CHARALAMBIDES // OTO Residency - Cafe Oto - tickets
19 & 20 May 2012
CHARALAMBIDES
The Michael Flower Band
Dean McPhee
Hitodama
Cafe Oto
18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL
Doors 8pm
£8adv/£10 door / £14 residency pass
Day tickets here
Residency pass here
CHRISTINA CARTER
Tom Carter
Padang Food Tigers
Cafe Oto
18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL
Doors 8pm
£8adv/£10 door / £14 residency pass
Day tickets here
Residency pass here
OTO projects and Miles of Smiles present
CHARALAMBIDES // OTO RESIDENCY
Dedicated to a vision of spiritual music (in all its forms) as transformative force, CHARALAMBIDES sound is uniquely personal and consistent, even through some outwardly extreme shifts in tactics - song-as-mantra, interstellar voids full of silence, or howling, ecstatically-received gnosis. For this first day of our Charalambides' weekend residency, Tom and Christina Carter will perform as Charalambides (The Sunday will feature their solo projects and various collaborations)
CHARALAMBIDES
Despite occasional attempts by yardstick-makers to place them in any of the various genres that rose & fell in their musical proximity, Charalambides have remained dedicated to a vision of spiritual music (in all its forms) as transformative force. Their sound is uniquely personal and consistent, even through some outwardly extreme shifts in tactics. Charalambides formed in Houston in 1991 amid a flock of fearlessly exploratory (and often drug-induced) rock bands, when Tom, Christina, and Kyle Silfer put down their beers and picked up their instruments. Eventually Kyle went home to New York, and Christina & Tom assumed the name Charalambides for what eventually turned into a flood of releases- beginning with 1992's Our Bed Is Green on their own Wholly Other label, and continuing with dozens of LPs, CDs, and cassettes on labels such as Siltbreeze, Eclipse, Time-Lag, and kranky. Despite occasional stints as a trio (first with guitarist Jason Bill and then with pedal steel guitarist & vocalist Heather Leigh Murray) and flourishing solo projects, Charalambides remains constant as the core duo of Tom & Christina Carter. From their 2006 & 2007 kranky releases A Vintage Burden & Likeness onwards, Charalambides has renewed their concentration on song-as-mantra (with intermittent guitar solos). But earlier recordings (like 2001's Unknown Spin) whisper of interstellar voids full of silence, or howl with ecstatically-received gnosis (2004's Joy Shapes).
Charalambides' live shows sometimes (and unpredictably) continue this latter thread, which often startles fans familiar only with the band's deceptively low-key reputation. Charalambides began playing sporadic gigs in 1992, making annual or semi-annual forays into other parts of the world from 1993 to 2005 (with the occasional year or two off). In 2006, Charalambides hit the road in earnest, touring the US/UK and making appearances at that year's Terrastock, Arthurfest and the Thurston Moore curated All Tomorrow's Parties: A Nightmare Before Christmas. In 2008, after months of incessant solo and duo touring in the US and Europe, Tom settled in New York City, and Christina went to Austin, leaving touring aside (for a finite yet undetermined period of time) to concentrate on writing and recording. Their upcoming shows in Amsterdam and Hasselt (Belgium) are their first European performances since 2008. Charalambides continue their recorded collaboration with Exile, a double LP of new recordings now available on kranky.
"On the band's last album, Likeness, Charalambides used old American folk lyrics like mirrors to both reflect the stains upon the country's soul and burn them away. The Carters are just as cognizant of these afflictions on Exile, but the struggles they recount are individual ones, and the tongues they speak in now are their own." - Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine
"...musically, through two decades of working together, they've created a world apart. Though they've played with many like-minded artists and floated through a number of "scenes" ... their work feels wholly self-contained, never seeming to refer to anything but itself." - Marc Masters, "The Out Door," Pitchfork
"Christina has a beautiful voice, clear and bell-like. I've heard her influence on lots of women in the experimental underground music scene. I never heard anyone quite as vulnerable and as strong. It's kind of magical. I never get tired of listening to it. It's fresh every time I put it on." - Kim Gordon, New York Times
"Charalambides are among the most beautiful and mysterious groups to have emerged from the American desert. ...They have created a glowing template of humanist/mystical improvisation that has kneaded brain muscles from here to Kokomo." - Byron Coley, The Wire
CHRISTINA CARTER
Christina Carter was born in the bayou city of Houston, Texas in November of 1968, and co-founded the group Charalambides there in December of 1991. Ever since then, she has deeply mined her own vein of sound-as-music with voice, guitar (both electric and acoustic), piano, and keys. For the past several years, Christina has utilized extended improvisational guitar passages within and without song-medley structures; re-contextualized certain Charalambides songs within the spare single guitar/voice form that birthed much of the group's music; and recently, investigated 'the song' as a thing unto itself, specifically concentrating on 'the word'- both in her own lyric writing and her interpretions of the work of other lyricists. In addition to performing extensively in the US, UK and Europe as a solo artist, Christina has played and recorded in various groups and duos with Black Forest/Black Sea, Maria Chavez (as Weird Cookie), Loren Connors, Chris Corsano, Dredd Foole, Sandy Ewen, Paul Flaherty, Gown (as The Bastard Wing), Shawn David McMillen, and Thurston Moore. She is also a permanent member of Scorces (with vocalist/pedal steel player Heather Leigh Murray). Christina currently resides in Austin, Texas. Her latest albums are the Charalambides album Exile (Kranky), the double LP reissue Texas Blues Working (Blackest Rainbow), and two solo CDRs: Trickster Who Is Like God (Many Breaths) and a reissue of Future In Past (Many Breaths), originally released on the Wholly Other imprint in 2002.
