Lydia Lunch (née Lydia Koch) has been active on the alternative scene since 1976. She was formerly a member of the New York underground scene which she co-defined by the modest name of no wave. Her frantic performances with her first band Teenage Jesus & The Jerks shared the stage with Sonic Youth, Suicide and Swans. Total artistic freedom, a voracious desire for honest and often controversial expression, post punk and wild free jazz experimentation defined the direction of many.
After her first years spent in New York there followed a short (but important) period in Los Angeles and an extremely creative period in London and West Berlin. The number of people that Lydia Lunch has worked with is incredible, a veritable who’s who of alternative culture: Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, Einstűrzende Neubauten, Foetus, The Birthday Party, Exene Cervenka, Die Haut, Swans, Henry Rollins and many others. These collaborations were often very extreme and exposing. Early consensus among the artists often ended up in mutual hatred. But perhaps that is why their collaborative projects are so extraordinary. Take for example The Birthday Party Drunk On Pope's Blood/Agony Is the Ecstasy (4AD, 1982), the extraordinary album with guitarist Rowland S. Howard The Shotgun Wedding (Rough Trade, 1991) or the literally copulative project with Clint Ruin aka Foetus Stinkfist (1987).
Thanks to frequent collaborations with other artists, Lunch’s discography is very rich, but hard to characterize. Paradoxically, it contains many solo recordings. All of them are groundbreaking, from the early Queen of Siam, which surprises with its psychedelic sweeping pop sounds, to the most recent (and almost entirely jazz) album Smoke In The Shadows. Lydia Lunch does not just focus on music; throughout her career she has also been very active in literature, theatre (she has written over 50 one-act plays with Nick Cave) and film, and often goes on tours devoted to the spoken word (she’s even given lessons). Recently she has focussed on photography and sculpture; she has already had several exhibitions. Notable among her latest music projects is her 2007 collaboration with guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, known from the The Mars Volta. Her newest project Big Sexy Noise, which Lydia will present at the Alternative Festival, was released this month under the Sartorial Records label. Lydia Lunch is now working together with the well-known British band Gallon Drunk with James Johnston, Terry Edwards and Ian White. The result is a heavy and sexy sound, gushing with rugged blues reverberations, expressive keyboards, wild saxophones and of course incredible, unmistakable vocals. Lydia Lunch has inspired the work of many better known artists and often even their personal lives. She remains one of the most important figures on the alternative scene.
Mona Mur & En Esch (GER)
The singer, performer and sound installation artist Mona Mur and En Esch, a former member of the legendary electronic body music formation KMFDM, are coming to support Lydia Lunch with a fresh project from the kindred city of Berlin. Wild and caustic music skirting the edge of metal, goth and electronica with strikingly arty vocals. Come and see why foreign reviews have called it gothic chanson.
www.myspace.com/monamurenesch
The Ritchie Success & Pavel Zajíček (CZ)
The Ritchie Success have been playing together since 2003, but they didn't release their debut CD Chloroform until this year. Wild electro-rock with a distinct industrial dance sound, German texts unmistakeably served up by vocalist Philip Shenker. This time, however, The Ritchie Success have joined forces with a legend of the Czech underground. The industrially stark passages and viscerally striking poetry of Pavel Zajíček work together surprisingly smoothly.
