Friday 14 July 2023, 8pm
Delighted to host a very-special 70th birthday resdiency with pioneering composer, Carl Stone! Featuring avant-garde electronics, forensic sampling, and live computing unveiling a strange musical language, these will be his first London performances in five years.
Dubbed the King of Sampling by the Village Voice, and one of the pioneers of live computer music. Carl Stone started originally with tape recorders and turntables in 1972. In 1986 he adapted his performance to include live computing, which he continues to this day. In addition to solo performance, he often collaborates with other musicians in ensembles that merge and blend musical reality. Pitchfork called Stone’s music “like a dance party in a room made of funhouse mirrors” and the New York Times called it “a powerful stimulant with lingering euphoric effects”.
Now in his 70th year, Carl Stone’s plan for his Cafe OTO residency will feature his solo work, plus collaborators helping him explore acoustic resonance, media bombardment, Irony, elegance, economy and wit. Guests include Robin Rimbaud (Scanner), Vicki Bennett (People Like Us), Miki Yui (Realistic Monk), Kazuhisa Uchihashi and Silvia Kastel, plus panel discussions, interviews and DJ time!
“{Stone’s music is} a powerful stimulant, with lingering euphoric effects.” - Steve Smith, New York Times
“One of American experimental music’s most eloquent advocates” - Time Out New York
Carl Stone is one of the pioneers of live computer music, and has been hailed by the Village Voice as “the king of sampling.” and “one of the best composers living in (the USA) today.” He has used computers in live performance since 1986. Stone was born in Los Angeles and now divides his time between Los Angeles and Japan. He studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnick and James Tenney and has composed electro-acoustic music almost exclusively since 1972. His works have been performed in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and the Near East. In addition to his schedule of performance, composition and touring, he is on the faculty of the Department of Media Engineering at Chukyo University in Japan... more
A pioneering Japanese guitarist, Uchihashi is involved in a wide variety of musics, but still retains a commitment to free improvisation. Born in 1959 in Osaka, Uchihashi began to play the guitar at age 12, playing in various rock bands, though he later studied jazz music. In 1988 he joined the band the First Edition, and in 1990 formed the band Altered States. He was also a member of Otomo Yoshihide's Ground Zero from 1994 to 1997. Uchihashi also plays daxophone, and in addition to his role as a free improviser, Uchihashi has been the musical director for Osaka theatre group Ishinha, has held improvisation workshops (a project known as New Music Action) in various cities in Japan, as well as London, Oslo, and currently in Vienna also. Uchihashi has set up his own record label, Innocent Records a.k.a. Zenbei Records, had held a music festival annually since 1996 Festival BEYOND INNOCENCE.
Under the name “People Like Us,” artist Vicki Bennett has been making work available via CD, DVD and vinyl releases, radio broadcasts, concert appearances, gallery exhibits and online streaming and distribution since 1992. Bennett has developed an immediately recognisable aesthetic repurposing pre-existing footage to craft audio and video collages with an equally dark and witty take on popular culture. She sees sampling and collage as folk art sourced from the palette of contemporary media and technology, with all of the sharing and cross-referencing incumbent to a populist form. Embedded in her work is the premise that all is interconnected and that claiming ownership of an “original” or isolated concept is both preposterous and redundant. Most of the People Like Us back catalogue has been available for free online since 2002. For many artists, profit and publicity is more likely through free distribution (the gift economy) than independent publishers and distributors, which often struggle with limited resources. Online self-distribution allows an artist to keep their work available, resolving a tension between label production costs and the desire of an artist for work to be available. UbuWeb generously hosts the discography and filmography of People Like Us.
This year marks 30 years for People Like Us, marked by a cover feature in The Wire Magazine (May 2021, a touring of Gone, Gone Beyond, a 360 immersive cinema installation to nyMusikk Oslo, SPILL Festival Ipswich, Attenborough Centre (ACCA) Brighton and London Barbican, and an evening hosted by People Like Us at their favourite venue Cafe OTO.
Scanner, British artist Robin Rimbaud, has been intensely active in sonic art, producing concerts, installations and recordings since the 1980s, connecting a bewilderingly diverse array of genres. His adventures are brilliantly strange – from scoring 1,000 dancers in Trafalgar Square London for the Olympics, creating permanent soundtracks in a London house, Riga Airport and a working morgue in Paris, to scoring the world’s first VR ballet with Dutch National Ballet. He doesn't drink alcohol, tea, coffee, or smoke and has kept a diary every day since he was 12 years old, never missing a daily entry.
