weirdo/outer limits music and film, Cork

Black Sun & Plugd Records present: Daniel Higgs - Triskel Cork, May 4th

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:38:00 -0400

Daniel Higgs portrait by Marcin Lewandowski. Taken at Black Sun at Camden Palace Cork, 2011.
————-

Triskel Arts Centre / Saturday May 4th / Tickets on the door: €10

//// DANIEL HIGGS
http://www.thrilljockey.com/thrill/Daniel-Higgs
http://www.dischord.com/band/danielhiggs

Daniel Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs is a musician and artist from Baltimore, Maryland on whose behalf superlatives are destined to fail. It’s not that his artistic output – spanning three decades, numerous albums, books of poetry and collections of drawings – simply eludes classification, it defies it. Often we hear that a true work of art is meant to speak for itself, and with the work of Daniel Higgs the maxim rings truer than ever. His art is of the cosmos, we on Earth merely lucky that it happens to be confined to our atmosphere, in our lifetime.

Higgs is known primarily for his work as the sole lyricist and frontman of the band Lungfish, a four-piece dedicated to charting, in this listener’s estimation, nothing short of the evolution of all species, known and unknown. That the band has undertaken this pursuit in the guise of a humble rock outfit, in the absence of any public relations fanfare, metanarrative, or manifesto has been enough to endear them to tens of thousands. They are enshrined as one of America’s last true folk bands, and Higgs anointed as a patron saint to artistic purity.

In recent years, Higgs has released a number of solo outings that can only be described as the ultimate in isolation, worlds away from the hypnotic, communal rock of his band.

//// WOVEN SKULL
http://wovenskull.com/

Woven skull is the vessel with which the sound of larks, lakes and the high breeze off tree tops travels from its source to the comfortable confines of rigid amplification, battered drumskins and rusty chimes into repetitive dark melodies.

Since 2008 the core trio that makes up Woven Skull have been gathering together in the remote area in the north west of Ireland known as Leitrim. Known for its tales of ghosts, ‘tree folk’, under water creatures and the constant battle calls of the ancient Tuatha De Danann that can be heard on Letirims Iron Mountain. These are the surroundings and forces that influence the sound that Woven Skull create: A contrast of minimal drones, repetition and psychedelic distorted riffs all layered in constant unconscious rhythms.

As well as the 3 core members, Woven Skull often take other people with them when playing live or during recordings. Other ‘players’ have included members of United Bible Studies, Gnod, Core of the Coal Man, Raising Holy Sparks and more. When playing live the group incorporates visuals and creates an intimate setting with candles and dim lighting. They have a number of self-released CDs as well as a tape release (Moods of the Hill People) on Fort Evil Fruit (Dublin) and a release coming out on Golden Lab Records (Manchester).

//// BLACK SUN CINEMA PRESENTS ::

In Deference to the Squeamish I (Willie Stewart, 2013)
This haunting track from Divil A’ Bit’s upcoming album is graced with an exceptionally lyrical and eerily delicate music video that entices viewers into discreetly experimental woodland reverie. Music by David Colohan, Natalia Beylis and Willie Stewart.

CHUMLUM (Ron Rice, 1964)

Ron Rice, director of the influential beatnik romp The Flower Thief (1960), has been called “the great tragic figure of the ‘60s underground film scene”. He completed only a handful of films before his death at age 29, but the playfully gorgeous androgynous swoon Chumlum (1964), starring Jack Smith and featuring a score by Angus MacLise (ex-Velvet Underground), remains emblematic of early ‘60s New York experimental filmmaking at its most dizzyingly creative. Shot on breaks between takes on pioneering gay underground icon Smith’s film Normal Love, it captures Smith’s cast in their full ‘Arabian Nights’ regalia decadently draped in hammocks, their bodies layering up and intertwining like the exquisite superimpositions of images Rice employs throughout. Bodies, fabrics, colours, images blend and blur into a hypnotic erotic reverie that encompasses the mind and senses like a delicate but inescapable net of the finest lace. Amongst the ‘flaming creatures’ on display in the cast are Barbara Rubin (director of the sexually graphic experimental classic Christmas on Earth) and Warhol superstar Mario Montez.

