8:00 PM
System BlowerStephen Pilolla - Synth, Keyboard, and Electronics Patrick Lema - Drums, Turntable, Sampler, and Electronics
9:00 PM
Tom Djll & Branden Abushanab duet bass, trumpet & synths
The duo project
System Blower is part of a new wave of experimental improvisation. With roots in the jazz tradition, Patrick Lema and Stephen Pilolla's collaboration has sparked music that is yet to be heard. One could say that the group's sound is a mix of 20th century composer Steve Reich's tape loops with Antonio Sanchez's film score of Birdman. Whether the genre is to be considered abstract, avant-garde, experimental, or retro futuristic, the aim is forward thinking.
Tom Djll (trumpet and electronics) met Branden Abushanab (contrabass) while traveling through Denver, Colorado, in July 2022. They found a near-instant rapport in their collective playing, ranging from free jazzish horn and bass insta-tunes to abstract electronic soundscapes — always occupying highly musical spaces.
Tom Djll is a mainstay of the San Francisco Bay Area new+outside music scene with an international reputation for his GROSSE ABFAHRT project and associations with Gino Robair, Tim Perkis, Rova Saxophone Quartet, Cheryl Leonard, Bryan Day, Jacob Felix Heule, and so many others. He studied under AACM masters Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis and Wadada Leo Smith at the Creative Music Studio, with Pauline Oliveros in Deep Listening Workshops, and at the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music. “Djll has taken the trumpet as far beyond its silver, snarling vernacular as it is possible to go, and as far from the extended technique proponents as Bill Dixon is from Roy Castle. Djll’s trumpet extensions are in some respects no different to what early jazzmen used as punctuation devices or timbral effects. Few have gone as far as Djll, though, in making such articulations the entire substance of a piece, and none have gone so far in the development of split-channel playing.” — Brian Morton, The Wire Branden Abushanab began playing bass in 1999 and has since strived continuously to take the instrument to its limits and beyond. Working through an eclectic variety of genres early in his career, Abushanab ultimately landed squarely in the realms of free jazz and avantgarde. His kinetic, experimental approach to performing channels energy equally from the likes of Barre Phillips and Stefano Scodanibbio while maintaining an edge distinctively his own.
Branden Abushanab has appeared alongside performers from all reaches of the experimental music sphere, playing everything from haunting electro-acoustic sets to extraordinary mash-ups of upright bass and harsh electronics. The 2010 release of The Dust Improvisations marked a turning-point in Abushanab's style, wherein he began to fully embrace the bass as a solo instrument, developing and exploring innovative and unconventional techniques for extracting unheard-of soundscapes. All About Jazz's Mark Corroto perhaps described this best in his review of The Dust Improvisations, stating, "these pieces feel as if Abushanab is reinventing the bass as sort of a free improvisation folk instrument. He eschews the groove, opening the ears to the entropy of his energy."
$10-20 sliding (no one turned away for lack of funds)
Masks welcome indoors.
Vaccination and booster shots highly recommended.
If you feel ill, please do not attend.
Cost: $10-20 sliding