Clavius Productions presents:
The Free Folk Phantasmagory
a celebration of folk, psych, and improv
October 2, 2004
611 Florida Ave NW
Washington DC
4pm til the witching hour
$5 gets you a sensory overload of experimental music and vegetarian cuisine
BYOB (or anything else that would help enhance your experience)
call 202-360-9739 for more info
Excepter From NYC, ex-No Neck Blues Band
"Excepter is the new group spearheaded by JF Ryan, former electric tree-branch swinger for the No-Neck Blues Band. Using a mutating system of synchronized electronics engineered to ensure live sequencing, Excepter seeks to carry freestyle composition from the tip of the tongue on down to the ones and zeros. All tracks on this LP were performed and mixed live to stereo. Digital editing was only used to arrange the phantasmagoric second side, a tribute to HP Lovecraft's novella Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath. Excepter also marks the singing debut of dancer/choreographer Caitlin Cook. Guaranteed to make you dream in color."
??To quickly stab at the latter,
Stream 13 may document one of Excepter's most plainly violent performances, but it also showcases another side, a band approaching a new level of power and communication, at times building stretches of majestic, glimmering ambience, a new realm of exploration for the group. In other words, the manic energy of Throbbing Gristle and Xenakis is present but, for the first time, so too is the calm and focus of La Monte Young's droning pieces and Merzbow's more minimal Bondage work. In each sense, these extremes are taken to their logical conclusions. Reaching to the edge of meaning and nihilism, Excepter manage a rare feat: they return. And in the process they engineer what is perhaps their most thoughtful and exciting work to date. To put it another way: if you have yet to enter their world, this would be the time and place to begin.? -- Andrew Russeth (The Wood)
Sabir Mateen
From NYC, free jazz legend, member of Test (Eremite/Ecstatic Peace)
Has played with numerous luminaries such as Thurston Moore and Yo La Tengo
Performing a set of solo sax/woodwinds
How many people are listening to classic recordings of artists such as Mance Lipscomb, Charlie Parker, Charles Ives, and Albert Ayler but would never have known, or cared, to attend the performances of these people while they were alive? The answer is, approximately the same as the number of people who will someday be checking out Sabir Mateen.
While his style is reminiscent of late Coltrane, Sabir inflects the cascading torrents of sixteenth and thirty-second notes with blues, soul, folk and atonal sensibilities. He has been known to work with almost every genre of music, from Filipino folk rock to electronic noise to hard post-bop and neo-classical.
Brought up in Philadelphia, Sabir has worked in L.A., where he was part of Horace Tapscott's ensemble. He moved to New York around the beginning of this decade, and although he played several gigs with Sun Ra, mostly resisted overtures to join the Arkestra in favor of forging his own path.
Sharron Kraus From the UK, currently in Philadelphia
Camera Obscura Records
Currently residing in Philadelphia after years of studying at Oxford, Sharron Kraus may be this generation's answer to those highly revered interpreters of traditional British folksong, Sandy Denny and Shirley Collins. Like Gillian Welch, Kraus writes her own ballads, though hers are steeped more in the Child and Sharp ballads of England instead of the Appalachia of Welch (which of course derive from the same sources). Kraus has recorded two phenomenal albums for Camera Obscura and plays solo, accompanied only by guitar, banjo, or whistle.
"There are a few who fight a lonely battle against world music's commercialized and warped definition of folk. People like Timothy Renner, the Iditarod and Gillian Welch who dig their hands deep into the soil of an unnerving past. And let us now also count Sharron Kraus among them. She's been playing music for a decade, but it's not until now she makes her debut on record - many thanks and congratulations to Camera Obscura for that. And what a debut it is! Kraus's songs are rooted as much in Appalachian styles as in the gloomier side of British folk song with a touch of Lal Waterson. And like Waterson, Kraus has a voice of a woman, not a girl. The instrumentation is sparse, often only an earthy banjo and a gritty fiddle. The songs are like omens of a world going decidedly wrong but with alluring melodies to trick you into the trap. When the song deals with family traditions it is ridden with guilt and accusations. When she sings of love, it is of physical affection between twins or if Kraus cares to pour light into the grim story at all it is still marred with rue and regret. The world as seen through the songs of Sharron Kraus is a relentless place of faded sepia. The only way to endure it is to turn ugliness into beauty. It doesn't really matter what is wrong, because there is no right left. Morals change and distort and you won't notice.
