ISSUE's two-night benefit series opens on Wednesday November 13that 7:30pm with a VIP Reception in ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Place theater. Kim Gordon collaborates with drummer Tim Barnes in an intimate performance over food and cocktails from Rucola. The concert begins at 9:00pm with a performance by guitar legend J Mascis solo. Gordon and her recent collaborator Bill Nace follow as the electric guitar duo Body/Head with Ikue Mori joining on drums— a return to her seminal no-wave roots.
VIP Tickets are still available. General admission tickets ($35- SOLD OUT) are for entry at 9:00pm.
Body/Head are an electric guitar duo comprised of Kim Gordon and Bill Nace formed in 2012. Initially their approach was almost entirely instrumental— lattices of interwoven feedback, recalling everyone from Heldon to Keiji Haino against a backdrop of slow-motion film projection. Gordon’s voice has since creeped into the mix, and her signature vocals have become an intrinsic part of their musical architecture.
From her beginnings with the seminal no wave unit DNA, Ikue Mori has always had a distinctively percussive sensibility. She abandoned her kit for decades, creating pioneering drum machine and software improvisations, and collaborating with fellow downtown icons John Zorn, Fred Frith and Kim Gordon among many others. Body/Head has brought Mori back to the drums, a super group that is not to be missed.
In the quarter-century since he founded Dinosaur Jr., J Mascis has created some of the era’s signature songs, albums and styles. The laconically-based roar of his guitar, drums and vocals have driven a long string of bands – Deep Wound, Dinosaur Jr., Gobblehoof, Velvet Monkeys, the Fog, Witch, Sweet Apple – and he has guested on innumerable sessions. J’s first solo studio record, "Several Shades of Why" (2011) is an album of incredible beauty, performed with a delicacy not always associated with his work.
Tim Barnes is a percussionist and electronic musician who has played with Jim O’Rourke, Silver Jews, Neil Michael Hagerty and the Howling Hex, The Tower Recordings, The For Carnation, and MV+EE. He also runs the newly-resuscitated Quakebasket label.
Benefit Committee
Matthew Higgs – Director/Chief Curator, White Columns
Branden Joseph – Frank Gallipoli Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, Columbia University
Charlotta Kotik – Independent Curator
Jay Sanders – Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art
Dustin Yellin – Artist / Founder, Pioneer Works
Board of Directors
Tom van den Bout, Board Chair, Jeanne Lutfy, Vice Chair, Tony Conrad, Artistic Chair, R. Luke DuBois, Karen Auster, Marianne Berry, Marcus Brauer, Steve Buscemi, Kathleen Forde, Sarah Garvey, David Grubbs, Jeremy Hurewitz, John Latona, Robert Longo, Stephen Maine, Margo Somma, Steve Wax.
