NeonMarshmallow
2011 New York City
October 14 15 16 Public Assembly Brooklyn
14
Grouper
Kevin Drumm
The Men
Phill Niblock
James Ferraro
Xeno & Oaklander
15
Tim Hecker
Mark Fell
Phoenecia
Carlos Giffoni
Tim Harrington
Rene Hell
16
Mandelbrot & Skyy
La Big Vic
Joe Lentini
Forma
Date Palms
//
Rhys Chatham
Alan Licht
Loren Connors
Ryley Walker
DJ sets
Veronica Vasicka
Spinoza
Ric Leichtung
Emilie Friedlander
Brian Turner
Todd P
Visuals
EyeBodega
Yr Friend Matthew
Jon Williams & Rebecca Gaffney
Johnny Woods
October 13
Clocktower Gallery
New York
C Spencer Yeh
Zarzutzki
Rhys Chatham (Official Site) is a composer, guitarist and trumpet player from Manhattan, currently living in Paris, who altered the DNA of rock and created a new type of urban music that fuses the overtone-drenched sounds of early 60s minimalism with the relentless, elemental fury of the Ramones where the textural intricacies of the avant-garde collide with the visceral punch of electric guitar-slinging punk rock. Starting with Guitar Trio in the 1970s and culminating with A Crimson Grail for 200 electric guitars in 2009, Chatham has been working for over 30 years to make use of armies of electric guitars in special tunings to merge the extended-time music of the sixties and seventies with serious hard rock. Parallel with his rock- influenced pieces, Chatham has been working with various brass configurations since 1982, and recently has developed a completely new approach with collaborations, improvised and compositional pieces involving trumpet through performances and recordings that started in 2009. Chatham's trumpet work deploys extended playing techniques inherited from the glory days the early New York minimalist and free jazz period.
Chatham deploys extended playing techniques inherited from the glory days of free jazz (Don Cherry, Bill Dixon, Jac Berrocal…) as well as leaders of the minimalist movement (John Cale, Tony Conrad, Jon Hassell, Charlemagne Palestine, La Monte Young…) of which he is one of the successors, arriving at a mix that ebulliently exits from his various horns while simultaneously going through stomp boxes and electronic devices. The result is delivered to an audience that has over the years never ceased to continue following his music with a mixture of surprise and enthusiasm – these forays into such diverse areas of style and sound as punk, techno, drum 'n' bass, drone metal, serious hard rock, and of course, the minimalist music scene of downtown NY at the dawn of the 70s, the scene which gave birth to him.