“All of yesterday’s parties seem to have exploded in the air… A hallucinatory micro-epic […] and one of the great “heroic doses” of ’60s underground cinema, a movie so sumptuously and serenely psychedelic it appears to have been printed entirely on gauze…
Chumlum [manages] to capture with unnerving fidelity the murky glories, the sudden temps morts and temps mutant, not to mention the inevitable malaise of a rich but fading high.”

-Chuck Stephens, Cinema Scope 54

erikleesnyder: Black Sun, Cork & Plugd Records...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:10:00 -0400

erikleesnyder:

Black Sun, Cork & Plugd Records presents:

Daniel Higgs, Woven Skull and a very special screening of Ron Rice’s Chumlum.

May 4th, 2013 // Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin St, Cork

Mike Gangloff, Tóla Custy & Bill Mousoulis (programme of Super-8)

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:54:00 -0400

Wednesday evening, April 3rd 8pm

Donations appreciated.

Screening first, followed by sets from Tóla Custy (Clare, Ireland) and Mike Gangloff (Virginia, USA).

Photo of Mike Gangloff and Nathan Bowles by Kevin McDonnell

With US underground drone wizards Pelt and later the barnstorming Appalachian old-time band Black Twig Pickers, Mike Gangloff helped forge a unique blend of avant-garde freedom and dyed-in-the-(plaid)-wool backwoods traditionalism. But along the way, the multi-instrumentalist offered only rare glimpses of the music he plays alone. This April, Gangloff returns to Ireland for a second visit, performing fiddle, banjo and vocal tunes he learned from regional masters around his home in Southwest Virginia and stretching out into personal spaces claimed in nearly two decades of improvisational music.

His is an idiosyncratic musical landscape informed by knee-to-knee sessions with players ranging from guitar fire-breather Donald Miller of Borbetomagus to Charlie Parr, from the late Jack Rose (a bandmate in Pelt and frequent Twig collaborator) to pre-war recording artist Clayton Hall, from the Slate Mountain Ramblers to the Ivanhoe Wildcats.

Expect dones and hoots, full-on stomps and disconsolate dirges. Expect to be rocked back on your heels in a way you’ve never been before.

“join pelt in celebrating the ecstatic joy that results from refusing to accept the alleged primacy of shit-culture. it does not exist if we will not believe in it. and we must refuse it on all levels always. the proof of its surrender is at hand. yr hand. right now, motherfucker!”
-Byron Coley

”Both scholars of the regional sounds and advocates of an ecstatic and highly personal approach to the music, the Twigs hold down local dance and bar gigs, play all manner of celebrations and every so often, hit the road. Along the way, Isak Howell, Nathan Bowles and Mike Gangloff kept company with some of underground America’s heavyweights and haunted the doorsteps of Appalachian fiddle and banjo masters. They’ve played for the National Council for the Traditional Arts and for audiences overseas. And they’ve put out a string of acclaimed albums, including 2008’s Hobo Handshake and last year’s Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers.” -Thrill Jockey on the Black Twig Pickers:

Also as part of this night, Black Sun is delighted to present a programme of Super-8 films by Bill Mousoulis, a legend of the Melbourne independent film scene who has created over a hundred works since the early ‘80s. Filmmaker, critic, founder of the journal Senses of Cinema, and passionate advocate personal filmmaking, Mousoulis has been hailed by Australia’s preeminent film critic Adrian Martin in glowing terms:

Can there be any doubt that (for the Super-8 world, but more generally for Australian independent film-making) Bill Mousoulis is a visionary? Tireless worker for the small movie at large, and ceaseless creator of his own contribution to cinema, he has come into this world, I believe, to inspire us… A romantic, a mystic, an artist inspired by the muse, a free spirit …I happen to think that Bill’s work is simultaneously naive (in all the best senses) and extremely sophisticated. You surely don’t have to look twice to be convinced that he is, after all, the Bresson of Super-8 … Bill’s movies aim high, and they convince you of their right to aim that high…

Cork audiences will have the rare opportunity of seeing a selection of Mousulis’ short works from the ‘80s and ‘90s, films in which he conjures witty, poetic and often soulful cinematic gems from his immediate surroundings, often with the help of an inspired ear for popular music.

