Lee discusses his new LP and performs songs from it at Glasslands  on Pitchfork’s “+1″

Order ‘Between The Times & The Tides’  NOW at the MATADOR STORE.

LEE RANALDO BAND DATES:

(# = dates supporting M. Ward)

5/5 Portland, ME – State Theatre – on sale #
5/6 Burlington, VT – Higher Ground – on sale #
5/7 New Haven, CT – Toads Place – on sale #
5/8 Boston, MA – House Of Blues – on sale #
5/11 New York, NY – Webster Hall – on sale #
5/12 Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer – on sale #
5/13 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club – on sale #

May 14th at Bull City Records In-Store Performance in Durham, NC (w band). 6pm, all ages, free.

5/15 Durham, NC – Duke Performances – tickets #
5/16 Athens, GA – Georgia Theatre – on sale #
5/17 Atlanta, GA – Buckhead Theatre – on sale #

5/18 Nashville, TN Mercy Lounge (w Wooden Wand and Pujol supporting)
5/19 Louisville, KY Zanzabar (w Wooden Wand and Sea Hero supporting)

May 20 Nelsonville, OH – Nelsonville Music Festival

May 21st at Landlocked Music in Bloomington, IN (reading his poem “Bloomington, Indiana: Autumn and playing solo acoustic). 6pm, all ages, free.

5/22 Chicago, IL – Vic Theatre – on sale 1/28 at 10am #

EUROPEAN TOUR, part 1:
May 31 Barcelona, Spain  Prima Vera Sound Festival
June 2 Dudingen, Switzerland – Kilbi Festival
June 3 Paris, France  - La Maroquinerie
June 4 Antwerp, Belgium – Trix
June 6 London, UK –  Scala with The Men.
June 7 Leeds, UK – Brundell
June 9  Porto, Portugal – Parque Da Cidade Optimus Primavera Sound

EUROPEAN TOUR, part 2:
(‡ = dates w Disappears)

July 2 Hamburg – Westwerk ‡
July 3 Schorndorf Manufaktur ‡
July 4 Köln Gebäude 9 ‡
July 5 Berlin-Lido ‡
July 6 Roskilde Festival

DATES WITH WILCO:
Ticket + Presale info  at Wilco World

Tue-Jul-17 Vienna, VA Wolf Trap – with Wilco
Wed-Jul-18 Vienna, VA Wolf Trap – with Wilco
Thu-Jul-19 Charlottesville, VA nTelos Wireless Pavilion – with Wilco
Sat-Jul-21 Camden, NJ XPoNential Music Festival
Jul-24 Brooklyn, NY Celebrate Brooklyn @ Prospect Park
July 28 Cooperstown, NY – Brewery Ommegang – with Wilco
July 29 Essex, VT – Midway Lawn @ Champlain Valley – with Wilco
August 1 Hartford, CT – The Bushnell – with Wilco
August 3 Rochester, NY  - Highland Bowl with Wilco
August 4 Columbus, OH – Lifestyles Communities Pavillion – with Wilco

ART SHOWS:

April 5-May 5, 2012. Let’s Begin with a Line. Dorsch Gallery, Miami. A group show. Lee is showing 3 of his etched vinyl record prints. Info here: dorschgallery.com

January 28-May 6, 2012. John Cage 33 1/3 – Performed By Audience, A Celebration of the Centenary of the Composer’s Birth. Tampa Museum of Art. info here: http://www.tampamuseum.org/exhibitions/john-cage-33-13-performed-audience Conceived in 1969 as an “audience participation” work, John Cage’s original “score” simply stipulated that the gallery be filled with about a dozen record players and two- to three-hundred vinyl records. Museum visitors are encouraged to act as DJs and create a musical mix by playing records freely and thus performing the work.

February 17-May 6, 2012. MEMBRA DISJECTA FOR JOHN CAGE: Wanting to Say Something About John. Freiraum Quartier21, INTERNATIONAL, MuseumsQuartier Vienna (this show later travels to the Czech Republic). Lee collaborated with Dutch Artist Zeger Reyers. More info here: http://johncage.tonspur.at/
More images: http://www.sonicyouth.com/symu/lee/2012/02/17/decomposition-for-john-cage/

RECENT RELEASES:
Lee’s new poetry chapbook, “How Not To Get Played On The Radio”, now out on SoundBarn Press. more info HERE.

Lee has a track on the Three Lobed Records all-guitarists recordstore day release “Eight Trails, One Path.”

Lee is also featured on a new Poetry CD by poet-musician David Amram.

Lee’s Official Facebook
Lee’s Twitter feed: @leeranaldo

At the moment these records can only be found at the Lee Ranaldo Band shows, but look for (limited quantities) available thru the Sonic store soon…

Angles, according to Ranaldo, is about “…the distance between New York City and the Sargasso Sea, or some equally far flung place; in other words, somewhere between the times and the tides…”

Director Leah Singer writes:
“This song felt very ‘New York’ to me. Time moves at a different pace here, fast and slow all at once. In the video you see a girl running aimlessly yet urgently through the streets. The song implies that relationships move at their own pace too, watching time pass but always meeting back up, coming full circle with someone. The swinging guitar pays homage to Lee’s experimental work and Z Behl, the girl, has been a friend since she was a child. Josh and Bret from Red Bucket Films lend a hand. They worked with our kids on the feature film ‘Daddy Longlegs’. So it was a bit of a family affair. Highlight of the shoot: Used a GoPro camera attached to some helium balloons for the cherry picker alley shot. Wind got the best of us and took the rig up to a rooftop where the camera got lodged in a fence. We intrepidly found a way on a Sunday to gain access to a building, leap over some parapet walls and retrieve the camera. Thanks Josh! All in a days work and caught on camera too!”

