Stephen O’Malley is a guitarist, producer, composer, and visual artist from Seattle, Washington, and one of the most influential drone avant-gardists of the last decades. He has conceptualised and participated in numerous drone-metal, death/doom, and experimental bands, including Sunn O))), Burning Witch, Khanate and KTL. He is also known for an extensive list of collaborators in both music and art, including Merzbow, and Keiji Haino, and theatre specialist Gisèle Vienne, sculptor Banks Violette, performance artist Nico Vascellari and filmmaker Alexis Destoop.
For Tune, he chose to present both solo and collaborative works. On the first evening he performs Les Sphères (effondrez-les), with accompaniment from composer Kali Malone. The piece draws on his deeply informed sound practice developed by a fascination with dhrupad, long wire instrumentation, drone music, phenomenological spectralism, and sound bath/healing. O’Malley here presents a long form piece of microtonal, physical sound presented in more intimate spaces.
Berlin/London-based cellist Lucy Railton will start the evening with a solo cello performance. Railton has been an active performer, music producer and composer for over a decade, releasing albums on Modern Love, Editions Mego – GRM Portraits, PAN (with Peter Zinovieff) and Takuroku. Having emerged from a long-term engagement with classical and contemporary music, these recent works exist between modern instrumentalism, electroacoustic composition, improvisation and expressive musique concrète. Her work often focuses on the sonic potential of her instrument and how it serves her experiments in electronic music production and installation work.
