Keiji Haino – Two Day Residency

Outsider music promoters Miles of Smiles help to sate Cafe Oto's hunger for the rawest Japanese sounds with a pair of super-rare London shows by legendary Tokyo noise musician Keiji Haino. Saturday 9th April will see him joined by Matthew Bower's Voltigeurs, whilst German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann will duet on Sunday 10th.

Keiji Haino's 30-year career has encompassed a dizzying range of approaches from wild, guitar-led ensemble rock and near-Neolithic drumming; live electronics and untutored explorations of lute and flute; and the deconsecrated peals of solo gamelan performance. He has also collaborated widely with the likes of Derek Bailey, Merzbow, Jim O'Rourke and Tony Conrad. Throughout, Haino has retained a visionary focus upon temporary suspension through noise (and silence) whilst refining a mercurial, highly distinctive method and an arrestingly dramatic on-stage presence that borrows the raiments of performance art.

A totemic figure in the era when European improv emerged from the shadow of jazz to display itself as a free-standing and vital new form, Peter Brötzmann remains a central protagonist in the trans-continental confluence of experimental musical forms. Long celebrated for his iron-clad lungs, his reed-biting, frenzied attack and an incisive awareness of dynamic, in recent years sudden, sparse eddies and contemplative clearings of remarkable tenderness have brought additional depth and beauty to his already canonic output. 

The balance between the extreme oppressiveness of obliterated riffage and the ecstatic release of fizzing sensory oversaturation is ever apparent in the work of British guitarist Matthew Bower, and so it is in Voltigeurs, his current duo with Samantha Davis (formerly of Harm and GYR). His cracked path has passed through the blackened roar of Pure and Skullflower to the teeming melodic drone of Total, Sunroof! and Hototogisu, as well as through proto-versions of Coil and Whitehouse and more recent collaborations with Richard Youngs and Vibracathedral Orchestra. Bands as diverse as Double Leopards and Godflesh have cited Bower as a major influence, and he has been acknowledged by WIRE magazine as "one of the map co-ordinates for much of what passed for a post-punk UK underground during most of the 80s and 90s."



SAM/OTO 

SAM/OTO is a pilot commissioning project providing grass-roots event organisers with the resources and opportunity to produce bold new programming for Café Oto - London's premier venue for adventurous music.

In spring 2010 we issued a public call for new event proposals that could be of any genre, format or description, with the only stipulation being that they must have a leaning towards experimental/fringe/underground activity and feature artists from outside the UK who have not previously performed at Café Oto.

After receiving almost 200 submissions from all over the globe, four were selected and awarded £2000 towards their development and realisation at Café Oto between January and April 2011.

 

Admission:£14 adv / £25 for a two day pass