Image: Ben Miller cover art by Jim Chatelain
Tuesday April 16 * 7pm * $10-20 * TICKETS
A member of seminal art rock bands like Destroy All Monsters and The Glenn Branca Ensemble, Ben Miller started his recording career as a teenage member of Sproton Layer, with his brothers Roger and Laurence. Ben Miller has also recorded with M3, GKW and as Ben Miller/Degeneration. Utilizing extended techniques, prepared objects and implements, and an array of processing, his approach to the electric guitar on In the Moment is almost like a polyphonic sound generator, fully apart from the tradition of Chuck Berry, Clapton and company. Alien tongues, ambient soundscapes, the sounds of mechanization and technology breaking down all emerge in the masterful manipulation of sound by Miller. A native of Ann Arbor MI, he currently leads Porcelain Hammer and Empool and Sensorium Saxophone Orchestra.
Described by The Road to Sound as making “shadowy music that prickles on your skin” and “unafraid to be anything at all”, Gabi Vanek is a bassoonist who exists in a world of harsh noise and drone/doom. She’s performed as both an ensemble member and soloist at small and large festivals such as the Darmstädter Internationale Ferienkurse, International Double Reed Society, Feed Me Weird Things, Oh My Ears, and exhibited at the Osaka University of the Arts Electro-Acoustic Music Festival. More likely, you’ll find her making noises in more “unconventional” spaces, like your local dive bar.
Silver Spring poet John-Michael Bloomquist's first book Rocket Celestial (White Stag, 2023) explores a theme of space exploration, tracking the lives of the first rocket engineers, the Ukrainian Sergei Korolev who launched Sputnik and other space firsts, and the German/American Wernher Von Braun, the creator of the V2 and the Apollo mission. It also has parables from St. Francis who visits many of the animals that our scientist performed horrible experiments on to get their perspective on the space race. There is also a priest of/from the future, Fr. Nescio (which is latin for I don't know), who has hallucinatory visions of his past/our future. As well as homeric styled hymns to the planets.