CHANGE OF VENUE! MOVED FROM THE WICK. ALL TICKETS PURCHASED FOR THE WICK WILL BE HONORED AT KNITTING FACTORY.
ISSUE, The Wick and desertshore present Nazoronai in their first New York performance. A recent collaboration of the legendary Keiji Haino (guitar, vocals & synth), Stephen O’Malley (bass) and Oren Ambarchi (percussion), Nazoranai unites three extraordinary experimental operators of doom, noise and power electronics. With support from Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe AKA Lichens, whose trance-like sets combine modular sythesis and vocals.
On Friday, May 23rd, Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O’Malley perform at ISSUE Project Room as part of Tectonics Festival NY. The duo collaborate in a special presentation of Alvin Lucier's“Criss-Cross”, and perform recent works by composers Eyvind Kang and Iancu Dumitrescu.
One of most widely recognized and legendary guitarists to come out of Japanese underground rock scene of the 1970s, Keiji Haino is well known for his harsh blues-inspired solo guitar performances and torrential walls of sound with his band Fushitsusha. Much of his work bears an insular singularity, but his varied output eschews a signature style. Haino cites a broad range of influences, including troubadour music, Marlene Dietrich, Iannis Xenakis, Syd Barrett, and Charlie Parker. He has had a long love affair with early blues music, particularly the works of Blind Lemon Jefferson, and is heavily inspired by the Japanese musical concept of “Ma,” the silent spaces in music. For the last 40 years Haino has been prolific in his output and collaborations, working with everyone from Faust, Boris, Derek Bailey, Loren Connors, Stephen O'Malley, Oren Ambarchi, Jim O'Rourke and John Zorn.
Stephen O'Malley is the guitarist and founder of numerous seminal groups including Sunn O))), Khanate and Burning Witch among others. Born in New Hampshire and raised in Seattle, he eventually spent a decade in New York and presently is based in Paris. As a composer and musician he has been involved in hundreds of concerts and performances around the world over since 1993. He is a frequent collaborator of many outsider and experimental musicians, artists and composers in various formations, and has served as a link between the doom-metal and art spheres. His collaborators have included Boris, Merzbow, Jim O’Rourke, Keiji Haino and Oren Ambarchi to French theatre specialist Gisèle Vienne, American sculptor Banks Violette, Italian performance artist Nico Vascellari and Belgian filmmaker Alexis Destoop, among many others. Since 2011 he has curated the label Ideologic Organ.
Oren Ambarchi is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with longstanding interests in transcending conventional instrumental approaches. His works are hesitant and tense extended songforms located in the cracks between several schools: modern electronics and processing; laminal improvisation and minimalism; hushed, pensive songwriting; the deceptive simplicity and temporal suspensions of composers such as Morton Feldman and Alvin Lucier; and the physicality of rock music, slowed down and stripped back to its bare bones, abstracted and replaced with pure signal. From the late 90's his experiments in guitar abstraction and extended technique have led to a more personal and unique sound-world incorporating a broader palette of instruments and sensibilities. Ambarchi has performed and recorded with a diverse array of artists such as Fennesz, Otomo Yoshihide, Pimmon, Keiji Haino, John Zorn, Rizili, Voice Crack, Jim O'Rourke, Keith Rowe, Phill Niblock, Dave Grohl, Gunter Muller, Evan Parker, z'ev, Toshimaru Nakamura, Peter Rehberg, Merzbow and many more. Since 2004 Ambarchi has worked with American avant metal outfit Sunn 0))) contributing to many of their releases and side-projects including their Black One album from 2005 and the recent Monoliths & Dimensions release.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is an artist and composer that works with spontaneous music and the voice, often under the moniker of Lichens. Lowe creates patch pieces using modular synthesizers and tonal vocal work with a focus on live performance and recordings. His interest lies in the physicality of sound, much in the way of ecstatic music. Lowe's sonic creations rely on the sensitivity of analogue modular systems to echo the organic nature of vocal expression, in order to create a trancelike state and usher in a deeper listening through sound and feeling. By way of a recent meeting and collaboration with artist Patrick Smith, Robert has begun to utilize projections with live performances. The current video piece is called "Clouds" which is a vector driven animation made by Patrick Smith.