For more information on Bill Mousoulis, visit his website: http://innersense.com.au/

Richard Dawson, Raising Holy Sparks, Birchall & Cheetham, Saul Levine screening

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 05:54:00 -0500

Black Sun, the Guesthouse & Plugd Records present:

Friday 8th March | Plugd Records at the Triskel Arts Centre | 8pm, €7

Richard Dawson

Richard Dawson has been a much-loved musical spectacle in his native Newcastle for many years now, a skewed troubadour who sings and plays guitar with a rare intensity and a very singular style. Beguiled northern audiences have long awaited the arrival of recordings that capture Dawson’s genius, and it has finally arrived with his album The Magic Bridge, a 10-song collection out now on cd and vinyl by Box Records.

Dawson’s music is a collision of opposites, his hoarsely cracking voice suddenly rising to a magical soar that’s been compared to Tim Buckley, John Martyn and Richard Youngs, while his battered acoustic guitar veers from stumble to sublime in a way that can recall Sir Richard Bishop or Captain Beefheart. Add this to his snaring way with words and Dawson’s got you pinned – stories like the one relayed in Black Dog In the Sky typify his by turns heartbreaking and hilarious self-deprecation and skill in painting a story with both words and guitar.

The listener is drawn in carefully but irresistibly from the instrumental opener Juniper Berries Float Down The Stream, which creeps in falteringly but grows and envelops before you realise it’s happened and your gripped. By track 2 and the arrival of his skyward voice (not to mention its beautifully tender conclusion) and Dawson has you under his spell.

In the words of The Wire, “What makes The Magic Bridge such a remarkable album is that every comparison one might make, however illustrious the precursor, feels both entirely justified by Dawson’s music, yet entirely inadequate as an explanation of it. This elusive freshness is why the album demands to be properly heard, compelling the listener to keep coming back to it.”

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://richard-dawson.bandcamp.com/album/the-magic-bridge” data-mce-href=”http://richard-dawson.bandcamp.com/album/the-magic-bridge”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;The Magic Bridge by Richard Dawson&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Raising Holy Sparks

Fronted by David Colohan, drawing on the devotional musics of church & countryside, Raising Holy Sparks play Appalachian Kosmische hymns to the lunar/rural arcane. David (also of United Bible Studies, The Magickal Folk of the Faraway Tree, Cubs etc.) formed Agitated Radio Pilot in 1993 as his musical solo project. A great amount of material has been recorded and released over the years, genres varying from lo-fi, ambient and alternative rock to the melancholic singer-songwriter and psychedelic folk of today. Looking in new directions, David has embarked on a new project under the name Raising Holy Sparks.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://agitatedradiopilot.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-the-unitarian-church-dublin” data-mce-href=”http://agitatedradiopilot.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-the-unitarian-church-dublin”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Live At The Unitarian Church, Dublin by Raising Holy Sparks&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Birchall & Cheetham duo

David Birchall (guitar) and Andrew Cheetham (drum kit) met when they were invited to play with Rhys Chatham as part of his G3 Ensemble in Manchester, March 2011. Since then, they have been improvising free-form deconstructed rock and drones in a tiny room within a dilapidated printing press. ‘Tipping Point’ was released by MIE Music (Pelt, Sarin Smoke, Richard Youngs, Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides) and they toured the UK in November 2011. David and Andrew have both toured the UK and Europe extensively with various musical projects. Recent gigs have seen them opening for Alan Silva & Roger Turner, Jon Mueller, Volcano the Bear, Ken Vandermark Trio and a performance at the Hunters Moon Festival 2012 in Ireland.

