Wednesday 26 February 2020, 7.30pm
Happy to welcome members of Urs Graf Consort, Prune Bécheau (violin & piano), Adrien Bardi-Bienenstock (vocals), Joel Grip (double bass) and Gabriel Bristow (trumpet) to perform improvisations and themes from the songs of 'Uva Ursi', the groups third release, due on bison this month.
"Urs Graf capture on-the-spot at acoustic vigils on the edge of amplified battlefields; Italian variety, free jazz, cabaret, instrumental theatre, Lettrist recitation, the disruptive intensities of improvisation and noise, and walrus songs. Though it may initially seem untenable the record does include humming and toe-tapping, but any dancing only arrives in passing before getting tugged in the current of a weird meters, catching a chill from disintegrations or getting globbed down by macabre sounds.' - Gwladys Le Cuff
Urs Graf Consort, a collective with a corrupted genealogy, produces simulacra, songs nested within themselves, with the experimental accents of Ursonate. Prune Bécheau and Adrien Bardi-Bienenstock are composers and performers for ensembles that are as varied as the motley company brought together in etchings by the Swiss engraver Urs Graf. The song, an object, is essayist, narrative, dramatic, and serves like a space to wander, a waterway whose banks meet only at its source and nevertheless form a whole, subtly fragmented, off-the-cuff punctuations that have no other purpose than to accentuate the fluidity of the whole in the play of obstacles; splashing, sinking, diving, shouting, while the pulsing of the commas continues to respond to the luminous undulation of the surface when, with a communal shiver, the buttocks disappear beneath the cool water.
Ashley Paul is an American performer and composer based in London. She uses an array of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, guitar, bells and percussion, mixing disparate elements to create a colorful palate of sound that works its way into her intuitive songs; free forming, introverted melodies. This blend manifests beautiful and simple musical forms against acoustic experimentation.
Ashley has performed or recorded with Phill Niblock, Rashad Becker, Nik Colk Void, Loren Connors, Heatsick, Aki Onda, C. Spencer Yeh, Anthony Coleman, Bass Clef, Joe Maneri, Joe Morris, Seijiro Murayama, Greg Kelley, Bill Nace and Eli Keszler appearing on such labels as Important, PAN, ESP-DISK’ and Tzadik. She received a Masters of Music from New England Conservatory in 2007.
Otto Willberg plays various bass instruments and lives in London. Live, Otto performs unashamedly melodic improvisational workouts created almost entirely with heavily filtered bass harmonica and electric bass. Strangely abstracted funk and fusion, a blend of the abstruse and immediate. silky smooth, luxurious, odd and compelling, "like listening to Eberhard Weber through a drainpipe”.
Otto is often heard on acoustic and electric bass with Laurie Tompkins (Yes Indeed) and Charles Hayward (Abstract Concrete//This Heat), as well as the fractured No Wave unit Historically Fucked. His previous solo releases have ranged from extended technique double bass to explorations of the acoustics of a 19th century artillery fort.
He has a solo record called ’The Leisure Principle’ out on Oren Ambarchi's the Black Truffle label. 6 unashamedly melodic & profoundly strange workouts for heavily filtered bass harmonica & electric bass!
