Clavius Productions presents two obscure foreign musicians who rarely make their way to the States, Italian improv saxophonist/accordionist Gianni Gebbia and Japanese guitarist/noisician Yximalloo:
Friday, May 4
611 Florida Ave NW WDC
http://www.claviusproductions.org 9pm, $5 suggested donation
call 202-360-9739 for info
BYOB!
Gianni Gebbia (from Italy, alto/soprano/sopranino saxes, clarinet, accordion, objects)
John Berndt (from Baltimore, saxes)
Ilya Monosov (of The Shining Path, Eclipse/Last Visible Dog/Holy Mountain)
Yximalloo (improv noise from Japan since the '70s, has collaborated with Jad Fair and Costes!)
Gianni Gebbia http://www.giannigebbia.com/ Alto & sopranino saxophones, flute, various objects, occasional writer, painter, artistic director
Born in Palermo, Italy, May 1st, 1961
FREELANCE COLLABORATIONS: Evan Parker, Fred Frith, Louis Sclavis, Gianluigi Trovesi, Lindsay Cooper, Lars Hollmer, Sakis Papadimitriou, André Jaume, Steve Buchanan, Yves Romain, Dominique Regef, Jean Pierre Drouet,Sergey Kuriokhin, Eldjis Ibrahimova, Vladimir Tarasov, Anatoly Vapirov, Petras Visnaiuskas, Fred Giuliani, Vitas Labutis, Tadashi Endo, Masaki Iwana, Motoharu Yoshizawa, Julie Stanzak, Keiki Miridokawa, Heiner Goebbels, David Moss, Claudio Lo Cascio, Otomo Yoshihide, Antonio Carallo, Raul Ruiz, Noel Akchoté, Benoit Delbeq, Paul Rogers, Thierry Madiot, Guillaume Orti, Christophe Marguet, Hubert Dupont, Ernst Reijsiger, Henry Kaiser, Mari Kimura, Damon Smith, Garth Powell, Phil Gelb, Tim Perkis, Gino Robair, Tom Nunn, William Hooker, Lee Ranaldo, Jim O'Rourke, Mimmo Cuticchio, Toti Garraffa, Floros Floridis, Lefteris Agouridakis, Antonello Salis, Pino Minafra, Salvatore Bonafede, Stefano D'Anna, Italian Instabile Orchestra, Peter Kowald, Gunther Sommer, Oliver Lake, Glen Velez, Enzo Rao, Tiziano Popoli, Miriam Palma, Lelio Giannetto, Vittorio Villa, Francesco Cusa, Massimo Simonini, Jim Meneses, Jean Marc Montera, Roy Paci, Francesco Cusa, Lukas Ligeti, Xavier Garcia, Nils Wogram, Michael Manring.
"Gebbia is a very intense and passionate player with a brusque gawky sound. His music is based on repetitive textures and bluntly juxtaposed passages of noise and near silence. He seems to have taken up the challenge posed by Braxton and Evan Parker, not so much in sound as in his approach to structure. He's conscious too that Sicily marks the southernmost point of continental Europe and as such marks at least a metaphoric refocus of the whole diffused Mediterranean tradition." (Brian Morton, The Wire, March 1994)
"The Italian saxophone player Gianni Gebbia is a homo novus on the free music scene. He has a brilliant tecnique and uses different reeds, instruments, special mouthpieces, and overtone singing inside the body of the saxophone. His playing is going all through the history of the saxophone: fast beboppish licks, cool gestures, and strange sounds are coming out of his instrument in a clear and effortless way. A name to keep in our minds for the future." (Reiner Kobe, Jazz Podium)
John Berndt http://www.johnberndt.org/ John Berndt (b. 1967) is a musician and organizer based in Baltimore, Maryland, who is best known as an experimental extended-technique saxophonist, electronic musician, and theorist of experimental culture. As an enfant terrible, he participated in the nascent neoism cultural movement along with Monty Cantsin, Istvan Kantor, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, and Blaster Al Ackerman, an '80s cultural movement which aligned itself with subversion and self-reference, but practically involved mail art, tape trading, noise music, and post-Fluxus happenings in North America and Europe. Subsequently becoming a respected businessman and grafting those skills onto his avant-garde roots, Berndt, one member of a collective of artists and improvising musicians in the spirit of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, works on the Red Room experimental performance series, which has presented weekly events since early 1996, and the High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music, a large annual improvised music festival begun in 1999 in Baltimore where all performers play in new groups. He also runs the Recorded record label which has issued several discs by Berndt's sometime collaborator Henry Flynt. (Wikipedia)
Ilya Monosov http://www.myspace.com/ilyamonosov Ilya Monosov has spent the last decade working with sound and objects and creating his unique form of ritualistic music performance. He has
worked in collaboration or had co publications with Preston Swirnoff, Marc Schulz, Andrew Deutsch, Pauline Oliveros, Charles Curtis, Larry Polansky, Bob Cobbing, Makoto Kawabata, Radu Malfatti and many others. His output has been highly varied and has encompassed everything from gypsy folk music, to minimalist improvisation, to heavy rock. He has also been involved in many performances and multi-media events (including performances and installations at the first lower case events in LA) and currently has a piece online in Frogpeak Unbound, as well as artist books in Printed Matter NYC. He maintains a myspace page to share some of his arrangements for guitar and voice with the public and offer links to supporting labels and distribution websites.
Yximalloo http://www014.upp.so-net.ne.jp/yximalloo/ Yximalloo is Naofumi Ishimaru alone, but he drafts a loose ensemble of players, including the core of Shigeo Ootake and Takashi Korgo (who appear on all discs), as collaborator-executors. All of his releases are on his own label, and none have seen a distributor yet (which is why you very rarely find his CDs in stores). Mr. Ishimaru recently visited Other Music, and left us with (very limited!) quantities of his entire catalog. Ishimaru works like a Japanese Jandek without the angst, like the Boredoms minus the bombast. Spiritual kin to early art-punk and especially the LAFMS, he revels in mock-ethnic music and nonsense. Lo-fi, sweet and primitive, he uses ancient drum machines, hand percussion, and electronic droplet noises, sometimes set to melodies gathered from some imaginary South Sea island where the traditional instrument is seemingly an old '80s synth. Handclaps and chanting abound, but Yximalloo has also been painted as a Japanese Half Japanese -- Jad Fair himself has collaborated with Ishimaru and draws the covers for every release here (gorgeous dayglo and glow-in-the-dark covers in iridescent plastic cases). Recording since 1973(!), he still has but one Yximalloo release in the States, last year's retrospective LP on Old Gold. Most CDs are around 70 minutes and usually contain over 30 tracks.
"Much more psychedelic in that grinding, rhythmic, rough trancelike way, and has many pretty moments within. Electronics are prominent, amidst long passages of 'tribal' drumming, yet most vocals are fed through robot filters. Even includes a fake Inuit breathing game (looped?) and lots of rhythmic chaos." (Other Music)
Check out this interview:
http://www014.upp.so-net.ne.jp/yximalloo/e-view.html Upcoming 611 Florida events:
6/3: Emeralds (stoner drone from Ohio)/Birds of Delay (UK heavy drone)/Plain Lace
6/12: Madagascar/Lord Fyre (of John Wilkes Booze)/Normanoak (of Impossible Shapes)/Ryan Jewell (experimental percussion from Columbus OH)
