Wednesday 23 July 2014, 8pm
Kevin Drumm returns to cafe OTO in a first time live duo performance with Russell Haswell - the pre-eminent exponent (and erstwhile raconteur!) of UK noise. We'll have an additional PA in each evening for full-range quadrophonic sound and tonight will open with an extreme sax duo of John Butcher and Seymour Wright. Brace yourselves.
Avant-garde tabletop guitarist Kevin Drumm was born and raised in 1970 in South Holland, IL, playing in a handful of rock bands before relocating to Chicago in 1991 to work at the city's Board of Trade. He soon began his experiments with prepared guitar, applying objects including magnets, binder clips, chains, a violin bow and even toenail clippers to distort the instrument's sound. In time, Drumm befriended a number of members of Chicago's growing improv community, including Jim O' Rourke (with whom he served in Brise-Glace, additionally contributing to Gastr del Sol's Upgrade and Afterlife album and Ken Vandermark. In late 1997 Drumm made his solo debut with a self-titled (Perdition Plastics) and has released superb duo records with Taku Sugimoto (Sonoris), Axel Dörner, Martin Tètreault (both Erstwhile) and Ralf Wehowsky (Selektion). His chameleon-like presence has been documented on a number of projects, each revealing new facets of his wide-ranging and unique talents on both guitar and electronics. Drumm seamlessly melds the worlds of acoustic and electronic sound, occasionally teetering on the edge of silence, yet always remaining impeccably musical. Kevin Drumm has recorded and performed with Phill Niblock, Tony Conrad, Jim O'Rourke, MIMEO, Mats Gustafsson, John Butcher, Thomas Ankersmit, Taku Sugimoto and many others.
Russell Haswell is a restlessly forward-thinking, multi-disciplinary artist, performer and curator. With a background steeped in computer music, black metal, noise, techno and solo improvisation, his practice is renowned for broaching the extremities of visual and sonic arts. He’s performed in noted live and HDJ [hard disc jockey] actions with Aphex Twin, Gescom, Pan Sonic and Masami Akita (Merzbow), among others, and worked with Florian Hecker on Iannis Xenakis’ UPIC system in their Haswell & Hecker duo, whoseBlackest Ever Black LP is widely considered a milestone of modern electronic music composition—and zweikommasieben Magazin has been a fan ever since.
http://haswellstudio.com/
https://twitter.com/russellhaswell
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
Born in Brighton and living in London, John Butcher is a saxophonist whose work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multi tracked pieces and explorations with feedback, unusual acoustics and non-concert locations. He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with a sense of place. Resonant Spaces, for example, is a collection of performances recorded during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.
Butcher originally studied Physics, but after publishing a PH.D (1982) on quantum chromodynamics he left academia and took off with music. He has since collaborated with hundreds of artists, some for many decades, including Derek Bailey, Eddie Prévost, Angharad Davies, John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Okkyung Lee, Andy Moor, Sophie Agnel, Christian Marclay, Pat Thomas, Phil Minton, Rhodri Davies, Tony Buck, Magda Mayas, John Russell, Chris Corsano, Steve Beresford, Ståle Liavik Solberg, and Matthew Shipp.
Additionally he values occasional encounters - with large groups ranging from the WDR Sinfonieorchester (as soloist), and the 20+ piece EX Orkest to duos with Akio Suzuki, Liz Allbee, Keiji Haino, Isabelle Duthois, David Toop, Mariam Rezaei, Fred Frith and Joe McPhee.
Recent compositions include “Fluid Fixations” (an hcmf commission), “Penny Wands” for Futurist Intonarumori, “Good Liquor…” for the London Sinfonietta and “Tarab Cuts” (shortlisted for a British Composer’s Award).
"Over 40 years of sustained performance and publishing, English saxophonist, improvisor and composer John Butcher has shaped much of what soprano and tenor saxophone can do, and what their roles and vocabulary in improvised music might be. I’ve always heard Butcher’s playing as a kind of nose-to-tail saxophony, where the whole instrument from reed-tip to brim of bell is available, accessible and articulate. Few other saxophonists slice as sharply back into the physical history, material (and physics) of the instrument, across its near 200 year history. When Hector Berlioz wrote of his friend Adolphe Sax’s then fresh invention, “the varied beauty of its accent, sometimes serious, sometimes calm, sometimes impassioned, dreamy or melancholic, or vague”, he could have been imagining Butcher's distinctively clean but complex, enquiring soundworld." WIRE - October 2024. The Primer by Seymour Wright