www.myspace.com/ritchiesuccess
http://www.myspace.com/dg307
George Cremaschi (USA) + Le Quan Ninh (F) + Frederic Blondy (F)
This is a new formation for these veteran musicians, who first met in California in 2007 while Blondy and Ninh were touring the US. They bring to the music the experience and freedom of many years of working with the world’s best improvisers, as well as the rigor, discipline and structure that comes from being composers and interpreters of contemporary music. Beyond style or tradition, the freely improvised music of this trio is rooted in the material of the instruments through which pass all of the listening and understanding of the musicians. Sounds, silences and gestures focusing on the ever-changing rhythms of neuro-electrical activity. http://www.cesta.cz/georgecremaschi.htm
http://www.lequanninh.net/
http://www.fredericblondy.net/
Phil Minton
Both his parents were singers. He learnt trumpet from age 15 and played and sang with local jazz groups, moving to London in 63 to play with Mike Westbrook. From the mid 60's he worked in dance bands in the UK, Canary Islands and Sweden. Rejoining Westbrook in 72 he was a regular member of his Brass Band until 84, playing trumpet and singing extensively in Europe, USA and beyond. Through the last 30 years he's worked mainly as an improvising singer and sung with most of the worlds leading improvising musicians as well as been a guest singer for many composers music. He collaborated with pianist Veryan Weston on compositions such as "Songs from a Prison Diary" and is currently a member of improvising groups TooT, No Walls, 5 Men Singing, fORC, Adorno, Speeq and Axon. He also has a quartet with Veryan, John Butcher, and Roger Turner, and plays duos with these three musicians. New working duos are with singers and musicians, Isabelle Duthoit, Maggie Nicols, Audrey Chen, Terry Day, Hugh Metcalfe, Daunik Lazro and Sophie Agnel. He was a Nesta awardee in 2005 and in the last 15 years has traveled to many countries with his "Feral Choir" - a workshop and concert for all people who want to sing.
A series of workshops for amateur singers leading to a performance in front of an audience. The project was created in the late 1980s when Phil Minton was asked to organize a workshop for amateur musicians in Stockholm. The success of this first attempt led him to further develop the idea. The project is not only for singers, but for everyone who wants to experience the freedom of experimentation. Phil Minton encourages participants to examine all of the possibilities of singing by means of exercises and improvisation over the course of the three-day workshop, leading to a concert performance. Some of the participants are professionals, some are actors and musicians, but most are amateurs without any previous experience in musical experimentation. Most participants in the workshops evaluate them very positively.
Isabelle Duthoit
clarinet & voice
She studies classical music in the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Lyon, and soon, she moves towards contemporain music, and works with composers. She finds her way with free improvise music and she creates projects as Triolid, Trio Canape ( with photo and phonography) Fogo (rock band). She is a member of Six, Hiatus ( experimental band plays contemporain and improve music) , Sol (free jazz rock) , she plays with Jacques Demierre, Jacques Di Donato. She learns by herself to sing and she has a particular voice, like a language before language, a sing without words. She has a duet with Phil Minton and a solo. In 2008 she’s resident at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto ( Japan) and she works with Nô and Bunraku singers. Untill 1995 and 2005 she creates the festival Fruits de Mhere with Jacques Di Donato, festival for experimental music, dance, cinema.... Since 1997, she is a clarinet and improvisation teacher in the Evry Music School (Essone France)
Phil Minton (GB) + Isabelle Duthoit (F)
„This is not the word but the breathing that moves the heart of the spectator“ said Sakihodayu san, a Bunraku chanter (tayu).
It may also be what pushes Phil Minton and Isabelle Duthoit to play with all these mouth and throat sounds, all these sounds without words. A duo touching the extreme, light and serious, funny and dramatic, blur and tranparent, sharp and sweet. A duo where strength and fragility delicately interweave with human breathing, with moaning throats, singing birds, whistling harmonics, sounds of machines and electronics, rapid streaming...
To whom belong these voices that are sometimes touching the sky and sometimes approaching the abyss?
http://www.philminton.co.uk/
http://www.philmintonsferalchoir.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kHZ5ezJTY8
Agon Orchestra & Ivan Martin Jirous (CZ)
Poetry and music have long belonged together and Ivan Martin Jirous’s life has had more of a connection to music than anyone else. Petr Kofroň, Ivan Acher, Michal Nejtek, Marko Ivanović put Jirous’ unique poetry to music for the Magorova Summa project. Modern classical compositions and poetry make wonderful music together…
http://www.geocities.com/agon.orchestra/
NTS Trio (CZ)
Nejtek Michal – piano, keyboard instruments and other sounds, arrangement
Tichý Petr – contrabass and other sounds
Smetáček Štěpán – drums and other sounds
This holy trinity first met sometime in early 2009. Their first performance together was on May 31 at the JazzDock club in Prague. Their common predilection for composers of contemporary music, jazz contrabassists and rock drummers who break the barriers of musical conventions impressed Guerilla Records, which will release their debut album in November 2009. The album will be launched at their concert at this year’s Alternative Festival.
