"The second release is Shape Shifters by This Friendship Is Sailing...the tone is set by the playful, childlike sounds permeating "We hear you, we hear you". Several minutes into the mewling cacophony, Nicols launches into a story about hearing a baby cry during a visit to Sicily. Instead of trying to quiet the infant, the adults of the community took a position of solidarity with it, meeting its need to make noise with reassuring vocalisations of their own. In Nicols telling, this anecdote becomes a powerful affirmation of prelinguistic sonority. Although devoid of semantic content, a baby's cries are intensely communicative- an apt metaphor for Nicol's own improvisatory practice" - The Wire
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Maggie Nicols / voice, piano, tap dance
Odie JI Ghast / voice
Sam Andreae / homemade electronics + alto saxophone
David Birchall / electric guitar
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Recorded live at Cafe Oto, London on 25th August 2021 by Adam Matschulat
Mixed by Sam Andreae and edited by David Birchall
Cover and the other paintings by Mio Ebisu
Band photographs by Andrew Brooks
Design by David Birchall
Maggie Nicols joined London's legendary Spontaneous Music Ensemble in 1968 as a free improvisation vocalist. She then became active running voice workshops with an involvement in local experimental theatre. She later joined the group Centipede, led by Keith Tippets and in 1977, with musician/composer Lindsay Cooper, formed the remarkable Feminist Improvising Group. She continues performing and recording challenging and beautiful work, in music and theatre, either in collaborations with a range of artists (Irene Schweitzer, Joelle Leandre, Ken Hyder, Caroline Kraabel) as well as solo.
It started as my solo work that is more linked with production. I tend to stick to my way of recording voice on dictophone device (or, these days, more often on my phone). Then I mash that lo-fi recording with samples, put my voice like a cherry on top.
In recent years Odie Ji Ghast became my performer name also, and I don’t hesitate to use it for whatever. Essentially though, this artist lives digitally more than stays gropeable, real and clean in the present. It is a voice that goes through microphones, dictophones, sound machines and wires. That is when Odie Ji Ghast happened anyway - when she got fascinated and heavily consumed by sound that is crackling. And can I take one step away from the sound of acoustic? Visible, front-line - for a second can I sneakily escape?
I play around with instruments from time to time but I take nothing but voice onto the stage. Because only that (and me fiddling with software at home) is what truly represents what this artist is solo. Plus some things I write, and some songs I sing when alone. So this is me trying to present a singular musical body in its most natural format.
David Birchall is a performer living in Manchester. He has played improvised music in the UK, Europe, Russia, Palestine, USA & Japan and undertaken artist residencies at The Penthouse (Manchester, UK) and Beppu Project (Beppu, JP). His work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 6 Music & SWR in Germany. He organises and co-curators the Curious Ear series for improvised music in Manchester.
Sam Andreae has been active across Europe over the last decade as a saxophonist, composer and organiser. Through improvisation and composition he explores a music of colliding sound gestures and aural detritus, built up from an intentionally fractured instrumental language and playful spontaneity. His compositions place a focus on gestural processes which in their unraveling reveal a trail of sound artefacts to be picked through.
“what Sam Andreae does is liminal music, he shows you the clicks, the noises, the breaths, the rattle and hum” – John Doran, Quietus, 2017 on BBC 3 Late Junction
