A four-band meltdown of extreme sax, guitar, vocals and noise promises to keep the ATP Nightmare Before Christmas spirit alive at London’s Luminaire on Tuesday 7 December, with a rare UK sighting of US skronk legends Borbetomagus and psych supergroup Rangda headlining.
For those of us stuck miles away from Minehead this weekend, the great brain of Twitter threw up some tantalising reports of Rangda, a new-ish power trio of Sun City Girls’ Sir Richard Bishop, fearsome drummer Chris Corsano and Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny, who were heard to be slugging it out in an unashamedly cosmic fashion on Sunday. A listen to this year’s album on Drag City, False Flag, reveals a mixture of lush, Popol Vuh-like guitar explorations and blistering but iridescent noise.
However, the evening’s deadliest three-pronged attack is likely to come from Borbetomagus, whose sax and guitar improvisations have been shredding synapses since probably before many of us were born. Alongside – and influential upon – the key noise movements of the 80s and 90s saxophonists Don Dietrich and Jim Sauter and guitarist Donald Miller have forged their doggedly underground and consistently brilliant path, with an arcane and awesome discography that kicks against the often cerebral confines of improvised music and pretty much turns it inside out. As you might expect, the process is a glorious mess, with zombie-like growls, visceral shrieks, queasy feedback and swarms of kamikaze high-end notes that will tickle fans of Original Silence, Zu, Ruins, Wolf Eyes and other such extremists. In the small confines of the Luminaire, they should be, quite literally, a blast.
Dutch saxophonist and electronic musician Thomas Ankersmit, who’s recently collaborated and toured with Borbetomagus as well as fitting in a recent London show with epic drone master Phil Niblock, supports: expect him to confound your expectations of the sax with unearthly, spacious manipulations of the instrument (Listen to him performing in an old aircraft hangar in Tallin, Estonia, here). Completing the bill is extreme vocalist and pedal steel artist Heather Leigh, whose astonishing voice and slide manipulations shred both strings and hearts, less like a display of virtuosity than a window on a beautiful, private ritual.
Promoters Miles of Smiles have two tickets to give away to the first people to email them with the answer to this question:
What’s the name of very prolific Rangda guitarist Rick Bishop’s new duo?
Email milesofsmilesinfo@googlemail.com
For information on the show, click here.
