a night of DUO DUO’S !

Electric guitarist Tashi Dorji and percussionist Tyler Damon will perforem as a duo. In the long tradition of string/drum duets — from Bailey & Bennink to Haino & Yoshida — these two cleave out their own unmapped continent of sound. They connect lashes of ecstatic intensity and outer reaches of texture and timbre. At times Dorji’s brutal electric torrents meld into Damon’s metal and tonal abstractions.

These two developed in parallel for years before forging an ongoing duo in 2015. Dorji has released a string of startling acoustic albums that’ve rescrambled six-string notions of jazz/improv/Flamenco. Damon’s rethink of overtone and rhythm is enraptured as it’s stupefying in solo exhibitions or with Mars Williams, Darin Gray and Thee Open Sex.

Local electronics lurking weirdhead Jimmy Joe Roche and expanded guitar luminary Layne Garrett will improvise as a duo.

Jimmy Joe Roche is an interdisciplinary artist whose work encompasses video, sculpture, and performance. Video screenings include the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Museum of the Moving Image. Roche has had five solo exhibitions in New York, Texas, and Colorado. His artwork is in the permanent collection at the the Baltimore Museum of Art. Roche has created commissioned work for Adult Swim, Dazed and Confused Magazine, Incubate Arts Festival and Harvestworks. He runs the cassette tape label Ultraviolet Light and is a member of the High Zero Collective. Roche is a professor of Film and Media at Johns Hopkins University.

Layne Garrett is an improvising musician and instrument builder based in Takoma Park, MD. He works with prepared guitars, found objects, and self-built instruments. He plays in the improvising duo Weed Tree with drummer Amanda Huron, as well as in regular and irregular collaborations with a spectrum of players from across the DC and Baltimore sound universe. He is an active promoter of the musical culture, hosting house shows for the past decade and recently as a founding member and curator for Rhizome DC. He leads instrument building and sound exploration workshops and camps for kids at various educational institutions around town. He has traveled to play at places like XFest in Massachusetts, Voice of the Valley Noise Rally in West Virginia, H-O-T Series of Improvised Music and Dance in Philadelphia, and Frantasia Festival of Out Music and Arts in Maine. Other activities have included facilitating a large-scale tape-loop intervention in Rock Creek Park, constructing participatory installations for the Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music and for the DC Listening Lounge’s annual Sound Scene event (including this year at the Hirshhorn Museum), and building a playable gong-map of the USA out of found car metal. In reference to a particular large freestanding sound structure he built, a collaborator commented: “man i would really love to play that big baby for 12 hours straight it is obviously a meditation key.”

 

Event location:

The Red Room at Normals Books and Records 425 E. 31st Street Baltimore, MD 21218

The Red Room is a volunteer-run space in Baltimore dedicated to mind-expanding experimental culture, headquartered at Normals Books and Records.