Friday 10 March 2017, 7.30pm
Delighted to host a two-day residency from singular multidisciplinary artist, Graham Lambkin. Formerly of The Shadow Ring and founder of the Kye label, Lambkin's work remains boundlessly uncategorisable and this should be an unmissable couple of nights.
“One gets the sense that Graham Lambkin sees the world through a very peculiar lens. His observations on the mundane are often startling, though rarely far-fetched. William Burroughs said of Denton Welch that Welch “makes the reader aware of the magic that is right under his eyes,” and the same could be said of Lambkin. He looks at an everyday object and sees an ocean of possibility.” – BOMB Magazine
“His work teases the fragile threads connecting the psychotic, the absurd and the mundane, often bringing them to the point of near ruination.” – Mark Harwood, from the forward to ‘Millows’.
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.
Since his emergence on the creative jazz and new music scene in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Joe McPhee has been a deeply emotional composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist, as well as a thoughtful conceptualist and theoretician.
McPhee’s first recordings as leader appeared on the CjR label, founded in 1969 by painter Craig Johnson . These include Underground Railroad by the Joe McPhee Quartet in 1969, Nation Time by Joe McPhee in 1970, and Trinity by Joe McPhee, Harold E. Smith and Mike Kull in 1971.
By 1974, Swiss entrepreneur Werner X. Uehlinger had become aware of McPhee’s recordings and unreleased tapes. Uehlinger was so impressed that he decided to form the Hat Hut label as a vehicle to release McPhee’s work. The label’s first LP was Black Magic Man, which had been recorded by McPhee in 1970. Black Magic Man was followed by The Willisau Concert and the landmark solo recording Tenor, released by Hat Hut in 1976. The earliest recordings by McPhee are often informed by the revolutionary movements of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s; for example, Nation Time is a tribute to poet Amiri Baraka and Joe McPhee & Survival Unit II at WBAI’s Free Music Store, 1971 (finally released as a Hat Art CD in 1996) is a sometimes anguished post-Coltrane cry for freedom.
During the 1990’s, McPhee finally began to attract wider attention from the North American creative jazz community. He has since been performing and recording prodigiously as both leader and collaborator, appearing on such labels as CIMP, Okkadisk, Music & Arts, and Victo. In 1996, 20 years after Tenor, Hatology released As Serious As Your Life, another solo recording (this time featuring McPhee performing on various instruments). McPhee also began a fruitful relationship with Chicago reedman Ken Vandermark , engaging in a set of improvisational dialogues with Vandermark and bassist Kent Kessler on the 1998 Okkadisk CD A Meeting in Chicago. The Vandermark connection also led to McPhee’s appearance on the Peter BrotzmanChicagoOctet/Tentet three-CD box set released by Okkadisk that same year. As the 1990s drew to a close, McPhee discovered two like-minded improvisers in bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen- TRIO X.
"He is a stellar improviser, relishing his sound materials so caringly and for so long, the kind of player that invites you to really step outside of whatever mix you're and think and feel for a while." Hank Shteamer, Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches
