Bowerbird
presents
Gate
series for experimental music, video, and performance
Featured this month:
DIAMOND TERRIFIER
FEMME TOPS
WAIT (Robert J)
PATRICK HIGGINS
DIAMOND TERRIFIER BIO:
Diamond Terrifier is Sam Hillmer of Zs’s saxophone and electronics solo incarnation. Named after the English translation of the Indo-Tibetan god-name Vajrabairahva, Diamond Terrifier is concerned with the potential positive qualities of destruction as mediated by noise/drone sheets of sound music. Diamond Terrifier’s debut release ‘Himalayan Appalachia’ appeared this past September and is soon to be followed by the follow up tape ‘Shrine Flu’ on Words+Dreams. This coming fall, Diamond Terrifier’s first full length effort will be inaugurated on Brooklyn avant killers Northern Spy label. KILL THE SELF THAT WANTS TO KILL YOUR SELF is due out September 2012 and will be produced by the formidable rocker Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear.
PATRICK HIGGINS BIO:
Described by The New Yorker magazine as one of the “prime movers of the local avant-garde,” and an “exacting avant-classical guitarist” by TimeOut NY, Patrick Higgins (b.1984) is a New York based composer/performer of experimental chamber music. Higgins is a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied philosophy and comparative literature. An active presence in the NYC independent music scene since 2004, Higgins composed and played guitar in the post-rock duo Animal. Recently, he has turned his attentions to the Baroque, arranging and performing the music of J.S. Bach for solo guitar and quadraphonic stereo electronics: Bachanalia. Among numerous other compositions for small ensemble and chamber orchestra, a recording of Higgins’ String Quartet No.2 is currently in production with the MIVOS Quartet. A record of video-game inspired electronic works is now available on ELE Records, Monkey Mountain.
FEMME TOPS BIO:
(Alex Hampshire, Rick Weaver, Evan Lipson, Jeff Zagers)
As journalists and conversationalists for the Port Richmond Outpost, poet Alex Hampshire and musician Rick Weaver discovered the esoteric writings of the Juniata Sorcerers. The words of the reticent Sorcerers naturally wove themselves into the stark freeform hub-and-spoke sound the duo had been cultivating that Summer in Philadelphia through use of a saxophone, a drum kit, words, a pedal, and an amp. The duo extended, distended, distorted, and expanded their knowledge of private mythology, reference of sound, and membership. Two wild card collaborators became integral to the sound of Femme Tops (an aesthetic blur of improvisation, composition, performance, mythology, ritual, and recitation). The first card-carrier, Evan Lipson (bassist, composer, improviser), had just arrived disoriented from his outrageously bizarre honeymoon in Camden. He talked symbology while seeking to transcend the existent paradigms of idiomatic expression. But it was no honeymoon for manic-instrumentalist Jeff Zagers, who'd just gotten out of Hahnemann Hospital before arriving on the Mountain, just in time to input eerie "old soul" melodies and execute psychological cues. This Southern Gothic Gentleman was moving fast: geographically, musically, and metaphysically.
Deploying orbital pulsations, psychic notations, and abstract interactions, the imbalancing act coiled and flourished in both Polish Springs and the Half Chamber, two different rooms free from a view. The Polish Springs duo (Hampshire & Weaver) and trio of Philadelphia (Hampshire, Lipson, & Weaver) spent most of their time shocking their nerves and struggling to arrive at the Male Sub Way in a regional ditch that appeared after T. Davis issued God's Orders. The Half Chamber trio of Savannah (Hampshire, Zagers, & Weaver) affectionately swung the moody lamplight to nourish the spirit muse of surreal harmony. Philosophical parallels and sonic pseudo-symmetry was not enough to permit the two trios to overlap in person.
Now, April will welcome the public actualization of Femme Tops in its potent purest form of four. A dream come true for the boys. And you know the boys will be working hard to push the sound. See you in the future.
Admission is FREE