op
vrijdag
| 12.01.2024
| 20:00in
Salon de IJzerstaven| Bickersgracht 10| Amsterdam
Tongue Depressor is a duo,
consisting of Zach Rowden and Henry Birdsey, who write, improvise, and
perform drone-based music with fiddles, double bass, bagpipes, pedal
steel, organ, bells, and tapes—often using microtonal tunings. They have
teamed up with John McCowen for Blame Tuning, released on Full Spectrum Records in 2023. Their album Bones for Time,
released on Worried Songs the same year, has been awarded a spot on
Bandcamp’s ‘The Best Experimental Music of 2023’ list. “Is it DIY
basement folk? Experimental classical? 20th century minimalism?
Neo-drone? We're not completely sure, and that's precisely why we're
hooked” (Boomkat).
John McCowen’s musical life has become an obsession with
discovering a polyphonic language on a historically monophonic
instrument—the clarinet. This obsession has guided McCowen into an
unique acoustic vocabulary that is akin to a shifting soundscape of
electronic feedback. His multiphonic approach is based in drones and
beating harmonics, as a means to showcase the compositional potential
within a single acoustic sound source. His work has been described as “the sonic equivalent of microscopic life viewed
on a slide” (The New Yorker), and as “an astonishing demonstration of
pure sound and human will” (The Wire).
Line-up:Henry Birdsey| Scottish smallpipesZach Rowden| double bass John McCowen| contrabass clarinet & flutes