Saturday 12 October 2024, 7.30pm
Sunburned Hand of the Man (aka "Sunburned") are a loose knit gang of musical artists born in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded as a way to let off steam from years of obsessive weirdo record collecting and perversely decoding the hand jive of wanton talents from the psychedelic and punk rock hardcore scenes in the Boston zone, Sunburned was born to be awesome. The nucleus, [now based in the Pioneer Valley] of the group is a small ragtag contingent of fascinants completely focused on the idea of spontaneous composition within the framework of religious experience: the rock n roll EVENT.
Taking it to the stars to see where exactly the light comes from then surfing that beam straight to the O-mind where the kick drum becomes it's own sentient nature's heartbeat. Through the years many a legend has passed time dusting their select broom in the delectable maelstrom grooves brought forth by the Sunburned van. They eat the road UP and leave the stage in ashes. Warriors, lovers - they get it "on". – Thurston Moore
Vibracathedral Orchestra are one of the cornerstones of contemporary British outsider music, their sonic palette drawing equally from rock, folk and experimental music. They have forged a reputation over the past 20 years playing long intense sets of free-riffing kaleidoscopic instant composition, heavy on transcendental string drones and wild percussive clatter. Their membership and elastic supporting cast over the years has been an unrivalled whoís-who of the UK audio underground, currently solidified as the stable quintet of Adam Davenport, John Godbert, Julian Bradley, Michael Flower and Neil Campbell.
"Slowly, the scattered surfaces of insistent, intricate noises in implacably revolving plateaus give way to strange, imaginary vistas ... the abandoned roof of a crumbling tower block overrun with climbing creepers affords a view over a forgotten city, submerged in jungly tendrils ... in a becalmed haze, turn to descend the tower beneath the surface of the green ... at first down worn corroded concrete stairs that become ever more thickly choked with vegetation ... until the easiest path is to step out through the twentieth-floor windows, long since absent of glass, supported by branches, stalks, thick leaves, a slow tumble through ever denser foliage until a headfirst, steady scramble downwards, suspended by forgiving green layers." - Owen Coggins
PETER GIZZI recent books include, Now It's Dark (Wesleyan, 2020), Sky Burial: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet, 2020), and Archeophonics (Finalist for the National Book Award, Wesleyan, 2016). A new book, Fierce Elegy, is forthcoming from Wesleyan in 2023.
His honors include fellowships from The Rex Foundation, The Howard Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and The Guggenheim Foundation. He has twice been the recipient of The Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Cambridge. In 2018 Wesleyan brought out In the Air: Essays on the Poetry of Peter Gizzi.
His editing projects have included o•blēk: a journal of language arts (1987-1993); The Exact Change Yearbook (Exact Change/Carcanet, 1995); The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan, 1998); and with the late Kevin Kilian, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan, 2008).
He teaches poetry and poetics in the MFA Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