“A blend of disjointed, free form cosmic edged curves performances. Their sound is not a million miles away from some sort of repressed free jazz, but is a bit too esoteric to be just that.” - Hunters Moon Festival Programme

“Raw, chaotic, as if the guitars have been fashioned with tendons in place of strings, and the drums skinned with actual skin.” - Fluid Radio

“Bad teach holier mulch, a cab hum-thrilled echo, David Birchall and Andrew Cheetham cut up some Elmore James tapes and spliced them back together all out of sequence then learned the results note-for-note, I reckon. “ - Braw

Screening of Saul Levine’s Notes of an Early Fall (1976, 34 mins)
Notes of an Early Fall is a classic of personal filmmaking by Saul Levine, a man hailed as ‘the king of Super-8’. Film diary and film poem in one, it collages images taken from daily life and surroundings into a throbbing yet subtle meditation on claustrophobia and a sense of entrapment. The distinctive rhythms of camera movement and editing cause this raw, tactile work to breathe and react with a vividly individualistic force. Every frame attests to the handmade nature of the work, the material fragility and luminous vitality of Super-8 in the grasp of a poet.

Saul Levine is not only a maker but also a respected advocate of avant-garde film and video. Based in Boston, he is currently a professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he has taught for over 30 years and programmed the longstanding MassArt Film Society. He is noted for his dedication to social change and personal self-expression.

“There’s something naggingly incomplete about the cinema of Saul Levine. No slight intended. Really, such a quality is intrinsic to the appeal of his films, those fluttering transmissions of stream-of-consciousness nostalgia. This is rough draft cinema, work perpetually in progress… His films scream and stretch at the seams. Splices announce themselves loudly and proudly, rudely even. The mark of the maker is evident… [The films] seem to begin and end in the middle, as though we were leaping into them mid-stream, mid-sentence, mid-thought. If there is a structural integrity, an organizing principle, it is an inherently emotional one… They churn like the endless flood of human memory.” (A. A. Dowd, In Review Online)

Our deepest thanks to Saul Levine for giving Black Sun, Cork permission to screen his work.

Experimental Film Society screening at Plugd Records, Friday...

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 10:25:00 -0500

Experimental Film Society screening at Plugd Records, Friday January 25th, 9.30pm

This programme of contemporary experimental film features new work by Irish-based members of Experimental Film Society. It is presented as part of Art|Works, Creative Arts and Industries Platform - a new collaborative initiative between UCC, Corcadorca Theatre Development Centre and Plugd Records.

Experimental Film Society supports and promotes works by a dozen filmmakers scattered across the globe, whose films are distinguished by an uncompromising devotion to personal, experimental cinema. It was founded and is run by Dublin-based Iranian filmmaker Rouzbeh Rashidi.

http://www.experimentalfilmsociety.com/

WÖLFLINGE 12/4/’12 (Vicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain, 7 mins, 2012)

Since 2010, Cork-based sound/performance artist Vicky Langan (Wölflinge) and experimental filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain have been working together in a creative audio-visual partnership built on the strikingly fitting match between Langan’s magnetic, often troublingly intense presence as a performer and Le Cain’s distinctively jarring, disruptive visual rhythms. Wölflinge 12/4/’12 is the record of a typically visceral performance Langan gave at Triskel Christchurch last year.

SOUND FROM THE VALLEY FLOOR (Dean Kavanagh, 25 mins, 2012)

Dean Kavanagh is an independent avant-garde filmmaker based in Wicklow. He favours ‘visual stories’ which radically reduce conventional narrative elements. These haunting, visually hypnotic works focus on private rituals and mysterious journeys to or from ‘home’, to or from memory. Shot mainly in Cork, Sound From the Valley Floor introduces a strain of bizarre humour into Kavanagh’s poetic evocation of displacement.

