Vert

Tonight I’ll be performing a remix/cover of Roky Erickson’s You Don’t Love Me Yet at the Könischer Kunstverein in Cologne as part of an ongoing artwork by Johanna Billing.

It’s taken a while, but New Thing at Novara is finally out (those of you in the US will have to wait til October 14th).

Its actually remix of an entire jazz festival – Novara Jazz 2006 – and a document of the frantic week I spent in a darkened Novara hotel room, going to the shows each evening, picking up recordings of them afterwards, and then putting everything together in time for the last night, where I performed the remix live in a medieval courtyard (w/ accompanying visual by the artist Luc Trevisani).

The remix is made of performances from Mina Agossi Trio, Di Terra Trio, Louis Moholo & Stan Tracey, Jelly Roll Morton, Fabrizio Ottaviucci, Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin, Matthew Ship & Guillermo E Brown, Trovesi all’Opera, Galja Vranesevic & Fedor Ruskuc, David S Ware, & the World Saxophone Quartet.

Listen to it on the right -> then go and buy it immediate on the sonig website.

A compilation of edited versions of all the tracks featured in the Noise Room – including my track Jellyrollmortonfeldmantwo – is out now on Sonig.

Also included are tracks by Lee Ranaldo, Black Dice, Kevin Blechdom, Mouse on Mars, David Grubbs, Vert, Jason Forrest, Daniel Schorno, Sun OK Papi K.O., Casey Rice, Robert van Heumen, Jeff Carey, Keith Fullerton Whitman aka Hrvatski and Michel Waisvisz.

Buy it now at the sonig webshop.

A piece of mine called Jellyrollmortonfeldmantwo is currently being featured as part of the Noise Room installation at the Cubitt Gallery in London until September 28th.

The piece is made up of 5 different recordings made by Jelly Roll Morton, 3 of them recorded to vinyl, 2 to piano rolls, all slowed down in various ways (using custom timestretch algorithms, or slowing down, or transposing to MIDI and just lowering the BPM) by a factor of about 100, so that they move at the rate of a typical Morton Feldman composition.

The Noise Room is a project by Jan Werner, and also includes pieces by Mouse on Mars, Stereolab, Sun OK Papi KO, FX Randomiz & C-Schulz, and many more.

I’m very happy to say that the musicians I worked with in Vietnam last November are coming to Germany, and we’ll be playing together at Gewoelbe, Koeln, along w/ lots of other german/asian collaborations:

Thursday 14 August 20:00 (we play at about 22:30)
Gewoelbe im Westbahnhof, Hans-Boeckler-Platz 2, Koeln

The musicians:
Tri Minh (electronics)
DJ Kruise (turntables)
Dinh Huy Ha (drums)
Thi Van Mai Le (Đàn tranh – traditional Vietnamese 17 stringed instrument)

This Saturday at 5pm, as part of Make Music New York, I’ll be playing live on the streets of Williamsburg, at the junction of Metropolitan and Bedford Aves, outside 222 Metropolitan Ave.

There’s no stage, no sponsors, and the amplifiers might blow up.

On May 4th, I will be taking part in an event called Hey Hey Glossolalia: The Eroticism of Pedagogy (or something like that) at the Judson Church, Washington Square, NY.  There will be lectures from various artists, including Frances Stark, Liam Gillick & others.  I will be the house band.  There might, if I get my way, also be a gospel choir.

One of the songs off of Some Beans & an Octopus, namely The Familiar Girl is hugely ripped off — lyrically — from Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, and so much more besides.

I took the idea for the song from a short story of his called out of the Vivian Relf out of the Men and Cartoons collection.

Spurred on by his great essay on plagiarism, the The Ecstacy of Influence, I sent him a copy of the album, and pointed out the, er, similarities. His response?- “It’s terrific, I like the song very much, and the album too! Thanks so much for taking the inspiration”

Finally got round to putting photos from Vietnam online: I played 3 concerts there, 2 as Adam Butler (my seated, après garde alter ego) and 1 as Vert, with a band of Vietnamese musicians, namely Huy the drummer, Thuy the Đàn tranh (traditional Vietnamese 17 stringed zither-like instrument) player and DJ Kruise the turntablist.

Next week I’m going to Vietnam for 2 weeks, to do some concerts with Vietnamese musicians.  Needless to say, I’m very excited about this…