Leah Singer, director
3.26.12 NYC

Recently, Lee appeared solo at the Morrison Hotel gallery, playing some songs from his album, “Between the Time and the Tides.” Chris Habib shot this exclusive interview and performance footage for The New Yorker.

some photos, by Daniele Antonopoulos+Lucas Faria, Leah Singer, Matheus Fleming:

While in BH we also visited Inhotim, a most amazing art park about an hour away from the city, set in a lush tropical environment that was just amazing. I’ve long wanted to see Chris Burden’s Beam Drop, and it was here, along w Doug Aitken’s Sonic Pavillion, Janet Cardiff’s amazing aural Murder of Crows and many other fantastic works. Here’s a few snaps of this astounding place:

Torn Photograph: Four Organs (for Steve Reich & Robert Smithson)
Lee Ranaldo
ink jet print, edition of 10,
21.5” square, torn in quarters, glassine envelope.
Inkjet print, edition of 10
2007

A photo work in homage to two individuals whose works have meant a great
deal to me. In 1970 Robert Smithson contributed a piece to a boxed edition of
artist’s multiples organized by the gallerist Marion Goodman under the label
“Multiples, Inc”. The box included artists such as Dan Graham, Mel Bochner,
Richard Serra and many others from the time. Smithson’s piece, Torn Photograph,
was an image of construction rubble taken from one of his slideworks, which he
had torn in 4 quarters and packaged in a glassine envelope. Steve Reich, the
composer, is a friend and has been my neighbor in lower Manhattan for the last
decade. There is an early piece of his called “Four Organs” which has had a
profound influence on me ever since I first heard it many years ago. The four
organs of his piece are now gathering dust in our mutual basement. I’ve
photographed Riech’s stacked up organs and have done a torn print of similar
dimensions to Smithson’s, dedicated to both men.

Robert Smithson: Torn photograph from the 2nd stop (Rubble) (1970)

The “maquette version” of this work (edition of 25) is available from Paul and Wendy Projects, Toronto.

The original premise was to improvise (not ‘illustrate’) to films from the American Avante-Garde (50s-60s etc), an under-known period of American filmic poetics. Members of the group include Lee Ranaldo and Alan Licht (gtrs/devices), Ulrich Krieger (sax/electronics), Christian Marclay and DJ Olive (turntables), William Hooker and most recently Tim Barnes (drums/perc).Various combinations of these players attend ‘Text’ gigs, depending on individual schedules, so the group takes on various permutations—sometimes all members participate, sometimes not.

A rudimentary ToL website w some further info is HERE.

Another clip, found on the web, from the same shows:

original project sketch:

early maquette:

infinity scores for production:

construction in Holland:

some of Zeger’s other works w ‘shrooms:

some inspirational scores:

statements:

Quite a while ago I’ve heard about the possibilities of some kind of fungi being able to move, in search for goodies, with a simple kind of ‘brain’ / ….
and on top of that they can move back and front between a singlecellular and a multicellular stage..
That’s my symbol of freedom for John..

“Fungi will always walk the water Walk”
- Welcome the Myxomycetes -

http://blog.wildyorkshire.co.uk/tag/myxomycetes/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mould

Zeger Reyers
8 Jan. 2012 – The Hague, NL

CAGED THOUGHTS

I remember John talking about how he didn’t like to listen to a record more than once. What was the point? If one gave oneself over to the experience the first time, then why repeat? He didn’t really care for the idea of music as ‘fixed in time’ on a black platter. He said he’d rather open the window and listen to the trucks rolling by, or whatever else was coming in-the constantly changing music of NOW rather than a packaged simulacra of ‘then’. Of course that’s the real idea behind 4’33″–it’s not a silent piece at all-there is always sound! Those comments have long stayed with me, in spite of the fact that I love both making records and playing records-often the same ones over and over again.

In 1982 I performed with Glenn Branca’s large ensemble at New Music America in Chicago. Cage was also in Chicago that year. I’m not sure if it was the first time John had heard Glenn’s music or not, but after seeing our performance he made some comments to the effect that it was a form of ‘musical fascism’ (with Glenn as all-powerful conductor pulling this music out of his ensemble), and for that he felt uneasy, uncomfortable with it. His comments caused quite a little stir at the time, perhaps more so than he intended, but it’s clear that his interest was in trying to move music in a different direction, away from the dominance of the composer/conductor and towards a much more ‘Zen’ or ‘landscape’ approach to sound creation and presentation, much closer to the unorchestrated randomness of the trucks rolling by outside his windows…

My friend, the Portuguese composer Rafael Toral, once told me his story of being a young composer, back in 1992, and writing to Cage to request permission to stage a piece of his in Lisbon. This was in the days before email (I don’t know if John ever used email) and he sent his letter off to John and Merce’s Westbeth address. Some time passed and he heard nothing, and then that summer it was announced that Cage had died. As well as sorrow for the death of the great composer, my friend felt a sadness at not having been granted permission to go ahead with his version of John’s piece. He assumed he’d have to forgo the idea. However, a week or so later, a letter came in the mail. John had written him, giving his approval. Somehow that story always reminds me of the often-surprising nature of John’s music!

Lee Ranaldo
New York City January 2012