TOM CARTER
Tom Carter's solo electric guitar work sculpts a richly varied landscape of immensely-stacked grit and beauty, weaving interlocking strands of visceral melody into towering (and often high-volume) long-form drones.Born barely south of the Mason-Dixon line, and just in time for the Summer of Love, Tom Carter led a decidedly non-hippy existence being shuffled around various farm and mining towns in Maryland and Ohio by his newspaperman father, before finally making his way to Texas in 1985, just in time to watch all the good hardcore bands die. Already obsessed with American pre-punk and British post-punk, Carter dove into the lysergically spiked musical waters of Texas with both feet, augmenting his guitar skills with unreliable instruments, cranky analog electronics, and disintegrating practice amps. Over the ensuing decades, he managed to forge his evolving ideas of complete tonal immersion (and the quest for the perfect fuzz tone) into a layered sonic toolkit of rough beauty and unrefined proficiency.
Best known for his work with acclaimed iconoclasts Charalambides, which he co-founded with Christina Carter in 1991, he has branched out into other collaborations since 2001, playing and recording with long-term projects Zaika (with Marcia Bassett) and Badgerlore (with Rob Fisk, Ben Chasny, Liz Harris, and Peter Swanson), as well as in frequent collaborations with Bay Area sound artist Robert Horton. Other fellow travelers have included Christian Kiefer, Paul Flaherty, Tetuzi Akiyama, Shawn David McMillen, Thurston Moore, Dredd Foole, Loren Connors, Pip Proud, Inca Ore, Jandek, Bardo Pond, Starving Weirdos, Ensemble Economique, Steve Gunn, Robert Millis, and Matt Valentine, among many others. Carter has released dozens of recordings in every available format for many different labels, including kranky, Digitalis, Eclipse, Important, Root Strata, and 3-Lobed. His most recent solo release is available on his own Wholly Other imprint, which he has operated since 1995.
"Instead of macro-analysing which direction Guitar music should take in the 21st century, his interest is personal and seems to derive from the question what'd happen if one were to continue the last seconds of a Garage-Rock song, when the singer and the rest of the band have already left the stage..." - Tobias Fischer, Tokafi.com
"At the heart of Tom Carter's music lies a fascination with the acoustical possibilities of the guitar - not as a single instrument, a single voice, but as a multitude of voices, all waiting to be discovered through a little expert handiwork." -Fragil.org (French, translation from Visitation Rites blog)
"Carter shows he has no boundaries as he pierces the atmosphere and heads into deep space." -Foxy Digitalis
THE MICHAEL FLOWER BAND
"Biker psych for the third eye rider"
A key member of legendary Leeds freak-out collective Vibracathedral Orchestra, MICHAEL FLOWER's fearless explorations of sound have established him as something of a benchmark in the world of experimental transcendental music - both solo and as one half of one the intense psych/improv drenched Flower-Corsano Duo. He has also played with Jandek, Spectre Folk, MV&EE and Sunburned Hand of the Man, among others.
DEAN McPHEE
DEAN McPHEE is a Lancastrian finger-picking electric guitarist now based in West Yorkshire, whose gorgeously liquid, pure-toned playing is supremely evocative of the small splendours and grand transitions of the natural environment. His magnificent debut album proper ‘Son of the Black Peace’ has cemented the reputation won by debut EP Brown Bear.
“Dean McPhee’s debut conjures pellucid, iridescent worlds with little more than a Fender Telecaster, a tremelo pedal and a litany of liquid runs and baroque, improvised figures”. (MOJO Magazine).
“The hallmark of McPhee’s style is a picked bassline and free-ranging variations on melodic ideas via a mesmerising progression of harmonics, cleanly picked notes, full chords and string-bending arab-esques… Son of the Black Peace is a 37 minute gem of an album” (The Wire Magazine)
http://www.blastfirstpetite.com/dean-mcphee-black-peace.html
HITODAMA
HITODAMA is the solo guise of Wigan-reared, Tokyo-dwelling drone obsessive Dave McMahon. Also known for the fun-size power-grind spasms of Shigai (with Narcosis Guitarist Chris Catterall) and the barbaric basement-bar noise of Jahiliyyah (with Tetragrammaton’s Cal Lyall), as Hitodama Dave coaxes serene yet seething marsh-light howl from a cluttered menagerie of analogue and digital FX. An especial treat for fans of Concern and Double Leopards.
http://www.myspace.com/onryoudrone
PADANG FOOD TIGERS
In Padang Food Tigers, Spencer Grady and Steve Lewis diverge from the stately electronic texture-scapes of their Rameses III project, crafting cobwebbed, organic miniatures with the beguilingly irreconcilable air of Sublime Frequencies field recordings faintly echoing through the halls of a haunted vicarage. Fans of Tetuzi Akiyama, C Joynes and Harappian Night Recordings will find much to admire here, but an oddly concrete-ish, microtonally composed resonance running throughout connects the listener back to the duo’s technological roots.
