Wednesday 16 September 2015

MATANA ROBERTS and ERIC CHENAUX performing in London next month!


Upset The Rhythm presents…

MATANA ROBERTS performing ‘Coin Coin Chapter Three’
ERIC CHENAUX
Tuesday 6 October
OSLO, 1a Amhurst Road, Hackney Central, E8 1LL
7.30pm | £12 | http://www.wegottickets.com/event/323005

MATANA ROBERTS is an internationally renowned composer, band leader, saxophonist, sound experimentalist and mixed-media practitioner. Roberts works in many contexts and mediums, including improvisation, dance, poetry, and theater. She made two records as a core member of the Sticks And Stones quartet in the early 2000s and has gone on to release a diverse body of solo and ensemble work under her own name on Constellation and Central Control over the past decade. She is perhaps best known for her acclaimed ‘Coin Coin’ project, a multi-chapter work of “panoramic sound quilting” that aims to expose the mystical roots and channel the intuitive spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression while maintaining a deep and substantive engagement with narrativity, history, community and political expression within improvisatory musical structures. Constellation began documenting the ‘Coin Coin’ project in 2011 and has released the first three of a projected twelve album-length chapters to date.

The third chapter of ‘Coin Coin’, entitled ‘river run thee’ and released on Constellation on February 2014, finds Roberts constructing a sound art tapestry from field recordings, loop and effects pedals, and spoken word recitations, alongside her saxophone and singing voices. ‘Coin Coin Chapter Three: river run thee’ which Roberts will be performing at this concert, could arguably be considered first and foremost a vocal work, and notwithstanding its experimental and esoteric structure, a deeply narrative work as well. Not unlike 2013’s ‘Coin Coin Chapter Two: Mississippi Moonchile’, this most recent chapter unfolds as an uninterrupted album-length flow, this time in what Roberts calls “a fever dream” of sonic material, woven in surrealist fashion.

Matana Roberts from Sax Pax on Vimeo.

At my artistic core, I am firmly dedicated to creating a unique and very personal experiential body of sound work that speaks to, and reminds people of all walks of life to reach, stand up, give voice, regardless of difference, created from mere labels of intellectual classification. In my ideal world the idea of ‘difference’, is an illusion designed only for the purpose of modern economic division and elitist intellectual hierarchy. Through my life’s work, I stand creatively in defiance.” Matana Roberts

Roberts has played with and alongside Rob Mazurek, Myra Melford, Vijay Iyer, Roscoe Mitchell and Greg Tate to name but a few and has also recorded as a guest musician with rock, pop and electronic groups as diverse as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, TV On The Radio, Savath & Savalas, Thee Silver Mt. Zion, and performance artists My Barbarian.
http://www.matanaroberts.com/


ERIC CHENAUX is an adventurous guitarist, singer and composer based in Paris. Having been an active player in Toronto experimental music circles with a host of group and collaborative works,  Chenaux has more recently amassed a body of solo work across five albums on the Constellation label, centering around his dextrous, fried guitar playing as juxtaposed with a gorgeously lyrical vocal style. An ingenious recombinant use of traditional folk, psychedelic pop and consort music in earlier albums has over time evolved into a wholly uncategorisable form of balladry, shot through with a singular vernacular of guitar improvisation. 2015 has seen Eric release ‘Skullsplitter’, perhaps the strongest document yet of the exquisite, poetical songcraft he snake-charms from the roiling and changeable sonic environments bedded beneath. Alongside it has seen a blooming of his collaboration with Canadian filmmaker Eric Cazdyn, with a set of visual pieces made for each track on the album testament to their ongoing exploration of a fresh, symbiotic approach to music-video.



Eric Chenaux "Le Pouget" + "Skullsplitter" from Constellation Records on Vimeo.


He has performed with Pauline Oliveros, John Oswald, Michael Snow, Brodie West, Han Bennink, Michael Moore, Josephine Foster, Wilbert De Joode, Gareth Davis, Jacob Wren and Norberto Lobo among many. Eric also composes and performs music for film and contemporary dance, and collaborates on numerous sound installations with visual/sound artist Marla Hlady, including Smedaholmen Tourist (with Amplifiers) (2012) for The Thousand And One Birds festival in Norway. Together with Eric Cazdyn he undertook a two-week residency at The Cube Cinema in Bristol, UK, where they produced and performed the film Play The Cube in 2014.
http://cstrecords.com/eric-chenaux/

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