Headfirst Editor's Pick
"A brainrot battering of absurd meme detritus, generative AI soundbites and unrelenting sampledelia: Callahan & Witscher are NY underground scene veterans whose 90s/00s pop-rock meets meta-plunderphonics could almost pass for Beck’s long lost Reddit concept album. Ludicrous!"
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A gig held at Exchange on Tuesday 11th February. The event starts at 19:30.
Blessed Union presents:
Callahan & Witscher (NY)
Neil Luck (London)
Bristol Laptop Orchestra
Jeff Witscher has been one of the most daring voices in underground American music for two decades, highlighted by releases on PAN and NNA Tapes. Jack Callahan’s focused, uncompromising approach to sound caught the attention of both Demdike Stare’s DDS label and Swiss composer Jürg Frey, who took Callahan on as his first composition student. Fans of their individual work might expect opacity, disruption, or rhythmic irregularity from their collaboration, but ‘Think Differently’, their debut record as Callahan & Witscher, sounds like a pitbull in a convertible, a sand-kicking beach party, the dopamine hit you get from 311 or Smash Mouth. It’s a punchy, crunchy, highly infectious record. How did Callahan & Witscher cut the path from the ghostly margins of avant garde musics to the gutters of post-grunge American hard rock? In the words of Callahan, “at some point, you start to need a stronger drug.”
Neil Luck is a musician based in the UK.
His work often explores the pathos and interaction between live human performance and multimedia, and attempts to frame the act of music making as something curious, or weird, or useful, or spectacular in and of itself.
His work takes a range of forms from music-theatre, to concert works, radio, public projects and recordings, and is the founder and director of the experimental music ensemble ARCO.
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
Callahan & Witscher (NY)
Neil Luck (London)
Bristol Laptop Orchestra
Jeff Witscher has been one of the most daring voices in underground American music for two decades, highlighted by releases on PAN and NNA Tapes. Jack Callahan’s focused, uncompromising approach to sound caught the attention of both Demdike Stare’s DDS label and Swiss composer Jürg Frey, who took Callahan on as his first composition student. Fans of their individual work might expect opacity, disruption, or rhythmic irregularity from their collaboration, but ‘Think Differently’, their debut record as Callahan & Witscher, sounds like a pitbull in a convertible, a sand-kicking beach party, the dopamine hit you get from 311 or Smash Mouth. It’s a punchy, crunchy, highly infectious record. How did Callahan & Witscher cut the path from the ghostly margins of avant garde musics to the gutters of post-grunge American hard rock? In the words of Callahan, “at some point, you start to need a stronger drug.”
Neil Luck is a musician based in the UK.
His work often explores the pathos and interaction between live human performance and multimedia, and attempts to frame the act of music making as something curious, or weird, or useful, or spectacular in and of itself.
His work takes a range of forms from music-theatre, to concert works, radio, public projects and recordings, and is the founder and director of the experimental music ensemble ARCO.
Entry requirements: no age restrictions
Other experimental gigs
— Rough Trade Bristol
folk
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