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| 0 | LONDON: Cafe Oto |
|---|---|
| P | Saturday 14th August, 2010 |
| N | 8:00pm |
Ikue Mori has been a leading figure in New York's experimental music scene for over 30 years. Her unique mix of free improvisation, echoes of popular song, contemporary composition, noise, film music, experimental electronics, and influences from the visual arts and literature has established her as one of the world's most interesting and sought after musicians. She has worked with, amongst others, John Zorn, Derek Bailey, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, Zeena Parkins (in the Phantom Orchard project), Fred Frith & Hideki Kater (in the group Death Ambient), vocalist Tenko (in the duo Death Praxis), DJ Olive and Dave Douglas.
Her musical journey started in 1977, when visiting New York from her native Japan, she started playing drums and formed seminal No Wave group DNA with fellow noise pioneers Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. DNA enjoyed legendary cult status, creating a new brand of radical rhythms and dissonant sounds, and forever altering the face of rock music.
In the mid 1980s, she started to employ drum machines in the unlikely context of improvised music. While limited to the standard technology provided by the drum machine, she nevertheless forged her own highly sensitive signature style, using a multiple array of dequantified machines augmented by samplers. By trying to make the drum machine “sound broken” she “founded a new world for the instrument, taking it far beyond backing rhythms and robotic fills” (Adam Strohm, Dusted)
In 2000, she started using the laptop computer to expand on her already signature sound, broadening her scope of musical expression, and opening up new worlds of sound and possibilities of musical interaction.
In recent years she has appeared at the Tate Modern, performing specially commissioned soundtracks to the films of American surrealist film maker Maya Deren, revisited dance rhythms on the CD Class Insecta, curated the Music Unlimited festival in Austria, made an animated DVD of the journey of the soul from hell to heaven (Bhima Swarga, Tzadik), and had her musical career celebrated by the Japan Society in New York with a series of events curated by John Zorn.
Since her days with DNA, Ikue has gradually reduced her kit from acoustic drums to drum machines to laptop computer. The third night of the residency sees her playing with two musicians who also have distinctive approaches to technology and physicality in music. Chris Cutler uses electronics to radically expand the sonic range of his drumkit and generate an almost orchestral barrage of sound. John Butcher pushes both the machinery of the saxophone and his own physical capabilities to the limit, producing sounds which hover between noise and music and which inject a strange and powerful physicality into any musical situation.
Links:
http://ikuemori.com/
http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=6082
