Arrington de Dionyso solo, performing "Sacred Mushroom Songs"
Arrington de Dionyso /
Danishta Rivero / Cody Putman /
Jacob Felix Heule quartet
Christopher Robin Duncan solo
ARRINGTON DE DIONYSO
An uncompromising voice in contemporary music, Arrington de Dionyso integrates ancient soundmaking techniques with trans-modernist inquiries into the nature of consciousness. His propulsive improvisations utilize voice and reeds (primarily bass clarinets and his invention the Bromiophone) as multiphonic tools in the navigation of liminal spaces between shamanic seance and rock and roll ecstasy.
While deeply rooted in the punk inclination to tear down musical standards in an effort for liberation, Arrington's music weds no-wave iconoclasm with the spiritual searching of Albert Ayler-era free jazz to reach towards an unveiling of primordially potent universalities. His compositions embrace sounds as colors, placing emphasis on the complimentary spectrums- from circular overtones whispered through bamboo flutes to the penetrating and deeply guttural howls of amplified throatsinging- all with the lungs of an Olympiad.
Born in Chicago in 1975, this son of Methodist ministers later attended theater school in Arkansas and taught himself seven languages. After moving to the Pacific Northwest, as a youth Arrington supported himself as a traveling busker selling cassette tapes until he arrived in Olympia to study ethnomusicology at the Evergreen State College. In 1995 he founded the trance-funk-gospel-punk band Old Time Relijun which garnered critical praise and a loyal fanbase over the course of endless tours of the US and Europe, releasing several dozen albums on K Records. In 2009 he created Malaikat dan Singa (“Angels and Lions”), a powerful new project integrating dancehall rhythms with gamelan scales, using the Indonesian language to interpret the Zohar and the mystic poetry of William Blake.
In 2011 Arrington was invited to do an artist residency in Indonesia that initiated the first of many tours in Java, Bali, Lombok, Sulawesi and Kalimantan with the groundbreaking indigenous metal-art-noise band SENYAWA. It was during these travels that Arrington learned of the Javanese Horse Trance ritual known as “Jathilan” and began to organize collaborations with traditional village musicians throughout Indonesia, as part of a lifelong obsession with the powerful ability of certain kinds of “intense music” to alter ordinary awareness and induce spiritual initiations. Travels such as these, oscillating between the extremes of the contemporary avant-garde and ancient trance music traditions, helped Arrington develop a unique approach to using music as a bridge between diverse global cultures while interrogating and rejecting the domination of “Western” definitions of what music can even be. He has played in ceremony with the Master Musicians of Jajouka in Morocco, Bauls in Bangladesh, throat-singing shamans in Tuva, and ancient instrument reconstructionists in Peru.
Whether as a band leader or solo performer Arrington's music evokes an "Ancient Future", sometimes shocking and hallucinatory, always aiming to channel Spirit.
arrington.bandcamp.com
Christopher Robin Duncan (born 1974-Perth Amboy, New Jersey) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California. Duncan utilizes the Sun and the Moon, as well as Time and Tide, as conceptual and compositional prompts for experiments in sonic and visual endeavors. For this performance, field recordings, processed harmonica and electronics will weave lush open ended forms, meant to mimic the ebb and flow of the ocean. In addition to his studio practice, he runs LAND AND SEA- a small press and project space in Oakland California, with his wife- Maria Otero.
Cost: $5-$15 sliding scale
Videos featuring musicians playing at this event
Jacob Felix Heule, Clarke Robinson, Matt Ingalls