http://www.myspace.com/nejtkuvtichysmetacek
Ivan Palacký (CZ) + Klaus Filip (A)
Even though laptopper and developer of "lloopp" software Klaus Filip and Ivan Palacký, playing on his Dopleta knitting machine, have already gotten together and played a number of times, we can hardly expect some previously-arranged strategy from them. The silence of the podium amplified several times and interrupted in strange proportions by the micro-malfunctions of their slow instruments… though it could be something else entirely.
www.palacky.org/
www.kunstradio.at/BIOS/filipbio.html
Pendler (A)
The melody of the Austrian trio mysteriously shrouded in shimmering guitar, bursts of keyboards and decent beats allied with unexpectedly pure vocals blended together with a disquietingly progressive intensity. The visual aspect of their art is integral to their show and Pendler certainly does not hide its peculiar sense of humour and playfulness.
http://pendler.klingt.org/
Golden diskó ship (GER)
Golden diskó ship is a one girl band. A mix of an original and personable guitar style, found objects, toy instruments, computer beats & sounds and layered vocals with selfmade video projections, drawing you into a unique, beautiful and immersive world of music and song.
"…a chaotic, organic and original music world…"
"…dreamy, experimental folk electronica, sounds like walking on the beach with the sun in your eyes…"
www.myspace.com/goldendiskoship
http://www.goldendiskoship.com/
Yoko Miura (Jap) + Arnaud Benoist (F)
Yoko Miura is a classically-trained pianist and composer. The key words for describing her resolutely distinctive music are freedom, candidness and improvisation. Alternativa will see her playing together with French drummer Arnaud Benoist, who has left his meanderings in hardcore punk formations behind him and is now mainly engaged in improvisation.
yokomiura.main.jp/
www.myspace.com/yokopia
Orchester Ivana Tomoviča (SK)
Guitarist Ivan Tomovič is somewhat of a hidden gem of the Slovak alternative scene. Deftly tucked away in several blues groups, he has been interfering with traditional structures for years now in his two-member Orchestr where his guitar, run through and multiplied by all kinds of effects, is only joined by throat singer Ďuro Turtev, playing with verve and extraordinary invention something that has no Czech equivalent: hallusion.
Mikoláš Chadima + Július Fujak (SK)
The word “xafoo” in Swahili means dirty and that is precisely the name Czech alternative icon Mikoláš Chadima and Slovak experimenter Július Fujak gave their joint project. The intermedial project will be based to a large extent on improvisation which will be supplemented with visual creations of full computerised drawings, photographs and sound objects.
http://www.julofujak.sk/
http://www.mchband.cz/
http://www.myspace.com/mchband
Ganesh Anandan (Indie) + Hans Reichel (GER)
The very name of the project indicates what we can expect from this dialogue of two drummers from different cultures: a discourse of three original instruments made by the musicians themselves. The mysterious names of Daxophone, Shruti Stick and Metalophone definitely arouse expectations. At times this unclassifiable music with a large dose of improvisation can seem unexpectedly pleasant and melodious and, in addition to this, it is a grand visual experience as well.
http://www.fingerworks.org/
http://www.daxo.de/
Tex Napalm w/ Dimi Dero & Lo Spider (GER/F)
This Dortmund native son is firmly straddling garage rock, nineteen fifties rock'n'roll and decadent chansons. Echoes of country and blues as well as the Berlin Australians headed by Nick Cave can also be heard. Tex Napalm is presenting his first solo album Dionysus Rising and will be playing together with French noise punk veterans Dimi Dero and Lo Spider.
www.myspace.com/texnapalm
www.myspace.com/texnapalmdimidero
Rány těla (CZ)
The noise-punk-pop revelation from the nineties is back on the scene! The legendary formation Rány Těla returned in 2006 after almost a ten-year pause and with even more energy than they exuberated in their first incarnation. Wild blues, vaulted pop melodies and a raspy wall of noise from three guitars all wrapped up with an ironic dandy sneer. The presence of the Australian Berliners can be felt yet again…
www.myspace.com/ranytela
