GEOFF MULLEN + JOHN CHANTLER
LONDON: Cafe Oto
WED 9TH MAY, 2012 8PM
£7.00
GEOFF MULLEN
Currently living in Providence, RI, Geoff is a lifelong guitarist and sonic manipulator. Recent work is focused on the natural balance achieved through chance procedure, improvisation, personal history / games of memory, and ambient music. Through electro-acoustic means, his music aims to transform everyday realities into scenes for artistic exploration - re-imagining the natural world as well as domestic / social environments as a stage for musical action.
Frequent collaborators include Eli Keszler and Ashley Paul, Scott Reber, Kris Lapke, andKeith Fullerton Whitman. His record label, Rare Youth, has been dedicated to the preservation and distribution of obscure, regional experimental music since 2006, and Mullen has had his work released on a range of labels including Keszler's REL and Whitman'sEntschuldigen, Type and Digitalis.
"beautiful intricate textures, playful warped mini-drones, bent-out-of-shape notes and the dings, flutters, belches and de-tuned caterwauling of contorted guitar abuse/exploration....a veritable zoo of yawning, stretching, collapsing sound....I’m thrown into the world of a free-form orchestra trying to find a new form of expression from total deconstruction of musical form, in turn creating one of the loosest organic jams I've heard in recent times" Norman Records
JOHN CHANTLER
“Hearing this music for the first time has a similar impact to the first exposure to Oval’s Systemisch from 1994, or the early Sähkö recordings like Ø’s Metri, in that it has a beauty partly derived from having travelled beyond the reach of human influence” Rob Young, The WIRE (on 'The Luminous Ground').
John Chantler is an omnivorous recording artist/musician based in London. Starting out as a drummer, John has spent the last few years loosely keeping time for Outshine Family (Black Maps) and The Balky Mule (Fat Cat) whilst exploring his own solo synthesizer works and occasionally convening the Organ Octet - a massed organ ensemble of eight reed/chord organs. He also plays synth in a trio with Tujiko Noriko and Lawrence English and his Holy Family duo with Lawrence English has dropped a tape on Digitalis with another on the way via Sanity Muffin.
He has also drummed for Tenniscoats and added 'warm noise' and electronic interventions to roving Japanese psych ensemble Maher Shalal Hash Baz.
In 2003, John relocated to his current base in London, playing regular live shows mixing guitar, laptop, and drums into increasingly rough-hewn and psychedelic shapes. He then started working with Carina Thorén on a series of uncategorisable sides that culminated in the duo’s ROOM40 LP ‘New Days’. His most recent solo work 'The Luminous Ground' was released via ROOM40 in 2011 and came in at #37 in The WIRE magazine's Top 50 records of the year chart. This was followed by a private press 12" entitled 'Automatic Music' that offered his own take on generative minimalism and surface stasis.
“Even during the sparser pieces, the music is void of anything concrete, and there’s something quite strange about being hypnotized by an album that distances itself so adamantly from stasis and constancy. Chantler captivates the listener in a limbo of ceaseless movement, leaving them dazed and somewhat disorientated by the eternal state of change.” 7.5/10 Jack Chuter, The Silent Ballet (on 'The Luminous Ground')
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