Saturday, November 14th, 2015
Gallows Hill Theatre, Salem, MA
BEN HERSEY (Easthampton, MA)
Ben Hersey is a performer, writer, poet, comedian, musician and a lot more!!
Hilarious, witty, edgy, superbly crafted AND profound performances.
A favorite in the Boston underground scene! This is a MUST!
JENIFER GELINEAU (Holyoke, MA)
Jen's sound ranges from tonal to atonal, harsh to sweet, chaotic to peaceful, using multiple natural timbres and textures. Her main instrument is the Violin however, lately, she has experimented with Cello, Glass, Music Box, Bow-Able items and pedals.
ANNE-F JACQUES & TIM OLIVE (Montreal, CA)
Anne-F Jacques and Tim Olive use handmade, idiosyncratic instrumentation to produce and amplify detailed sound textures, from fine-grained to coarse. Anne-F’s “rotating devices” refer to small electric motors which are modified, manipulated and amplified; Tim’s “magnetic pickups” are the engine of a devolved one-string electric guitar. They share a tactile, lo-tech approach to improvised sound composition, manipulating diverse objects and materials in conjunction with somewhat unpredictable audio pickup/amplification systems to create a music in turns serene and agitated, pellucid and dense, fluid and gritty.
Their collaboration began in July 2013, when Japan-residing Olive was in Montreal for a series of performances. A day of recording in Jacques’s studio resulted in "Dominion Mills", a CD released on 845 Audio in 2014 which received excellent critical reviews. The duo then organized a tour of Japan in November 2014, where they played in Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya and Tokyo, performing together and with Japanese musicians, including Takahiro Kawaguchi and Makoto Oshiro.
Tim Olive
Tim Olive's work, utilizing magnetic pickups and analog electronics, is predicated on collaboration. Extensive live action in North America, Asia, Europe and Australia has provided opportunities to play with a wide range of musicians in event-specific one-off contexts, as well as ongoing performing/recording collaborations with Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Jason Kahn, Anne-F Jacques, Makoto Oshiro, Takahiro Kawaguchi, Nick Hoffman, Francisco Meirino and Katsura Mouri. Recent live collaborators include Richard Kamerman, Nate Wooley, Jin Sangtae, Madoka Kouno, Takuji Naka, Carl Stone and Tetuzi Akikyama.
Anne-F Jacques
Anne-F Jacques is a sound artist based in Montreal, Canada. She is interested in amplification, erratic sound reproduction devices and construction of various contraptions and idiosyncratic systems. Her particular focus is on low technology, trivial objects and unpolished sounds. She performs regularly, has many ongoing collaboration projects (with Nicolas Dion, Miguel A. Garcia, Takamitsu Ohta and Hélène Prévost, to name a few) and makes soundtracks for Julie Doucet’s animated films. She has presented sound installations in many artist-run centers in Canada and sound performances in North America, Europe and Japan. Anne-F is also involved with Crustacés Tapes, a postal sound distribution project.
Audio links:
soundcloud.com/annef/tim-olive-anne-f-jacques-live-at-space-eauu
MULCH CRAFT (Worcester, MA)
Mulch Craft is one of the many Jeff Giarrusso’s projects. Ultra mysterious in its nature, MC can involve costumes, audience participation, percussion, lo-tech electronics, objects and more. Profoundly aware of the use of space and silence, his performances naturally engage the audience's attention.
Here’s a description by Mickey O’Hara from the Firehouse in Worcester (taken from a review in the Boston Hassle)
Mulch Craft at the Go-Go
Jeff Giarrusso plays solo as Mulch Craft. He used to live at Gay Gardens so some of you Bostonians might know him. This year Jeff moved into a room in a giant barn house in the woods on the outskirts of Worcester. Shortly after moving in, he delivered what was probably the most creatively ambitious use of the space I’ve seen so far. Here’s the play-by-play:
I was a tad late to his set but when I walked into his bedroom, most of the audience were playing various instruments he had given them, engaged and enthralled. Jeff, dressed in a homemade mask, thrift-store dress, and white lace gloves grabbed me and pointed to a small keyboard, which I started playing. He then started playing a sampler and other electronics and together we blasted off into outer space. Jeff brought us all back to Earth by motioning to us to stop and producing a rope, on which he placed each of our hands. While holding a walkman that was quietly playing a fucked up noise tape, he led us with the rope down the stairs, past another ambient sound station he had previously set up, and out of the barn, into the woods. I wondered where we were going and then saw a light in the distance. We walked closer to the light, which was a small candle in a clearing, and he circled us around it. There were small instruments placed around the candle and we played them for a while. Then Jeff blew out the candle and that was the end of the set.
Boy did he break in that space. It was the talk of the town for days afterwards...
http://cactuscave.blogspot.com/
