Black Sun - monthly weirdo music nights at Granary

Oblivia + Ju Suk Reet Meate (Smegma), Jozef Van Wissem, Laura Sheeran

Granary Theatre / 7 November / 8pm til late / €10

+ SMEGMA [Oblivia + Ju Suk Reet Meate] + ((only Irish performance))
http://www.myspace.com/smegmatheoriginal
Blasting out of Los Angeles in the early 1970s, Smegma took the logic of Captain Beefheart, the Velvets and free jazz to new places: an improvising troupe that thinks it’s a rock band, a weird folk band that plays free jazz, a garage band that plays experimental noise music, they have influenced generations of the best and strangest artists. Freaks rather than hippies, they recorded with ‘outsider’ artist ‘Wild Man’ Fischer, they found like minds in Portland’s punk and post-punk worlds, and collaborated in the late 1980s with the Butthole Surfers. They have inspired American and European industrial artists, they have played with free jazz musicians and the even freer. Their monstrous sound is driven by combining the energy of rock with the power of noise, and all this through an array of homemade instruments that make their music unique. Ever-strange, they have continued to draw the most creative of musicians to them, making records with Japanese noise legend Merzbow and the pin-ups of the American noise scene of today, Wolf Eyes. Members of Smegma have worked with Earth, Chris Corsano, John Fahey. If this seems like a roster of the great, then this is due to Smegma’s position at the top of the heap of free and noise music-making. Noise music finally caught up with them. Now it’s your turn.

Oblivia (Rock'n'Roll Jackie) began working with sound in the late 70s, soon finding like-minded cohorts in the LA Free Music Society and Portland's crossover free-noise/psych/jazz pioneers Smegma - both loose knit collectives of outsider musicians vaguely united by a shared commitment to DIY art actions. After experiments with guitar and voice she found her focus creatively plundering found sounds through modified and weighted turntables. ' My visual art medium is assemblage or collage. So it comes naturally to assemble sounds. I enjoy hearing how beautiful or humourous mixing can be, just like I love the way things come together visually when assembling 'cut ups'...' O

Reet Meate is a founder member of Smegma, a multi-instrumentalist who, for nearly 40 years, has been conjuring up incredible multi-layered, free-spirited deconstructions of popular music - from splicing primal garage rock with cartoon sound effects and speech clips, to coaxing unworldly sounds out of his strings, to wild vocalizations, to freeform improvisations with trumpet. Meate's influence is not to be underestimated...

+ JOZEF VAN WISSEM +
http://www.myspace.com/vanwissem
http://ubu.com/sound/van-wissem.html
Composer-lute player Jozef Van Wissem is renowned for his unusual take on the Renaissance and Baroque lute, probably the most unlikely instruments in the world of contemporary music. He cuts and pastes classical pieces, reverses melodies, adds electronics and processed field recordings This wedlock of composition and improvisation creates an absolutely original amalgam of contemporary folk and early music, where seventeenth century lute and twenty-first century contemporary music meld. Whilst using subtle electronic sound manipulation, he stays faithful to the timbre, resonance and playing technique of the lute. He has deconstructed existing compositions, by playing them backwards. He has also composed his own pieces for lute, using palindromes and mirrored structures. His music is not so much about linear progression, more about an unfolding intensity, which brings the listener in a state of concentrated listening. He runs the Incunabulum label, and performs extensively around the world. He also works with M.B. / Maurizio Bianchi, James Blackshaw, Tetuzi Akiyama and Gary Lucas. With Blackshaw he formed the duo “ Brethren of the Free Spirit’ which has two releases out on Important records.

+ LAURA SHEERAN +
http://www.myspace.com/laurasheeranmusic"

Laura Sheeran is a 22 year old solo artist based in Dublin. Her musical path began at the age of 15 when asked by Clodagh Simonds (Mellow Candle, Current 93) to sing for a then embryonic project later to be known as Fovea Hex. She has continued to sing with Fovea Hex (also playing accordion and bowed saw) alongside Cora Venus Lunny, Kate Ellis and Michael Begg. Other contributors to this project include the likes of Roger Doyle, Brian Eno, Roger Eno, Robert Fripp, Percy Jones, Donal Lunny, Andrew Mckenzie, Matmos and Steven Wilson. Throughout the summer Laura has been putting the finishing touches to her debut double album, experimenting with instruments such as harp, flute, cello and the accordion. This on top of writing for strings, vocal experimentation and using appliances like old and new sewing machines, fans and broken pens (thanks to Cicely Irvine). Entitled 'lust of pig and the fresh blood' the album is due for release early in the new year. At Black Sun Laura will be previewing material from the album and also including some improvisational work. Her set up on this occasion will include laptop, 6 string ukulele, flute and bowed saw.

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