Jason Kahn (usa/switzerland) – With Roy Montgomery And The Escalation

Jason Kahn

Born 1960 in New York, Jason Kahn is an artist, musician and writer. He lives and works in Zürich.
Though having played in New Zealand several times since 2007, this will be Kahn’s first visit back to the country since 2018. In the past he has performed or recorded with several New Zealand artists, including Richard Francis, Bruce Russell, Jeff Henderson, Antony Milton and Daniel Beban.
On this tour Kahn will be working with electronics, using a chaotic feedback system that places his body in the circuit flow. Grabbing the open leads of a modular synthesizer with his hands makes and breaks circuits, causing the synthesizer to overload or momentarily collapse. Various contact microphones, electromagnetic inductors and the synthesizer’s own output via a mixing board are used to modulate the parameters of the synthesizer. This results in a very dynamic system, often difficult to control, but allowing great expressivity—much like any acoustic instrument, but electronic.
Live radio captures during the concert and field recordings made beforehand in the performance space and its environs provide further working material for each concert. In the end, these performances are essentially site-specific works, improvising with the space at hand, both in the sense of its physicality and the sounds found there. Every performance is different, not only because the music is improvised but also because the source material used pertains directly to each space being played in.

Roy Montgomery

Roy Montgomery was born in London, England but lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. He currently lectures in environmental management and urban planning at Lincoln University. He plays electric guitar and has made many home recordings since the early 1980s from which he has released several self-produced 45s, LPs and CDs on various independent labels including Drunken Fish, Kranky, vhf and Grapefruit. He was involved in bands such as the Pin Group, Dadamah, Dissolve and Hash Jar Tempo (with Bardo Pond) and he has collaborated with other artists such as Flying Saucer Attack, Liz Harris (Grouper), Julianna Barwick, Purple Pilgrims, Emma Johnston, Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux), Alicia Merz (Birds of Passage) and Martha Skye Murphy. A new LP, entitled Broken Heart Surgery is due for release in October 2023. Roy performs live relatively infrequently.

The Escalation

The Escalation is the occasional guitar duo of Ōhinehou Lyttelton residents Bruce Russell & Peter Wright. Bruce has forged a long and successful career as an auteur in the world of improvised sonic mischief, famous as a member of the most notorious noise-rock trio in the known universe – The Dead C, plus a multitude of other sins in the murky back streets of the sonic arts. Peter has likewise made a name for himself over a couple of decades, armed with his trusty open-tuned guitar and a bucket full of time unravelling effects, crafting imaginary soundtracks for interstellar travel. Together they gleefully take an axe to any preconceived notions of what guitar music is, or even what a guitar is. Purists beware!