VOICE and GUITAR /
BEYOND TRADITION //

Phil Minton with Moshi Honen,

Dylan Nyoukis with Stefan Jaworzyn,

Sharon Gal with Steve Noble and Alex Ward.

Focusing on the specific relationships of voice and guitar, the concert brings together seven master performers, in three intimate sets.

Music for heart and mind

Please note that Thurston Moore has unfortunately had to cancel his appearance at this event. Please contact We Got Tickets with any refund requests.

DYLAN NYOUKIS & STEFAN JAWORZYN

This enigmatic duo returns to café OTO, following their performance last summer as The Fireside Chat with Lucifer duo. Thurston, founder of Sonic Youth, first met Dylan through Dylan’s label, Chocolate Monk, which has subsequently released thousands of hours of beyond-all-margins experimental sound. The two became friends and Dylan's "bands" Prick Decay, Decaer Pinga, et al, have performed alongside Sonic Youth many times to the utmost horror of indie-rock purists.

A former heavy metal kid, Dylan Nyoukis, is a noise expressionist and an experimentalist who explores improvisatory sounds of nightmarish beauty. ”…His solo vocal and tape work continues to push the envelope in terms of the expressive options offered by amplified physicality while his rejection of any kind of theoretical backdrop liberates him from servitude to any specific agenda. He remains a singular voice." - David Keenan
chocolatemonk.co.uk/

Writer, musician and misanthrope Jaworzyn was a notorious and energetic presence in the UK underground of the 1980s and '90s. Following a brief stint in Whitehouse, in '86 he formed Skullflower with Matthew Bower and remained the band’s guitarist for four years, playing on Birthdeath (1988), Form Destroyer (1989) and Xaman (1990), among others. In 1990 he established the Shock label, which, like the annual Shock Around The Clock film festival, grew out of Shock Xpress – the seminal, vigorously outspoken horror/exploitation zine edited by Jaworzyn for most of its lifespan. Shock Records was a resounding boot to the arse of the narrow-minded, welcoming artists as disparate as Lol Coxhill, Coil, Drunks With Guns, The Dead C and Ramleh into its fold. Jaworzyn rejoined Whitehouse in 1990-91, and around this time was also invited to participate in a roundtable discussion about serial killers on Channel 4’s After Dark programme – it ended with him vehemently debating the meaning of the word “integrity” with fellow guest Michael Winner. Despite having supposedly renounced the guitar, in '91 Jaworzyn returned to the instrument with some venom, forming Ascension (later Descension) with drummer Tony Irving; the band’s turbulent brand of free music – documented on several substantial CD and LP releases – famously incited an audience riot when they supported Sonic Youth at Kentish Town Forum in ’96. In the second half of the decade Jaworzyn retired the Shock label and largely withdrew from music, choosing to focus on drinking and cursing; although his The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion was published by Titan Books in 2003, and on occasion he emerged to play live (including the Whitehouse 'farewell' show in a duo with drummer Chris Corsano).



Now, after seventeen years off the grid, Jaworzyn has reappeared. 2013 saw him reactivate Shock to issue two 12” EPs of emphatic new solo material, as well as Eaten Away By Shadows (a compilation of solo bedroom recordings from ’82-’83) and the aforementioned Skullflower KINO CD series. Pre-dating the Eaten Away tracks, the driving, faintly sociopathic and supremely zoned pieces on Drained Of Connotation (BLACKEST027) were created in early/mid-'82 at Jaworzyn’s then home in Cardiff using a Korg MS10 or 20 (on loan from musical collaborator Robert Lawrence) and his beloved Dr Rhythm drum machine. SJ: “While a maniacal edge predominates, a couple of pieces seem surprisingly ‘mellow’, a concept infrequently associated with my subsequent endeavours and disposition.

The Quietus interview with Stefan Jaworzyn

This duo will be loud and bold. Bring earplugs.

PHIL MINTON & MOSHI HONEN

Phil Minton & Moshi Honen met at The Gathering, a unique space for free improvisation, creative collaborations and musical explorations, which has been running in London since the early 90’s. They have since played and performed together in various groupings, but this is their first duet.

Phil Minton learnt trumpet from age 15 and played and sang with local jazz groups, moving to London in 1963 to play with Mike Westbrook. He worked in dance bands in the UK, Canary Islands and Sweden. Rejoining Westbrook in 1972 and becoming a regular member of his Brass Band until the mid 80’s, playing trumpet and singing touring extensively around the world. For the last thirty years, he has been working as an improvising singer in lots of groups, orchestras, and situations. Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal abilities. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with many other musicians. Since the eighties, His Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries.
www.philminton.co.uk

Moshi Honen is an improvising guitarist, composer and instrument builder. He plays an amplified acoustic guitar and self made electronic devices and objects, creating an intensely fractured rumbling soundscape.
soundcloud.com/moshi-honen



SHARON GAL WITH STEVE NOBLE AND ALEX WARD

This trio, with only a few previous performances at Boat Ting, has been keeping below the radar, waiting, stealth like, for a spacetime opportunity to emerge and reveal itself. Their collaboration produces a shifting and visceral triangle, at times primitive and shamanic, with pulsing wild rhythms, subliminal whispers and guttural cries. The music transforms into abstract sounds, breaking up as concrete noises, picking up again with powerful guitar riffs and melodic songlike structures with fractured language; a free form tour de force which transcends the boundaries of style and genres.

Sharon Gal is an experimental vocalist, performer and artist. Her practice involves vocal and electronics free improvisation, collaborative group and site specific performances, field recordings and radio broadcast. She performs solo, and in collaborations with Steve Beresford, Steve Noble, Alex Ward, John Edwards, Dylan Nyoukis, Phil Minton & Feral Singers. She has been conducting a series of collaborative group compositions ; L’ESPRIT D’ESCALIER – for voices in a staircase, LONG DRONE – for a large ensemble of various instruments, TOY ORCHESTRA – for children and adults and GALS with GUITARS – For female guitar players.

Sharon is a founder member of London’s arts radio, Resonance 104.4 FM and has been presenting and producing various shows including the weekly; DIGGERS, with Edwin “Savage Pencil” Pouncey. She has several audio releases: Ash International/ Paradigm records/ Chocolate Monk / Emanem / Ecstatic Yod, and the most recent 7” vinyl, Melancoholic, for American Tapes Label.
www.sharon-gal.com/

Steve Noble is one of London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many more. In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey's excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book ‘Improvisation; its nature and practise’. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins).

Alex Ward is a composer, improviser, and performing musician, working primarily with clarinet and guitar. His involvement in freely improvised music dates back to 1986, when he met the guitarist Derek Bailey. He subsequently took part regularly in Bailey's Company events, and has gone on to become a major figure in British improvised music. His current work ranges from the duo Dead Days Beyond Help, in which he plays guitar and sings, his group Predicate who perform his compositions, regular improvising groups with Steve Noble, Kay Grant and others, as well as more ad hoc encounters with musicians as diverse as Thurston Moore, Joe Morris and Duck Baker. He brings a unique energy and inventiveness to all these projects, elevating them far above the ordinary and injecting them with a thrilling sense of danger and possibility.
alexward.org.uk