Thursday April 23
Doors 730pm Music 8pm SHARP
$7
PYRAMID ATLANTIC
8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring MD 20910
301.608.9101
located three blocks south of the silver spring metro station (red line)
Free parking in gated lot out front
INFO: www.dc-soniccircuits.org
DIRECTIONS: www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org

MEM1:
Mem1 (Mark + Laura Cetilia) seamlessly blends the sounds of cello and
electronics to create a limitless palette of sonic possibilities. In
their improvisation-based performances, all sounds are derived from
the cello as the sole source material, which is manipulated in real
time. Their music moves beyond melody, lyricism, and traditional
structural confines, resulting in organically revealed narrative.
Hailing from Los Angeles, CA, Mem1 has traveled extensively,
performing at Roulette (NYC), REDCAT / Disney Hall (LA), Levontin 7
(Tel-Aviv), the Orange County Museum of Art, the San Francisco
Electronic Music Festival, Electronic Church (Berlin) and, in Spring
2009, the Borealis Festival (Bergen, Norway). In 2007, they were
awarded an artist residency at Harvestworks in New York for the
creation of a new Surround Sound piece, Sonodendron. Throughout the
next year, they will travel throughout Europe, Norway, and Israel to
take part in residencies at STEIM (NL), Kunstenaarslogies (NL) and USF
Verftet (Norway), and to perform and create a sound installation for
the Museums of Bat Yam (Israel). Their third full-length album, +1,
consists of collaborations between Mem1 and artists such as Steve
Roden, Jan Jelenik, and Frank Bretschneider. It will be released in
early 2009 by Interval Recordings.

http://www.mem1.com/

AREA C:
Erik Carlson is a composer, media artist and architect based in
Providence, RI. His work examines sound as an evocative presence,
often acting as a marker, in the physical and mental spaces we
inhabit. Since 2002 he has been recording and performing under the
name AREA C, whose compositions work with timbre, texture and live
loops, exploring cyclical relationships and the details of their decay
over time. Improvisation plays an important part in both recordings
and live performances, encompassing extended explorations of minimal
rhythm and melody, drawing on remnants of other times and places,
outdated and untested technologies, signals sent out but never
received. In 2009, Carlson received the MacColl-Johnson Fellowship in music
composition and he is currently working on new commissions for the
NASA RI Space Grant Consortium and the LEF Foundation. His permanent
sound installation (”Low Rez/Hi Fi,” a collaboration with architect
Meejin Yoon) can be viewed at 1110 Vermont Avenue in Washington DC.
AREA C’s fourth full-length CD, titled “Charmed Birds vs. Sorcery,”
was released in February 2009. The album reveals “an astonishingly
refined and singular approach to guitar-based composition…. Glacial
harmonics drift in and out of each channel, skittering, modulated
notes pulse and surge, sputtering suddenly to luminescent
manifestation before disappearing just as quickly.” Later this year,
the Sedimental label will release AREA C’s series of live
collaborative performances at the Cormack Planetarium in Providence,
RI.

http://www.areacmusic.com/

Fast Forty
Experimental music from the District of Chaos. Altered electronics, found sounds and scrap metal, blended to soothe and stimulate. File under: Intense Ambient.

http://www.myspace.com/fastforty

Wednesday April 22
Doors 730pm Music 8pm SHARP
$8
PYRAMID ATLANTIC
8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring MD 20910
301.608.9101
located three blocks south of the silver spring metro station (red line)
Free parking in gated lot out front
INFO: www.dc-soniccircuits.org
DIRECTIONS: www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org

The task of describing the life and work of Eugene Chadbourne (aka Dr. Chadula) is more than daunting. His music is so unique, and his output over almost thirty years of music-making is so vast, as to defy description To that must be added so many other skills and important contributions to music. He is truly a Renaissance man, a rebel among rebels. When I first thought about both an anniversary festival and a special focus on improvisation and collaboration across traditions, Dr. Chad’s name appeared in red neon letters.

He began playing guitar at an early age. Noticing that girls liked The Beatles, he thought perhaps learning to play the guitar could lead to getting a girlfriend. Having rejected the other two paths to this desirable outcome, beating people up and being good at sports, he began to teach himself how to play. What began with a simple boyish dream and a Herman’s Hermits record turned into a musical odyssey that has connected the dots between the Appalachians and the edges of the known musical universe. Along the way, he’s taught himself the banjo as well as piano, bass and drums.

Eugene is a music lover who listens to the world with an open mind, which is reflected in his sets. A typical one could include the music of Thelonious Monk, Eric Satie, Merle Haggard, Phil Ochs along with his own. Some of the departure points may be familiar, but even if you have heard him play a song before, you won’t hear it the same way again. Each performance and each listening is unique. It has to be. To paraphrase an old saying “you can’t play the the heart of improvisation is an awareness of music, the instrument, the place and all that has led up to that moment. The improvisational music scene can sometimes get a bit rarefied and oblique, but Eugene’s guiding star is his ongoing love for country music. It is not a repertoire customarily heard in New York’s The Knitting Factory or the avant-garde festivals of Europe, but Dr. Chad has made it so.

The list of artists he has collaborated with runs into pages. Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Jimmy Carl Black, Wadada Leo Smith, Camper Van Beethoven, the Red Clay Ramblers and the Violent Femmes are just a handful, appearing in clubs, galleries and festivals and in one case, a command performance with Tony Trischka for William S. Burroughs.

He has also written widely about music, inventing the touring diary when he described his travels with Shockabilly in 1984, and creating books including I Hate the Man Who Runs This Bar. He is one of the founders of the “low-fi” or “low tech” movement that came to see thousands of artists creating and releasing their own cassettes (and now CDs) on their own labels. He has also inspired many as a creator of instruments. His electric rake has motivated many artists to build new instruments and expand the sonic landscape. When you combine all of the above with his penchan for speaking out loud and clear about what exactly the hell seems to be going on, you have an unforgettable artist whose connection to folk is both deep and wide.

In these troubled yet hopeful times, Doc Chad brings his solo music to the people, a traditional wandering minstrel messaging many meanings. Eugene Chadbourne currently performs on the 5-string banjo, a hybrid electric resonator guitar and homemade instruments such as the infamous electric rake. In this period the solo repertoire features many original songs Chadbourne has been recording since the early ’80s

http://www.eugenechadbourne.com