Monday 9 February 2015, 8pm
First show at OTO in over three years for mercurial singer-songwriter Simon Finn, performing with Joolie Wood (violin, Clarinet) & Ian Hothersall (drums) as well as a special guest appearance from David Toop. A lone wolf troubadour from the mid-’60s UK scene, he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Bert Jansch, before seamlessly re-appearing on the UK scene in 2003 after a gap of some decades, and has since gone from strength to strength. Joining him on the bill will be Grimm Grimm, the space folk solo project of London-based Koichi Yamanoha.
Simon Finn has been given another crack at the troubled profession of singer/songwriter, his story the stuff of legend: A lone wolf troubadour from the mid-’60s U.K. scene, he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Bert Jansch. The powerful Pass the Distance, released to critical acclaim, seemingly lost for- ever... Since, a new record has surfaced – capturing the past and the present, a seamless transition despite the quarter century Simon Finn has won over fans worldwide – including Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and ex-Blur gui- tarist Graham Coxon – with his passion, his wit and his soul-shaking music.
Aside from his solo shows Simon also plays guitar in a band called Current 93, which were the cover story of the July Wire. In 2006 his original album, Pass the Distance, was made in 1969, with David Toop (author of The Rap Attack and Oceans of Sound) and Paul Burwell. It was produced by Vic Keary who ran Mushroom records at the time.
His 2007 release, Accidental Life, has also been recorded and mastered by Vic Keary. Playing on it are: Joolie Woods, David Toop, Karl Blake (Lemon Kittens) Keith Godman, with backing vocals from Danielle Dax and Rose McDowall (Strawberry Switchblade).
London-based singer-songwriter experimentalist Koichi Yamanoha has been operating under the alias of Grimm Grimm since 2013. The project is an outlet for his fragile, emotional, haunted, otherworldly forays into baroque folk, futurist lyricism and electroacoustic oddities.
Born in Tokyo, Yamanoha's first solo record, “Kazega Fuitara Sayonara” (Good Bye When The Wind Blows), was released in late 2014 via Kevin Shield and Charlotte Marionneau’s Pickpocket Records in collaboration with Honest Jon's. His debut album, “Hazy Eyes Maybe”, was released by ATP Recordings in 2015 and tracks from the album were used as soundtrack for the Aaron Brookner / Jim Jarmusch directed documentary film “Uncle Howard”. Yamanoha released his third studio album, Ginormous, on 28 February 2020 on Tip Top Recordings. The album was mixed and co-produced by Marta Salogni and featured Paz Maddio and Lætitia Sadier.
www.grimmgrimm.com
David Toop has been developing a practice that crosses boundaries of sound, listening, music and materials since 1970. This encompasses improvised music performance, writing, electronic sound, field recording, exhibition curating, sound art installations and opera. It includes eight acclaimed books, including Rap Attack (1984), Ocean of Sound (1995), Sinister Resonance (2010), Into the Maelstrom (2016), Flutter Echo(2019) and Inflamed Invisible: Writing On Art and Sound 1976-2018 (2019). Briefly a member of David Cunningham’s pop project The Flying Lizards in 1979, he has released fourteen solo albums, from New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments on Brian Eno’s Obscure label (1975) and Sound Body on David Sylvian’s Samadhisound label (2006) to Entities Inertias Faint Beings (2016) and Apparition Paintings (2021). His 1978 Amazonas recordings of Yanomami shamanism and ritual were released on Sub Rosa as Lost Shadows (2016). In recent years his collaborations include Rie Nakajima, Akio Suzuki, Tania Caroline Chen, John Butcher, Ken Ikeda, Elaine Mitchener, Henry Grimes, Sharon Gal, Camille Norment, Sidsel Endresen, Alasdair Roberts, Lucie Stepankova, Fred Frith, Thurston Moore, Ryuichi Sakamoto. Curator of sound art exhibitions including Sonic Boom at the Hayward Gallery (2000), his opera – Star-shaped Biscuit – was performed in 2012.
