Thursday 7 April 2016, 8pm
Great to have Graham Lambkin and Astor back at OTO, joined on the bill this time around by Australia's Hour House.
Despite having worked together closely over the last decade, realizing the publication of numerous books, LPs and CDs through their respective imprints, the one thing Graham Lambkin and Mark Harwood have never done is share a live stage. This will be a unique opportunity to see these two artists come together in an unscripted, unbounded and unpredictable performance setting, and a not to be missed opportunity for lovers of marginal music.
Graham Lambkin (b. 1973) is a London based multidisciplinary artist and publisher whose work embraces audio, visual and text-based concerns. Lambkin was a founding member of the seminal English underground group The Shadow Ring who between 1992-2002 explored the possibilities of fusing amateur folk music, cracked electronics and surreal wordplay into a unique and unsettling hybrid that continues to exert an influence today. Following the dissolution of The Shadow Ring Lambkin embarked on a run of critically acclaimed solo recordings including Salmon Run (2007), Amateur Doubles (2011) and Community (2016) as well as a series of collaborative projects with the likes of Joe McPhee, Keith Rowe, Moniek Darge, Michael Pisaro and Áine O'Dwyer. Lambkin was also the founder of the Kye label who between 2001-2016 published over 60 new audio works by artists as diverse of Philip Corner, Gabi Losoncy, Vanessa Rossetto and Malcolm Goldstein as well as significant archival collections by Anton Heyboer, Moniek Darge, Joe McPhee and Henning Christiansen.
As a performer Lambkin has appeared internationally, presenting work at venues such as The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, The Kitchen, NY, New Museum Brooklyn, NY, CALarts, CA, Sibelius Museum, Turku, I.C.A. London, Cafe OTO, London, Arts Centre, Melbourne and Fylkingen, Stockholm.
Lambkin's visual art explores the metamorphic properties of the drawing medium in which the abstract and the figurative perpetually shape-shift across contrasting visual planes, thereby undermining the expected categories of image content. These works have been exhibited internationally in five solo shows to date, most recently Time Runs Through the Darkest Hour at Blank Forms, NY. Lambkin has seen eight volumes of visual/text based work published to date, chiefly through Penultimate Press, Berlin/London, and has also produced graphic work for a range of artists including The Dead C, Harry Pussy, Splintered and Double Leopards.
Lambkin's much anticipated new release Aphorisms (2023) has just been published via Blank Forms, following their archival 4xLP boxset Solos (2021), and looks ahead to the extensive 12CD box/book anthologising the complete works of The Shadow Ring later this year. In addition Lambkin is readying for the release of Gondolas 2CD (2023), a collaboration with James Rushford via Erstwhile.
Astor is the moniker of Mark Harwood, Australian publisher, event curator and sound artist who is now residing in London, United Kingdom. Under this guise he deploys a wide variety of techniques including field recording, musique concrete, electronics and spatialisation. All of these forms are approached with a sense of bypassing the cliches imbedded within in order to coerce a sound world which is simultaneously contemporary, foreign, beautiful, unsettling and engaging. Mark has released 2 acclaimed lp's on Kye (USA) and has a third 'Lina in Nida' on Penultimate Press (UK).
Australia's Hour House offer a musical blueprint marinated in mystery, beauty, sound, and song. Hour House is the duo of Mark Leacy and Sam Kenna, formerly of the Newcastle-based outfit Castings. Their debut LP Chiltern comprised individual tracks folded into two side-long suites in a unique excursion through foreign encounters, warm surrounds, and disorienting comfort. Field recordings, electronics, samples, guitars, voice, and atmospherics all contribute to form a bewitching whole. Many questions are raised: is this a soundtrack to a mental experience or an altered take on a familiar reality? Is the third section based on the sound of a basketball court? Does the fourth form a song? Where do the original Soviet science fiction soundtracks fit into all this? Is this sound or music? Simultaneously ambiguous and accessible Hour House unfold a consciousness-tickling ride unlike any other.
