Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio sparked an electric guitar revolution with three guitars and a single chord. The 2008 Table of the Elements release Guitar Trio is My Life! is celebrated here with a much larger ensemble, the Lords of Tinnitus, anchored by drummer Jonathan Kane and accompanied by images by artist Robert Longo. The ensemble includes Ernie Brooks, Robert Longo, Jonathan Kane, Robert Poss, Bill Brovold, Zach Layton, Adam Wills, and Colin Langenus.
Text of Light (William Hooker, Alan Licht & Nels Cline) was initially formed to perform with American avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage’s film The Text of Light. The group takes on various permutations, and at ISSUE will feature William Hooker, Alan Licht, and Nels Cline. The group has headlined both film and music festivals, and has toured European and USA club and cinema venues.
Jon Mueller has been an active drummer and percussionist over the past 25 years. His recordings have been featured in a variety of contexts, from cassette tape to MTV, and he has performed concerts throughout the U.S., Japan, and Europe. He has worked with members of the groups Swans, Wilco, Bon Iver, and Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio, as well as been a longtime member of the groups Pele, Collections of Colonies of Bees, and more recently, Volcano Choir. He has collaborated with artists such as James Plotkin, Marcus Schmickler, Bhob Rainey, Dan Burke, Asmus Tietchens, Lionel Marchetti, Z’EV, Jason Kahn, Jack Wright, and many others. His recordings have been released by record labels as disparate as Table of the Elements, Polyvinyl Records, Type Recordings, Jagjaguwar, and many others.
New York-based singer-songwriter Peg Simone employs the slide to bone-chilling effect, fracturing raucous rock choruses and sepia-toned ballads into ghost images with its off-tuned eeriness & pure blues tones stuttering across hectic post-punk rhythms. Her recent release is Secrets From The Storm (Table of the Elements, 2010).
The Text of Light group was formed in 1999 with the idea to perform improvised music to the films of Stan Brakhage and other members of the American Cinema avante garde of the 1950s-60s (Brakhageʼs film ‘The Text of Light’ was the premiere performance and namesake of the group). The original premise was to improvise (not ‘illustrate’) to films from the American Avante-Garde (50s-60s etc), an under-known period of American filmic poetics.
Members of the group include Lee Ranaldo and Alan Licht (gtrs/devices), Christian Marclay and DJ Olive (turntables), William Hooker (drums/perc), Ulrich Krieger (sax/electronics), and most recently Tim Barnes (drums/perc). Various combinations of these players attend ‘Text’ gigs, depending on individual schedules, so the group takes on various permutations—sometimes all members participate, sometimes not.
To date the group has performed with the following films: Brakhageʼs The Text of Light, Dog Star Man, Anticipation of the Night, Songs; Harry Smithʼs Mahagonny outtakes, Oz-The Approach to the Emerald City, and Late Superimpositions. The group has headlined the Victoriaville Music Festival, Canada (2002); Three Rivers Film Festival, Pittsburgh; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and have done several tours of Europe as well as performing in New York City and other USA club and cinema venues.
Jon Mueller has been an active drummer and percussionist over the past 25 years. His recordings have been featured in a variety of contexts, from cassette tape to MTV, and he has performed concerts throughout the U.S., Japan, and Europe. He has worked with members of the groups Swans, Wilco, Bon Iver, and Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio, as well as been a longtime member of the groups Pele, Collections of Colonies of Bees, and more recently, Volcano Choir. He has collaborated with artists such as James Plotkin, Marcus Schmickler, Bhob Rainey, Dan Burke, Asmus Tietchens, Lionel Marchetti, Z’EV, Jason Kahn, Jack Wright, and many others. His recordings have been released by record labels as disparate as Table of the Elements, Polyvinyl Records, Type Recordings, Jagjaguwar, and many others.
Jon Mueller formed the imprint Crouton in 1999, because of an interest in how people experience packaged sound and writing. Crouton published over 40 releases in deluxe presentations; each of them collaborative projects that required much listening, creative thinking, planning, discussion, organization, and hands-on implementation. Crouton also organized events in the Milwaukee and Chicago areas with artists from around the world. These were heavily documented by the press and even filmed as part of a PBS documentary. Mueller stopped publishing via Crouton in 2009 to focus exclusively on rhythmplex.com.
Peg Simone, out of NYC, employs the slide to bone-chilling effect, fracturing raucous rock choruses and sepia-toned ballads into ghost images with its off-tuned eeriness & pure blues tones stuttering across hectic post-punk rhythms. Her upcoming release “Secrets From The Storm” is due in February/March 2010 & will be released on Table of the Elements. Peg is also a guitarist in Jonathan Kane’s Februaryand collaborated with Kane on the upcoming album for their own 22 minute version of When The Levee Breaks titled “1927/Levee” with intro narrative written by Holly Anderson.