Beautiful Twisted is the perfect title. Many singers have explored the shady side of the world and the minds of those who inhabit it, but few have done it as convincingly as Sharron Kraus. It's too early to name
Beautiful Twisted a classic, but I doubt you'll find a better example of a true future folk classic this early in the new millenium." --Peter Sjoblom (The Broken Face)
From Quagmire From DC, ex-Rake, ex-Laconic Chamber
VHF Records
From Quagmire is Dorothy Geller (Laconic Chamber, Elegy) on finger-picked nylon string guitar and hushed vocals, James Wolf (also Laconic Chamber) on violin, and Vinnie Van Go-Gogh (Rake) on guitar, percussion, and situationism. Their second CD,
Caught in Unknowing , strongly follows on from their 2001 debut,
Tropic of Barren, further evolving the Virginian trio??s exquisite and unique chamber music. Here the spaces between notes seem even more like chasms, the sounds of instruments laid bare by the extraordinary fidelity of their recording. In fact, the compositions on
Caught in Unknowing seem like X-rays of songs, their skeleton defined and everything else a ghostly imprint. The pieces on
Caught in Unknowing typically center around some kind of basic internalized folk-song core provided by Dorothy??s guitar patterns and whispered lyrics, around which the other members weave sonic exclamations wild violin excursions from James, and the sound of complaining hinges and a spectra of clatter from VVGG.
Many sounds are of indeterminate origin, and for some reason that makes for compelling listening of the ??how did they do that?? variety. The lengthy central track (possibly called "Stale Mate" though it is a little hard to tell with a track listing that appropriately is a circular thing with no obvious beginning or end) wraps up all of these elements into a transfixing whole, and asks the listener to try and think of something else that sounds like this. And that??s a question that doesn??t get asked very often anymore, and even less often results in a stumped listener. (from Ptolemaic Terrascope)
The Big Huge From Baltimore, acoustic psych/folk duo
Magic Eye Records
Brought up on American folk and British psychedelic pop music, The Big Huge wears its influence on its sleeve, while being sure not to recreate the past. After the split of Sonna, a Baltimore-based ambient instrumental group, The Big Huge (Drew Nelson) decided to revert back to his love of acoustic instrumentation. After a few solo shows, he decided to recruit a fellow Baltimore-based musician, Michael Lambright, to help with accordion, ukelele, glockenspiel, and banjo. After a year of shows in Baltimore and the east coast, Drew and Michael began recording their first LP,
Crown Your Head With Flowers, Crown Your Heart With Joy . Recorded by Chris Freeland and Drew in Chris?? parents?? living room, the record has a summer vibe with lyrics harking back to a time of Welsh communes during the summer of love.
Recommended for fans of The Incredible String Band, Donovan, Vashti Bunyan, etc.
Niagara Falls From Philadelphia, folk/psych/improv quartet
This circus place favor consists of two paper saucers, about a dozen round toothpicks, a tiny animal bought in the dime store, and a whole grain breakfast cereal on the floor as sawdust. Norman Fetter of $100,000,000,000 and Golden Ball, Jenn Lee, Jeff Carpineta from Rob Walmart, and Erich Breimhurst -- this stringed foursome is all improv: dark, pretty, minimal, and feisty. Their first release,
barrel vault will be released in late summer, 2004 on Honeymoon Music.
Eric Carbonara From Philadelphia
Solo flamenco/classical/raga guitar
??While studying classical Indian music at the Ali Akbar College of Music, under the guidance of Sri Arup Banerjee (disciple of Ali Akbar Khan), I became fascinated with the concept of Nada Brahma (sound god), the belief that sound is the voice of the divine, and music, being the organization of sound through time, is the language with which the divine speaks. So, for the past few years, I have tried to create music with this philosophy, with much emphasis on the space between dissonance and resonance and the malleable chaos of molecules. Sounds that I hold dear are: Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Paco Pena, Manitas de Plata, Eno, Ali Akbar Khan, and Ornette Coleman's Chappaqua Suite. I have one album entitled
Selections From the Void , and three others I have yet to finish.
Selections consists of two pieces created from a signal delay system similar to that of Pauline Oliveros and Robert Fripp.? --Eric Carbonara
Dense Fog
From DC
Debut duo of Bill Kellum (Rake) and Vinnie Van Go-Gogh (Rake/From Quagmire)
Daniel McCormick-Martin
From DC, ex-Black Eyes, member of White Flight
Performing solo improv guitar
Order of appearance will roughly follow the list above.
