ISSUE Project Room returns to Red Hook this summer for the second-annual concert series in collaboration with Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation. This all-day indoor/outdoor show crosses metal, noise and experimental electronics, headlined by Liturgy— in their first reunited show as a quartet since 2011— alongside Californian post-metal duo Wreck and Reference, Brooklyn extreme-noise group White Suns, and noise/electronic artist Kyle Eyre Clyd, alias Penny Royale. Anticipating a forthcoming full-length in 2015, self-christened “Transcendental Black Metal” band Liturgy make a long-awaited return to the stage with Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, Bernard Gann, Tyler Dusenbury, and drummer Greg Fox (Guardian Alien, Zs).
Doors open at 3pm, music starts at 4pm.
Originally founded in 2005 as the solo-project of frontman/guitarist Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, Brooklyn four-piece Liturgy took off following the release of their debut full-length, 2009’s Renihilation, to be re-released by Thrill Jockey this August. Characterized by highly technical musicianship, poetico-mystical gesturing, and a minimal directness, the group eschews standard aesthetics of the black metal genre with a philosophical bent. Hunt-Hendrix’s controversial chapbook “Transcendental Black Metal: A Vision of Apocalyptic Humanism" (2009), polarized metal-enthusiasts and journalists internationally, pushing the group to the forefront of emerging third-wave metal. Their sophomore LP Aesthethica (Thrill Jockey, 2011), continued their commitment to developing and enhancing resonances between black metal and various domains of avant-garde culture: serious music, contemporary art and contemporary philosophy. Following a few years in various duo and trio formations, including appearances at ISSUE as part of Hunt-Hendrix’s 2012 Artist-in-Residency, this fall sees Liturgy’s return as a quartet— with Greg Fox, Bernard Gann, and Tyler Dusenbury. In anticipation of a new full length in 2015, they’ll be touring the Midwest and East Coast during September.
Formed in 2011 by drummer Ignat Frege and instrumentalist Felix Skinner, Wreck & Reference are a Californian duo with a minimal instrumentation drums, vocals, and computers. With an unconventional hold on experimental, electronic, and post-metal genres, this difficult to classify group have turned heads with two full-lengths, Y̶o̶u̶t̶h̶ (2012), and C̶o̶n̶t̶e̶n̶t̶ (2013), which NPR described as "weirdly heavy and unnerving". Following this June's release of their latest album, Want (The Flesner), Pitchfork wrote, "California duo Wreck and Reference provide a radical vision of what the metal of the future might look like."
White Suns have been purveyors of extreme music since 2006. In recent years, the band has consisted of Kevin Barry and Dana Matthiessen, who combine field recordings, synthesizers, and homemade electronics in their avant-industrial compositions. In the past, White Suns has released albums on The Flenser, Load Records and Weasel Walter's UgExplode label and extensively toured the U.S. Their uncompromising 2014 release Totem was praised by Tiny Mix Tapes as “...a furious purgative or ipecac that, if only for 40 minutes, will help us forget our own contrivance."
In 2008 then-performance artist and DIY curator Kyle Eyre Clyd began her solo noise project using unclaimed electronics left behind at her residence, Brooklyn's Silent Barn. Since then, her semi-outsider status—as a Southerner among the Northeast's local scenes, a non-musician amongst musicians, a woman amongst men—has allowed her to develop a unique voice, tangential to the harsh noise genre. Her most recent album, titled “Pale Dawn Creeps,” was released on Alga Marghen's sublabel HALATERN, etc. this past July. She has played for audiences at the Stone, PPOW Gallery, Sculpture Center, live on WFMU, on the Columbia New Music Hour, on US tours, and at festivals including Ende Tymes and INC NOLA. She currently divides her time between upstate NY where she is a Music/Sound MFA student at Bard College and her birthplace of New Orleans.
