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Sharp / Lopez / Kaiser / Amendola

Minus X - A Tribute to Iannis Xenakis

Sharp / Lopez / Kaiser / Amendola: Minus X - A Tribute to Iannis Xenakis (Erototox)

A tribute to the music of composer Iannis Xenakis through 12 new works referencing and reconstructing the original works of Xenakis, the title of each piece an anagram that reflects the elements of its source, realized by Elliott Sharp on bass, guitars & synth, Brandon Lopez on bass guitars and mandocello, Henry Kaiser on guitars and Scott Amendola on drums & percussion.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Elliott Sharp-electric bass, 12 string guitar, electric sitar, steel guitar, viola, soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, fretless baritone guitar, electric mandocello, analog synthesizer

Brandon Lopez-contra bass, baritone guitar, electric mandocello

Henry Kaiser-electric guitar, acoustic guitar, 6 string bass

Scott Amendola-drums, percussion, electronics


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UPC: 749666851006

Label: Erototox
Catalog ID: NEED##
Squidco Product Code: 32035

Format: 2 CDs
Condition: New
Released: 2023
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels
Recorded at The Shine Box, in Berkeley, California; Santa Cruz, California, and Studio zOaR, in NYC.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Though weaned on Varese, Hendrix, Trane, Cecil Taylor, Sonny Sharrock, Albert Ayler, Stravinsky, Captain Beefheart, Stockhausen: the universe cracked open for me in 1968 on first hearing the music of Iannis Xenakis, a composer who had captured the glorious chaos of subatomic weather in a cloud chamber, found fibrillating grooves in burning charcoal, the majestic blues of the elliptical arc, and sonified the chaos imbuing the natural order of the universe.

While most composers made music with notes, Xenakis transformed pure philosophies into sound. With his experiences as a mathematician and architect equally informing his musical approach, Xenakis manifested these connections in emotive and exciting compositions that made clear the mapping of independent processes to those in sound. Not content to make overwhelming music, Xenakis also outlined his thoughts and methods in his volume Formalized Music.

My old friend Henry Kaiser shares my passion for the music of Xenakis as well as for many other musical visionaries. For this tribute we hypothesized a Xenakis tribute band to make audio reconstructions of key compositions by the master for which we added fellow intrepid explorers Brandon Lopez and Scott Amendola. This project was conceived and executed during lockdown which necessitated remote recording (though Brandon was able to record his tracks at Studio zOaR). The title of each piece is an anagram that reflects the elements of its source. Pieces were mixed to create the fiction of a live band playing in a room. For the coda, Henry mixed all of the tracks together to create our own neutron-star-density Stochastic Rock."-Elliott Sharp



"Born in New Jersey and long based in Berkeley, CA, Scott Amendola has woven a dense and far-reaching web of bandstand relationships that tie him to leading artists in jazz, blues, rock, new music and beyond. A creative catalyst as a bandleader, composer, and accompanist, he's collaborated closely with artists such as guitarists Nels Cline, Jeff Parker, John Schott and Charlie Hunter, organist Wil Blades, violinists Jenny Scheinman and Regina Carter, saxophonists Larry Ochs and Phillip Greenlief, and clarinetist Ben Goldberg, players who've all forged singular paths within and beyond the realm of jazz. He's led or co-led some two dozen albums and contributed to more than 100 recordings.

Grammy winning guitarist Henry Kaiser operates diversely in the fields of rock, jazz, world, and contemporary experimental musics. The California-based musician is one of the most extensively recorded as well, having appeared on more than 350 different albums and contributed to countless television and film soundtracks. He is also a longtime research diver in the US Antarctic Program.

