Saturday November 12 * 7pm * TICKETS
Public Speaking is the solo project of Brooklyn sound artist and songwriter Jason Anthony Harris. He uses voice, objects, electronics, and traditional instrumentation to make soulful modern music. He balances adventurous methods with an intimate compositional aesthetic.
Harris grew up on a Christmas tree farm in central Florida, and came to New York City in 2004 to get his start in music. He formed bands ranging from indie rock to instrumental improvisational noise-rock before starting a solo career. The accompaniment of an acoustic guitar eventually expanded into pedals, keyboard, and electronics, before he abandoned the guitar in live sets completely. He improvised his performances with processed voice and found objects, interacting with the space and the audience, trying to create spontaneous moments to share in these intimate small rooms, galleries, and basements. These experiments led him back to songwriting, and equipped with new tools and approaches to sound, he took on the moniker Public Speaking in 2012.
Public Speaking has performed and toured throughout the continental U.S. His music has been featured on the Bandcamp Weekly, The Needle Drop, and in the Museum of Modern Art Magazine. He has released albums on Fabrica, Already Dead, Tape Drift, and Floordoor Records. His albums merge vocal songs with abstract noise and polyrhythmic process pieces. The instrumental collection “Within Patterns” was named one of the Top Ten Experimental Albums of 2014 by A Closer Listen. Tiny Mix Tapes compared 2016’s “Caress, Redact” to Autre Ne Veut and How to Dress Well, and Brainwashed.com called it “one of this year’s best records.“ Public Speaking has been remixed by Jeremy Bible, Ariadne, More Eaze, Heejin Jang, and more.
Harris released “Six Golden Tumors” in 2019: a record deeply influenced by horror films and their soundtracks, biblical texts and mythologies, early Christian history, and Dante’s “Inferno.” His most recent albums “Songs Need People” and “Songs Need Friends” are comprised of songs he wrote for his Patreon subscribers about their lives during the pandemic. He is currently writing and recording new music featuring field recordings of construction during the Museum of Modern Art’s latest renovation.
Insect Factory is the music of Silver Spring, MD's Jeff Barsky, and is a meditative project focused on creating detailed and atmospheric guitar compositions. New tape/download “Celestial Cycles” just released on Already Dead Tapes & Records in August 2022!
“…densely layered loops, planes of static standing tall like a gigantic back-scratcher of audio, improvised melodies clamoring over drones like they’re peaks in a mountain range…monolithic, moving, fluid and entirely lovely.” – Tiny Mix Tapes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzIBEBuEWKI
PraxisCat is the experimental electronic solo project from Christine Paluch. Christine is a DC based composer using synthesizers, code, and other musical instruments to explore the relationship between synesthesia and urban spaces.
Astroturf Noise exists at the intersection of free improvisation, effects-heavy noise music, and American roots music. Since forming in 2017, the trio of Sam Day Harmet (mandolin/electronics), Sana Nagano (violin/effects), and Zach Swanson (upright bass) has carved out a distinctive sonic space. Here, American roots music coexists with electronics-spiked free improv, Downtown skronk, and manipulated found sounds. On their upcoming second album, they are also assisted with guest appearances from pedal steel master Susan Alcorn, avant-bluegrass guitarist Stash Wyslouch, and on piano, Soundpainting maestro Walter Thompson.
Written and recorded over the pandemic, their second album for 577 Records, Blazing/Freezing, reflects the anxiety of our moment: blazing and freezing from the effects of climate change, the anger of our chaotic political environment, the fear of whatever new insanity will come next. But it also reflects an unmistakable joy and playfulness throughout, an excitement for new sounds and musical collaboration. As hyphenated Americans (Jewish-American, Japanese-American, Mexican-American respectively), Astroturf Noise look to American music with mischievous instincts for deconstruction as they try to make sense of a deeply strange America.
"Fire music served up in a surrealist honky-tonk." -NPR Music
"Rollicking and ecstatic Americana-flavored punk-jazz weirdness ... out of this world." -The Brooklyn Rail
"Wildly fresh" -Jazziz Magazine
"Like a gnarled and perverted anti-Deliverance ... [a] disturbing yet oh-so-right recipe" - A Jazz Noise
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