Friday May 26 * 7pm * TICKETS
Roger Clark Miller is a guitarist, pianist, bassist, composer, singer, percussionist and occasional cornet player. He has been a band leader since 1967. His recordings have appeared on Matador, Fire, Ace of Hearts, SST, New Alliance, Forced Exposure, Cuneiform, Atavistic, Feeding Tube, World in Sound, and others. He has toured nationally since 1979 and internationally since 1998. His career officially began in 1979 when he co-founded the influential post-punk band Mission of Burma on guitar and vocals. He has performed in too many ensembles since then, and made too many wildly diverse records, to mention here. As well, he has scored soundtracks that appeared at the Sundance and the Telluride Film Festivals, and his art installation "Transmuting the Prosaic", has shown at two different art museums.
For this concert, Miller will be performing compositions from his newest album on Cuneiform Records "Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble."
He currently uses a customized strat and three lap-steel guitars on stands, two of them loaded with alligator clips or bolts, the other tuned to a post-Glenn Branca unison E. Using bass and tenor guitar strings, this melts his previous prepared piano ideas into more portable guitars, resulting in percussive grooves and bass-lines. Combining advanced looping technology with new stomp-boxes, many in stereo, he truly creates a "solo ensemble" sound.
To organize the compositions, he turned to his "Dream Interpretation" technique. By tightly following and translating a specific dream into music, a new type of structure was available: organic and personal, yet universal. Realizing the essentially surrealistic/psychedelic nature of dreams, the type of guitar sounds he was interested in now had an appropriate context. Miller will play a second set of guitar songs ("Unplugged") from across his career.
The Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp, Sept.2022: “The sonic twists and turns on these eight tracks do indeed follow a dream-like logic, as Miller jumps from drones to abstraction to heavy riffs that could fit into raging rock songs. Most impressive is the guitarist’s tonal control – this music may emerge from the fog of sleep, but Miller’s deft handling is crystal clear.”
AllAboutJazz.com, Nov. 2022: “Roger Clark Miller has a hell of a resume… “Dream Interpretation #16” opens the program with a mysterious low rumble, heavy on the reverb. Rock guitar riffs appear on top, then a locomotive rhythm drives a guitar solo (more than a bit reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix at his most experimental). “Dream Interpretation #20″ is awash with echo and backward loops, recalling Pink Floyd at their most psychedelic, before building to a massive multi-guitar climax… These dreams vary between three and seven minutes each, but they are information-rich. The dance between composition, performance and improvisation is unique, the end result of Miller’s long journey into these lands.”
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. His latest tape/download “Celestial Cycles” was 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