ISSUE Radio: The Ashcan Orchestra

This live set by The Ashcan Orchestra was recorded by ISSUE in November 2012. Led by composer/performer Pat Spadine, the revolving Bushwick-based performance ensemble has been popping up in D.I.Y. style and art house venues throughout NYC and the eastern seaboard since 2007. Employing everything from children’s hand bells, tape recorders, discarded televisions, homemade circuitry, light bulbs and mirrors, to more widely accepted noisemakers, Ashcan creates new music in forms more familiar than the instrumentation would lead the listener to believe. This process from humble and understandable beginnings to grander and more complex ends, has been a vehicle to both celebrate and emulate the physics that bind the known universe.