Sunday 18 January 2015, 8pm
Skatgobs is the visceral vocal improv trio of Phil Minton, Dylan Nyoukis and Luke Poot. Despite having performed together in various combinations and incarnations, this will be the first time they've appeared at OTO as a trio. Channeling and contorting the voice into enveloping textures and contours that can be subtley crepuscular one moment and howlingly nightmarish the next, all three are peerless vocal performers. Support comes from The Bohman Brothers - the longstanding improvising duo of Jonathan Bohman and Adam Bohman - fresh from his recent exhibition of visual work at the OTO Project Space.
For a long time now Phil Minton has been working as a improvising singer, solo and in groups and situations at various locations all over the place, deserts, quarries, concert halls, pubs, holes, dodgy clubs, containers, up trees, in prisons, on mountains, in churches, under bridges and cafe oto etc.
Phil Minton comes from Torquay. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60s - Then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later of part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980′s.
For most of the last forty years, Minton has been working as an improvising singer in lots of groups, orchestras, and situations. Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal techniques. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with above and many other musicians, including tours with American singer Audrey Chen - with whom he has sang far and wide in the last ten years.
Since the eighties, His Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries.
A former heavy metal kid, Dylan Nyoukis, is a noise expressionist and an experimentalist who explores improvisatory sounds of nightmarish beauty. ”…His solo vocal and tape work continues to push the envelope in terms of the expressive options offered by amplified physicality while his rejection of any kind of theoretical backdrop liberates him from servitude to any specific agenda. He remains a singular voice." - David Keenan.
Video by Helen Petts
Luke Poot. Sheffield based Strepsils abuser. Recent collaborations with the likes of Adam Bohman, Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides, Blue Yodel, Ben Knight, Acrid Lactations, Chastity Potatoe, and Phils' gang of toughs. 'I just listened to a bit that sounded like a pig pushing weights with a scotch egg in its gob.' - Stuart Arnot.
Adam Bohman has been operating on the outer fringes of underground music for decades. Working with home-built instruments, found objects, tape cut-ups, collages, ink drawings and graphic scores. Favouring acoustic sounds over electronics, he explores the minute tendrils of sounds coaxed from any number of non-musical instruments and objects. He is a member of British experimental groups, Morphogenesis, The Bohman Brothers, Secluded Bronte, and The London Improvisers Orchestra. Adam's music is unique and experimental, incorporating Fluxus japery, musique concrete, sound poetry and free improvisation.
Adam Bohman and Jonathan Bohman have been recording together since their early teens and playing live since 1984.
Their repertoire includes a combination of sounds created in the moment and distinct compositions including songs. They use unconventional instruments, household objects, dislocated text from found, literary and commercial sources and collaged layers of recordings.
Regular concerts started in the mid-90s in London at places like The Club Room in Penton Street, The Red Rose and The Klinker. From 2000 to 2005 they had their own concert series upstairs at The Bonnington Café in Vauxhall, London.
They have performed at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Roundhouse, Royal Albert Hall, South Bank and numerous smaller venues across Europe and America.
Their duo recordings include 'A Twist For All Pockets' (Rossbin, 2001), 'Purely Practical' (Peripheral Conserve, 2002), ‘Back On The Streets' (Peripheral Conserve, 2012), ‘Library Music’ (Des Astres D’Or, 2019) and ‘In Their 70s’ (Fort Evil Fruit, 2021). Their forthcoming album is ‘Room Service ‘ (Rural Isolation Project).
https://thebohmanbrothers.bandcamp.com
Continuous collaboraters since 2008 now exploring lurid visions of cut up text and found sound disruption.
Frequently debunking their previous efforts, Harrison and Murphy confront the mystery via ramshackle experiments in surreal audio improv.
http://archive.org/details/DuncanHarrisonAndIanMurphy-ADivineScrimmage-excerpt
