GRAIN is an ongoing series of improvised and experimental music. With live performance from: Tongue Depressor, Marija Covačević, Steve Noble / Caius Williams, Theodora Laird / Grace Black.
Doors 7:30pm
Tickets £9-14
GRAIN is a concert series and archiving project for experimental and improvised music, largely happening within South Bermondsey, and programmed / produced by Caius Williams & Theodora Laird.
Through programming and documenting new and adventurous music through collaboration, archiving, workshops, and performances, the project explores the ongoing dialogue between the transience of DIY art spaces and the communities that inhabit them.
Tongue Depressor (New England, USA) is the duo of Zach Rowden and Henry Birdsey. They write and perform drone-based music with continually expanding instrumentation including bagpipes, double bass, pedal steel/lap steel, tape loops, harmonicas, organs, and bells. They tour regularly in North America, Europe, and the UK, and have released 30+ LPs, CDs, cassettes, and lathes on labels including No Rent, Astral Spirits, Xkatedral, Stoned To Death, Redscroll, Chocolate Monk, Full Spectrum, Dinzu Artefacts, Worried Songs, and Soundholes. Tongue Depressor maintains collaborations with a revolving door of third members including Austin Larkin, Weston Olencki, John McCowen, Jakub Battick, and Leila Bordreuil.
Serbian born, New York City based violinist Marija Kovačević works in classical, experimental and improvised music.
Her project Music for Broken Violins is an exploration of sonic textures with broken violins, bows and their fragments. Marija has developed an idiosyncratic vocabulary of dragging strings, playing cracks, bowing broken bodies, wrapping loose hair and creaking pegs. In performance, there is a minimalist, ritualistic structure to her unembellished studies, as each instrument is approached in procession, with silence in between each visceral deviance from the accepted technical norms. In addition to four albums of solo work, broken violins also appear on Rainy Afternoon near Paris album with Thierry Müller, Push Broken Duet album with Romain Perrot (available on Chocolate Monk), Bez Vremena album with Paul Collins and Quentin Rollet (available on Astres d’Or) and most recently Playable Litter album with Theo Gowans (available on Scatter Archive). Marija’s fifth solo album is set for release this year on Relative Pitch Records.
Steve Noble is London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Rhodri Davies and many, many more.
In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey's excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book Improvisation; its nature and practise. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins).
Theodora Laird is a vocalist and multidisciplinary artist. Releases under her solo project ‘feeo’ have received critical acclaim. Theodora's practice has involved in tandem with an interest in situating narratives within freely improvised music, specifically through frequent involvement in the GRAIN residency.
Grace Black is an artist who makes sculpture, performance and music. Often this is as a part of duo Mosquito Farm who regularly perform across DIY venues in London and beyond.
Caius Williams is a musician from London who plays the double bass, guitar, and bass guitar. He works in collaboration with others, alongside various solo projects, often working with improvisation and explorations of resonance, and perception.
Some projects include Crosspiece (with Theodora Laird), a duo with guitarist Tara Cunningham, alongside recent or regular performances/collaborations with Lifetones (Charles Bullen of This Heat), Steve Noble, feeo, Daniel O’Sullivan, Mark Sanders, Tom Challenger, Maggie Nicols, Sachiko M, Mark Wastell, amongst others.
Caius has been running the GRAIN series for the last 3 years, a concert series and archiving project for experimental and improvised music, largely happening within South Bermondsey, and programmed / produced with Theodora Laird. Through programming and documenting new and adventurous music through collaboration, archiving, workshops, and performances, the project explores the ongoing dialogue between the transience of DIY art spaces and the communities that inhabit them.