Brandon Lopez is a New York-based composer and bassist working at the fringes of jazz, free improvisation, noise and new music. His music has been praised as "brutal" (Chicago Reader) and "relentless" (The New York Times). From the New York Philharmonic's David Geffen Hall to the DIY basements of Brooklyn, Lopez has collaborated with such artistic luminaries as Fred Moten, Tyshawn Sorey, Sun Ra Arkestra, Okkyung Lee, Tony Malaby, Chris Potter, Edwin Torres, Tom Rainey, Cecilia Lopez, Susan Alcorn, among others.

Elliott Sharp, composer, producer, author, and visual artist, leads Orchestra Carbon, SysOrk, Tectonics and Terraplane and whose compositional strategies encompass fractal geometry, chaos theory, algorithmic approaches, genetic metaphors, and new techniques for graphic notation. He has been awarded the Berlin Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Art, and the Center for Transformative Media. Sharp's collaborators have included Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Cecil Taylor; Ensemble Modern; Debbie Harry; JACK and Arditti quartets; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; Jack Dejohnette; Sonny Sharrock; media artists Christian Marclay and Pierre Huyghe; the Radio-Sinfonie Frankfurt; and Bachir Attar of the Master Musicians Of Jajouka."-Erotox


Artist Biographies

"Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.

A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City for over 30 years, Elliott Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from orchestral music to blues, jazz, noise, no wave rock, and techno music. He leads the projects Carbon and Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane and has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction.

His collaborators have included Radio-Sinfonie Frankfurt; pop singer Debbie Harry; Ensemble Modern; Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Kronos String Quartet; Ensemble Resonanz; cello innovator Frances Marie Uitti; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; pipa virtuoso Min-Xiao Feng; jazz greats Jack deJohnette, Oliver Lake, and Sonny Sharrock; multimedia artists Christian Marclay and Pierre Huyghe; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians Of Jajouka.

Sharp is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2014 Fellow at Parson's Center for Transformative Media. He received the 2015 Berlin Prize in Musical Composition from the American Academy in Berlin. He has composed scores for feature films and documentaries; created sound-design for interstitials on The Sundance Channel, MTV and Bravo networks; and has presented numerous sound installations in art galleries and museums. He is the subject of a new documentary "Doing The Don't" by filmmaker Bert Shapiro."-Elliott Sharp

-Elliott Sharp website (http://www.elliottsharp.com/bio.html)
4/24/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"[..] Composer/bassist, Brandon A. Lopez, deemed "The Ubiquitous Free Improv Bass Ace" by the Village Voice and said to play with a "Bruising Physicality" by the Chicago reader.

He was born and raised in the splendors of Northwestern New Jersey, in the shadow of the (New York) city. It was there that he cultivated a taste for the left of center musics and subsequently, dug graves.

He's had the pleasures of working with many of the world's luminary weirdos. Here's a list: Nate Wooley, William Parker, Chris Corsano, Justice Yeldham, Weasel Walter, Peter Evans, Tyshawn Sorey, Gerald Cleaver, Ingrid Laubrock, Tom Rainey, Tony Malaby, Paul Lytton, Mette Rasmussen, Jooklo Duo, Michael Foster, Leila Bordreuil, Jaimie Branch, Joe Morris, Brandon Seabrook, Cactus Truck, John Dykeman, Daniel Carter, and many others.

He's currently leads a trio dubbed "The Mess", another one called the Brandon Lopez Trio, works as a soloist and is formerly/currently/latterly writing more and more music. He may play some it sometime soon (see "gigs").

He attended New England Conservatory."

-Brandon Lopez Website (http://www.brandonlopez.nyc/)
4/24/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Henry Kaiser (born September 19, 1952) is an American guitarist and composer, known as an idiosyncratic soloist, a sideman, an ethnomusicologist, and a film score composer. Recording and performing prolifically in many styles of music, Kaiser is a fixture on the San Francisco Bay Area music scene. He is considered a member of the "second generation" of American free improvisers. He is married to Canadian artist Brandy Gale.

