First of two weekend benefit shows to help support Rhizome.. come out and help keep us going!
BIG PLASTIC FINGER - Those who come from the perspectives of psychedelia, noise, improvisation, hard core, experimental, and rock will all sense something slightly familiar - but will find themselves in BIG PLASTIC FINGER’s adventurous realms, meant only for the bold. Shape shifters of space, BIG PLASTIC FINGER multiply and manipulate energy, transmuting sound into a physical force. Playing together for over 4 years, the core principles are: Bonnie Kane - sax, flute, electronics; Scott Prato - electric guitar, electronics, vocals; and Mark McClemens - drums.
Well known among international improvisers, the members of BIG PLASTIC FINGER have collectively opened for The Boredoms, Hawkwind, Nik Turner, White Zombie, and Spacious Mind; recorded with John Spencer; toured nationally and internationally, and played festivals from Ohio to Zagreb.
"Post post post everything ...somewhere beyond the flickering abyss of cyberspace...space-jazz with healthy doses of the Canterbury improv scene (Robert Wyatt, Derek Bailey), Sun Ra, Can and Ash Ra Tempel”. - Valerie Kuehne
https://bigplasticfinger.bandcamp.com/track/think-deeply
TRISTAN WELCH & RON OSHIMA - Ron Oshima is a working-class musician that has been playing soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones and flute. He has been playing around the DC metro area for over 20 years with various groups of many varieties as well as working as an award-winning sound designer. Tristan Welch is an experimental guitar player that creates heavy ambient movements via heavy minimalism. Together, Tristan Welch and Ron Oshima have created three new pieces collectively titled “God Bless America”. These pieces create an ambient atmosphere with a mixture of free jazz. Each piece has a strong focus in their own respective keys – G, B and A. God Bless America was recorded live at The Brink outside of The Nations Capital on Election Day (US) 11/8/16. The concept behind God Bless America is actually pretty simple - we are not nationalist and we could all use a little help. https://tristanwelch.bandcamp.com/
DIN DATEN DUTERO DEDICATION - When synth-designer Peter Blasser did a residency at Rhizome last October, he left behind a pair of strange oval circuit boards, a surfboard-style wooden case and 147 brass nodes. The Rhizome crew has been hard at work ever since piecing this mysterious beast together.
On May 5th the synth will officially be dedicated as a piece of public sound art, regifted to the people of Takoma Park. Rhizome person Steve Korn will play an inaugural improvisation on the DDD and immediately thereafter it will go on permanent display at Rhizome..anyone can play it and explore the deep well of sounds that exist within. We are especially hopeful young people will take advantage of its public availability and in doing so discover the world of noise that their music teachers and school band directors worked so hard to shield them from.
http://www.ciat-lonbarde.net/dindatindudero/
(link is for the original DDD synth, now sadly lost..)
From the new DDD papers by Peter Blasser: "The Din Datin Dudero manifesto specifies three essential components — sandrodes, sh’mance and nobs. The brass pins are sandrodes, or androgynous nodes. They are both inputs and outputs, as most wires indeed are. The analogue processes connect to each other in loops, and these connections, polyvalent and androgynous, come forth to the exterior of the instrument.
Another layer of the manifesto specifies a contingent internal re-wiring system called the sh’mance. This is mostly digital, taking the analogue vibrations and de-siding them to ones and zeros in primitive memory blocks. These registers then inform multiplexers to make new connections among the pins. This has the same effect as connecting some pins with alligator clips, but internally, and controlled by signals. A mansion is a solid state of butlers, lords, maids and stables in diurnal rhythms; a sh’mance is like a fourth-dimensional portal in and around the mansion to become different solid and jelly states, changing its architecture or hierarchy of animals.
The final part of the manifesto details the two giant and hairy nobs. One knows not what a nob does — it is not a knob known for mono-dimensional axes such as frequency or volume. Instead, a nob joins with the field of sandrodes by becoming an analogue process in itself. To bring this about, I designed two circuit ideas for torque gestures: one for capturing boundaries on a turn in direction and another for generating arbitrary steps within any rotation."