Thursday 18 October 2018, 7.30pm
Very pleased to host O YAMA O – the duo of Rie Nakajima and Keiko Yamamoto – for a special performance featuring fragments of visuals / sculptural installations, and songs from their recently released debut album on Mana Records. Joining them tonight will be Marie Roux, Billy Steiger and David Cunningham, who all worked on the album, plus a solo set from On Yee Lo.
- Stream the album via WIRE magazine
- Download a digital version of the album
- Purchase an LP edition, with notes by David Toop
“Suddenly we are closer to music being made than we have been for many years or longer even, so alarmingly close as to feel warmth and discomfort, as if studying the sole of a foot from a few centimetres away or holding a private whisper within an enclosed hand and feeling its trembling desire to be free; but also so far away distant as to feel each vibrant, pungent ingredient within its box or jar or bowl or packet or bottle or air-tight translucent container or brown paper bag painstakingly stirred, shaken, scattered, poured into the heated cauldron of what we call recording, its imaginary rooms and its production, though my better self prefers not to speak about or analyse the notion of ‘the studio’, this being a working up of spaces that are social, a vision of something beyond us but not quite beyond us because its existence as a listening object is real enough to make us pause and question how it was lost or never found.” – DAVID TOOP
Formed of musician and artist Rie Nakajima, Cafe OTO co-founder Keiko Yamamoto, percussionist and photographer Marie Roux and violin player Billy Steiger, O Yama O explores a certain domestic and democratic quality of everyday life, born through associations to folk music of Japan and a folding of myth, tradition, and routine; the non-spectacular and the sublime. They move between pop and the philosophical, defined by the overall space afforded to texture and movement. In small, delicate sound an intimate musical climate is established that reflects on life, telling stories of improvised clockwork, whispered dreams, small movements of the hand and the rhythm to be found in the shuffle of a deck of cards.
The group have performed since 2014 at venues and festivals such as noshowspace, Ikon Gallery, Wysing Arts Centre, Supernormal, Borealis Festival, Mayhem, and allEars Festival.
Billy Steiger was born in Howth on the 16th December, 1986. Now he plays the violin.
“Then he sat down by a pond and began to play a tune. As he played, the most extraordinary thing happened. One by one the fish in the pond began to jump out and fly about in the air. And what is more, they were all different colours and they were singing to the music.”
Patrick, Quentin Blake.
https://billysteiger.bandcamp.com/
Some people know David Cunningham's work as an artist whose large installation works explore the spectator's real time experience of the acoustic properties of a space - these works have been shown at Chisenhale Gallery, Tate Britain, Ikon Birmingham and ICC Tokyo. Others are more familiar with his parallel work as a record producer and musician who over many years has worked with an eclectic range of people, amongst many others The Flying Lizards, This Heat, Michael Nyman, Patti Palladin, Martin Creed and most recently O Yama O.
London-based multidisciplinary artist and cook On Yee Lo (b. Hong Kong), creates and constructs ‘Cooking Instruments’- physical systems where common meals are prepared and consumed which encompass gestures, labour and hospitality. Her performances fold together with experiences of working as both cook and musician within the experimental music communities. These systems unravel her research in culinary techniques and open transformative processes across a variety of social settings. She has exhibited and performed her work at Counterflows Festival Glasgow, LUFF - Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival, SCHIRN Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Cafe OTO, Ikon Gallery, ICA London, Camden Art Centre, Bloomberg New Contemporaries and ARTISSIMA Turin.