In 1977, Kaiser founded Metalanguage Records with Larry Ochs (Rova Saxophone Quartet) and Greg Goodman. In 1979 he recorded With Friends Like These with Fred Frith, a collaboration that lasted for over 20 years. In 1983 they recorded Who Needs Enemies, and in 1987 the compilation album With Enemies Like These, Who Needs Friends? They joined with fellow experimental musicians John French, and English folk-rocker Richard Thompson to form French Frith Kaiser Thompson for two eclectic albums, Live, Love, Larf & Loaf (1987) and Invisible Means (1990). In 1999 Frith and Kaiser released Friends and Enemies, a compilation of their two Metalanguage albums along with additional material from 1984 and 1999.

In 1991, Kaiser went to Madagascar with guitarist David Lindley. They recorded roots music with Malagasy musicians and discovered music that, he says, "changed us radically and permanently". Three volumes of this music were released by Shanachie under the title A World Out of Time. In 1994 he made a similar trip to Norway, again with Lindley, recording music that was released as Sweet Sunny North (2 volumes, 1994 and 1996).

Since 1998, Kaiser has been collaborating with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith in the "Yo Miles!" project, releasing a series of tributes to Miles Davis's 1970s electric music. This shifting aggregation has included musicians from the worlds of rock (guitarists Nels Cline, Mike Keneally and Chris Muir, drummer Steve Smith), jazz (saxophonists Greg Osby and John Tchicai), avant-garde (keyboardist John Medeski, guitarist Elliott Sharp), and Indian classical music (tabla player Zakir Hussain).

Kaiser has appeared on more than 250 albums and scored dozens of TV shows and films, including Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World (2007). He was given a Grammy Award for his work on the Beautiful Dreamer tribute to Stephen Foster.

In 2001, Kaiser spent two and a half months in Antarctica on a National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program grant. He has subsequently returned for nine more visits to work as a research diver. His underwater camera work was featured in two Herzog films, The Wild Blue Yonder (2005) and Encounters at the End of the World (2007), which he also produced, and for which he and Lindley composed the score. Kaiser served as music producer for Herzog's Grizzly Man (2005). He was nominated for an Academy Award for his work as a producer on Encounters at the End of the World."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kaiser_(musician))
4/24/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Scott Amendola (born February 6, 1969) is an American drummer from the San Francisco Bay Area. His styles include jazz, blues, groove, rock and new music. He is considered central to the Bay Area music scene.

Amendola was originally from New Jersey and studied at Berklee School of Music in Boston. After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area he came to popularity in the 1990s as a member of T.J. Kirk with Charlie Hunter, Will Bernard and John Schott. Their second album received a Grammy Award nomination. He has led his own bands and trios which have included Nels Cline, Jenny Scheinman, Jeff Parker and John Shifflett as well as Ben Goldberg and Devin Hoff. Often favoring guitarists he has toured with Bill Frisell and Kelly Joe Phelps and recorded with Pat Martino, Jim Campilongo, G.E. Stinson, Nels Cline and Tony Furtado. He is an original member of the Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core. He has been a session percussionist for Noe Venable, Carla Bozulich and Odessa Chen.

In 2011 Amendola will have his new orchestral work performed in conjunction with the Oakland East Bay Symphony as one the symphony's New Visions/New Vistas premieres. Amendola will be joined by Nels Cline and Trevor Dunn."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Amendola)
4/24/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



CD1



1. Aeka 13:31

2. Mehra 6:19

3. Thopraktapi 9:50

4. Sonom Alpha 15:21

5. Diamorphika 6:57

CD2



1. Evoile 5:06

2. Agemo 4:06

3. Konkret FF 2:50

4. Magastatix 9:12

5. Onchaijo 15:11

6. Reboundary 5:28

7. Stochastic Rock 6:04

Related Categories of Interest:


Avant-Garde
Compositional Forms
Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Improvised Rock
Jazz
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
West Coast/Pacific US Jazz
Quartet Recordings
New in Improvised Music
New in Compositional Music
Recent Releases and Best Sellers

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Erototox.


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