Live improvisation from Attorneys General (Matthew Byars), with featured players Tara Cunningham, Alex McKenzie, and Mike O’Malley, and a duo set from Zhuyang Liu and Zheng Hao.
Doors: 7:30pm
Tickets £8-12 Sliding Scale
Attorneys General is a project led by Matthew Byars of DC-based band The Caribbean and NPR-distributed podcast Essential Tremors. A formative experience for Byars as a listener was hearing the work of sound engineer Martin Swope of Mission of Burma on their seminal 1985 live record, The Horrible Truth About Burma, in which Swope, using a reel-to-reel tape machine, captured, looped, manipulated, and destroyed elements of the band’s sound in spontaneous and unexpected ways. Byars has adapted this approach to having three-four people (different players every time, mostly) generate utterly improvised sound through a mixing board he controls, which allows him to capture, loop, manipulate, and destroy the sounds they create. Results vary from the transcendent to the disastrous, but the inherent risk involved is, ultimately, the point.
Born in Wuhan; based in London. Zheng Hao mostly uses electronics or electro-acoustic instruments for solo and group improvisation, while other times also makes unpleasant computer dance music. Enjoys gritty and gnarly textures as well as delicate, amorphous qualities in different sound and space.
Zhuyang Liu is a multimedia artist, sound artist, and producer working within delirious fictional rhythms. They weave sound, installation, theatre, text, and new technology into absurd, multi-layered sonic architectures and immersive experiences.
An international award-winning guzheng soloist known for their experimental and free-improvisational practice, Zhuyang also mastered the Xuanqin (geomungo, recognised as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of China’s ethnic Korean tradition.They continue to carry forward traditional instruments such as the duxianqin (one-string zither ) SanXian, while exploring a broad spectrum of world string instruments including the koto, gayageum etc.
Zhuyang crafts unique instruments and sound systems from both traditional materials and found objects, integrating acoustic and electronic mechanisms to form a distinctive sonic language and aesthetic. Their works guide audiences into layered worlds where sound, installation, instrument, and performance intertwine—humorous, incisive, and hauntingly precise. Described as a kind of “script-writing machine of a collapsing society,” their practice extends the architectural logic of traditional instruments into futuristic and unstable sound environments.
Tara Cunningham is a guitarist and composer whose work focusses on both improvisation, and pushing the textural boundaries of her instrument. Ongoing projects include; duo with bassist Caius Williams and acid-jazz group Red Snapper. She has also recently recorded part of Jack Cooper’s Modern Nature for their fourth studio album, as well as currently working with drummer Seb Rochford on his latest project for 6 guitars.
Alex McKenzie is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer, and improviser based in London. With a collaboration centred practice, their primary output is as a member of the experimental folk band Shovel Dance Collective, the post-rock group caroline, the polystylistic performance project Gentle Stranger, the new music ensemble Search Engine Quartet, and the interdisciplinary art collective capital city. Though artistically varied, their work is consistently uncompromising, drawing from 'non-idiomatic' free improvisation, traditional folk music, noise, sound art, and experimental songwriting. They have released a number of critically-acclaimed albums, and perform live regularly both within the UK and internationally.
They have duo projects with Tom Hardwick-Allan, Grace Black, Aga Ujma, Cat Winter, and Adélaïde de Alfaro. Alongside these ongoing collaborations they have performed in improvised music ensembles with artists including Moor Mother, Elaine Mitchener, Evan Parker, Able Noise, Black Midi, Mosquito Farm, Meat Strap, Caius Williams, Milkweed, and Eli Winter, and collaborated with the artists Jesse Darling, Agnes Scherer, Adam Christensen, and Plastique Fantastique.
