Monday 4 November 2019, 7.30pm
Bringing together Charles Hayward (This Heat, Camberwell Now) on drums and US bassist Tim Dahl (Lydia Lunch, Child Abuse) has been anticipated for some time. They finally met on stage this summer, the day after This Is Not This Heat’s final performance in New York (a journey that began at Cafe Oto back in 2016), at the newly opened Public Records, Brooklyn.
The duo instantly committed to an intensely observed reciprocity. Their unrestrained, fast-paced and continually intersecting inventions produced truly exploratory and idiosyncratic improvisation. As exhilarating for the audience as it was revelatory for the artists Charles Hayward later commented that “it was like playing with an alien”; words of serious import from an artist that looms so large in experimental music. For a second set they expanded to a trio introducing guest Alex Ward on both clarinet and guitar. Repeating the format for Café Oto Hayward and Dhal will play one set in duo and will then be joined this time by violinist Agathe Max.
Support comes from Doom Jazz trio GRID (Matt Nelson,Tim Dahl. Nick Podgurski) on their UK debut.
Produced by I-D.A Projects and supported by care in the community recordings.
Charles Hayward is an English drummer/singer/composer and was a founding member of the experimental rock groups This Heat and Camberwell Now. He also played with early European improv group Mal Dean's Amazing Band and gigged and recorded with Phil Manzanera in Quiet Sun as well as a short stint with Gong. Since the late 80's he has concentrated on solo projects and collaborations including Massacre (with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith), Monkey Puzzle Trio, Albert Newton (with Pat Thomas and John Edwards) and This Is Not This Heat which toured the UK, Europe, USA and Japan between 2016-2019 performing expanded versions of This Heat’s oeuvre to unfaltering critical acclaim. Hayward’s latest group, Abstract Concrete, formed from London players from a diversity of European underground scenes, released it’s self-titled debut album in November 2023.
Tim Dahl is a professional electric and double bass player, vocalist, keyboardist, and composer living in New York City since 1998. He is best known as the bass player and co-composer of the noise-rock band Child Abuse, GRID, Pulverize the Sound and Lydia Lunch's Retrovirus. He has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Japan. Tim has also performed with many notable musicians, composers and performers including Yusef Lateef, Archie Shepp, Eugene Chadbourne, John Zorn, Tatsuya Yoshida, Von Freeman, Stanley Jordan, Mary Halvorson, Malcolm Mooney, Marc Ribot, Brian Chase, Hamid Drake, Elliot Sharp, Weasel Walter, Marni Nixon etc. Tim is currently living in Brooklyn and is an active member in the music scene there.
France-born, London-based Agathe Max, violin and viola player, beside different collaborations (Abstract Concrete, UKAEA, These Towns, Ondata Rossa) works on projects including electroacoustic composition, music and sound design for documentaries, animated movies, short movies, theatre, contemporary dance and art exhibitions. Max’s last composition Shadoww, journeys from blissful voice and yearning bow work on ‘Ylang Ylang On Heart’ through to intricate synthesis and pounding beats. It’s widescreen, panoramic music propelled by fervid energy, but never at the expense of detail and nuance. Partly inspired by shadow work exercises from her friend Louise Bolla – that is, a practice of psychological therapy which aims to connect with what’s hidden in the unconscious – Max’s music traces a parallel possibility in sound. Music’s ability, whether in a church or a club, to give a brief glimpse of being plugged into something beyond your own ego.
www.agathemaxmusic.com
https://instagram.com/agathe.max
https://agathemax.bandcamp.com/
With an approach based in free jazz, GRID takes the plunge into darker, heavier and more psychedelic realms of improvised music. The trio, featuring Matt Nelson (Battle Trance: Elder Ones) on saxophone, Tim Dhal (Lydia Lunch; Pulverize the Sound; Child Abuse) on bass, and Nick Podgurski (Feast of the Epiphany; New Firmament) on drums, harnesses the clamorous spirit of free jazz while venturing beyond it’s acoustic borders through the implementation of electronic processing and dirge-like tempos akin to Doom and Sludge. Regarding their 2017 debut on NNA Tapes, Noisey called GRID “a three-way chat. It’s a conversation between musicians with differing musical opinions, but their debut album has become a shared dialogue that is as fluid as it is improvised”.
“The trio’s common denominator is 70’s free jazz - but that genre’s intensity at a gruelling pace, through manipulated electronics.” – NPR
“Though the textures are extreme in nature, and densely layered, GRID doesn’t seem primarily interested in bludgeoning listeners.” - Pitchfork
