Thanks to our friend Lisa Meyer at Supersonic Festival and Matt from HTF Media Birmingham for arranging/ shooting & editing this excellent short film.
In 2011 Tony Conrad played an intense solo violin set at the annual extreme music festival. Footage from this show and an on camera interview make up the short film which can be watched above.
During the same weekend, the American drone music pioneer also took part with a lengthy on stage Q & A with tQ Ed John Doran. This 90 minute long talk was not filmed and it is perhaps, in some ways, just as well.
Things got off to a slightly frosty start when the pair took off their coats on stage to reveal Conrad wearing a T-shirt bearing the inscription "L.A." in homage to his home town, while Doran, a careless dresser at the best of times was wearing a T-shirt bearing the logo: "California Bastards".
Initial hostilities aside, Conrad enraptured a large audience for the full duration, "flipping Pythagoras on his back and skewering him" in the process and spinning many weird and engrossing stories about La Monte Young, John Cale and Faust along the way. The festival described the event as a "rare and humorous treat" while Doran simply called it "terrifying".
R.I.P. to the inimitable musical visionary who died earlier this year.
