlas Mnemosyne.
@xcrswx
Paul Abbott is a musician and drummer. He plays with real and imaginary drums, synthetic sounds, performance and writing.
Projects include: XT with Seymour Wright; XT+Pat Thomas; Kavain Wayne Space (RP Boo) Trio with XT; XT+Anne Gillis; X Ray Hex Tet; yPLO with Micheal Speers; F.R.David, very good* & Rosmarie with Will Holder; film sound for Keira Greene and The Creaking Breeze Ensemble with Nathaniel Mackey. Paul has performed at venues and festivals internationally. He was a co-founder and co-editor of Cesura//Acceso journal for music, politics and poetics, and resident artist at Cafe OTO 2015 & 2023.
Recent releases include: Slip; Strata, Act (Joy Contemporary)*; YESYESSPEAKERSYES; Knees, Elbow Bag; Deorlaf X; Fugitive Equation and very good*.
