Rashad Becker returns to OTO following an incendiary residency with André Vida here last Summer and his unparalleled new LP for PAN 'Traditional Music Of Notional Species Vol. I'. Tonight sees a duo performance with Brooklyn-based composer, performer and intuitive sonic experimenter Ashley Paul, before a trio with Paul and Sicilian sound aktionist Valerio Tricoli.

Schedule:
Valerio Tricoli - Solo
Rashad Becker + Ashley Paul - Duo
Rashad Becker + Ashley Paul + Valerio Tricoli Trio show

RASHAD BECKER

Becker is a shadowy figure, generally more comfortable behind the scenes of Good Music (TM) and as an engineer at Dubplates & Mastering where he is widely considered to have some of the most finely tuned ears in music. He describes his music as “playing the traditional music of imaginery species”



"Becker’s name will be known to a lot of people – indeed it appears on many, many records – but his music won’t be. His day job is as the mastering and cutting engineer in Berlin’s world-famous Dubplates and Mastering, where his role involves entering into a creative dialogue with the music of others, helping them to achieve what they set out to with their compositions in the final product. Before he got the D&M gig, he was originally a musician in his own right, and he continues with this as an irregular sideline, making and manipulating loops and electronic sounds. What wasn’t a surprise about his performance at Cafe Oto was how precise it all looked and sounded as he carefully twisted dials to produce a sequence of very crisp and discrete tones, sparse and improvisational (if you had to pick something from Becker’s other work to compare this to, it sounded like an early, experimental, Mego, a less harsh Pita or Hecker). What was more unexpected was just how conversational it all sounded. Aside from the samples of human voices that he dissected and looped, most of the other frequencies used were within the range of the human voice – it sounded like a long stream-of-consciousness sentence made up short syllables, electronic oohs and wahs, sections of muttering, and occasionally bickering. Whatever he does, it seems Becker has the knack of giving sound its voice." The Liminal

Robert Henke interviews Rashad Becker (on Mastering)



ASHLEY PAUL

Ashley Paul is a performer and composer based in Brooklyn, New York. She uses an array of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, guitar, bells and percussion, mixing disparate elements to create a colorful pallate of sound that works its way into her intuitive songs; free forming, introverted melodies. This blend manifests beautiful and simple musical forms against acoustic experimentation. Her solo albums have received high praise being chosen “Album of the Column” in The Wire, number one on Byron Coley and Thurston Moore’s “Tongue Top Ten” in Arthur Magazine and included on NPR’s All Songs Considered “Best of 2010”. She has been interviewed in the German magazine Spex, The Sound Projector magazine, Foxy Digitalis and on Rare Frequency.

Ashley has performed or recorded with Phill Niblock, Loren Connors, Aki Onda, C. Spencer Yeh, Anthony Coleman, Joe Maneri, Joe Morris, Seijiro Murayama, Greg Kelley, Bill Nace and Eli Keszler appearing on such labels as PAN, ESP-DISK’ and Tzadik. She received a Masters of Music from New England Conservatory in 2007.

ashleypaul.net



VALERIO TRICOLI

One of Italy's more enigmatic electronic musicians - Tricoli has been investigating the complex relationship between self, sound and devices for more than a decade - Psychic processes translated in soundscapes, and vice versa. He is a member of 3/4 Hand Been Eliminated (Häpna / Die Schactel) - a super-group drawn from Italy's improvising community that carries on the mantle handed down by This Heat, intertwining musique concrete and free improv with rock dynamics. His two solo works on Bowindo 'Metaprogramming within the eye of the storm' and 'Did They? Did I?' offer up two slabs of brilliantly baffling musique concrete and his nimble production work added much to the distinct soundworld of Autistic Daughters' two records and Dean Roberts 'Be Mine Tonight' (Kranky).