AREAS OF SYMPATHY (Maximilian Le Cain, 40 mins, 2013)

Areas of Sympathy, Le Cain’s latest solo work, is a visually raw collage of home movies, performance documentation and found footage that knits together into a frustrating but highly exhilarating series of abandoned science fiction / thriller narratives without beginning or end. The memory of an old movie partially watched late at night while more than half asleep…

HOMO SAPIENS PROJECT (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 16 mins, 2013)

The prolific and influential Rouzbeh Rashidi has been working on the ongoing Homo Sapiens Project since 2011. This series of short films is a laboratory for experimenting with cinematic forms. A ‘notebook’, sometimes an oblique ‘diary’, the films produced range from cryptic, often darkly surreal film diaries to impressionistic portraits of places and people, from found footage séances to semi-documentary monologues. Formally, they encompass everything from highly composed and distantly framed meditations to frenetically flickering plunges into the textural substance of moving images. HSP 139 was made as a response to Le Cain’s Areas of Sympathy.

Black Sun Cinema Recommends Michael Higgins @ CFC Gallery

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 08:29:43 -0500

Michael Higgins, one of Ireland’s most talented and exciting experimental filmmakers, has a film-based exhibition opening at 7pm on Thursday 8th at Cork Film Centre Gallery, Ballincollig. The opening will also feature a special screening of his new feature film Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep.

Inspired by cinema and visual narrative, Michael’s work involves a wide range of both digital and analogue technologies, and concerns people’s perceptions of time and reality. In creating content, Michael acts on a single idea, be it a piece of music, an image, a character or environment. In following this initial idea through, he makes a point of being open to changes and external forces that occur throughout the various stages of production, allowing the development of the work to be self-driven. He simply assists it in materializing.

When working with film, he utilizes vintage camera equipment, expired film stocks and hand processing in order to bring out the unique characteristics of celluloid subject to destruction and decay. These processes achieve unpredictable results that resonate with ideas of time past or a ‘lost time’ and also a sense of decadence linked to an apparently dying format.

For more information, please visit:

http://corkfilmcentregallery.com

Michael Higgins’ website:

http://mgmh.me

Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep trailer:

http://somemustwatch.com

Black Sun presents: A Programme of Lithuanian Experimental Film

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 13:15:44 -0400

Saturday 20th October 2012

Black Sun Cinema presents:

A Programme of Lithuanian Experimental Film
in association with Tinklai International Short Film Festival (http://www.tinklai.net/), Lithuania, and Solus Film Collective (http://www.soluscollective.com/), Dublin

Saturday 20 October 2012, 8.45pm,
Triskel Christchurch Cinema, Tobin St., Cork
blacksuncork.tumblr.com

Black Sun Cinema, in partnership with Triskel Christchurch, is proud to present a retrospective programme of Lithuanian experimental shorts from the ‘90s. These films, very rarely screened in Ireland, provide an eye-opening snapshot of a distinctive independent film culture in the process of defining itself.

Much of the programme highlights a tendency towards personal, poetic and formally adventurous approaches to documentary reality. The wordless, powerfully bleak yet pictorially exquisite rural worlds evoked in The Window (Julius Ziz, 1989) and Earth of the Blind (Audrius Stonys, 1992) will appeal to admirers of Bela Tarr, while Ten Minutes Before the Flight of Icarus (Arunas Matelis, 1991) offers a charmingly quirky glimpse of an urban neighbourhood in upheaval. The Black Box (Algimantas Maceina, 1994) confronts personal and national history more directly, albeit in a visually radical fashion.

Contrasting with the rest of the programme, the selection of hand-painted, hand-scratched films by artist August Varkalis plunges into visual abstraction: ecstatic, fast-paced cascades of pure cinema that make for intoxicating viewing.

Black Sun is delighted to announce that renowned Lithuanian filmmaker Julius Ziz will be present to introduce the screening.

The Window (Julius Ziz, 1989)
The Black Box (Algimantas Maceina, 1994)
Ten Minutes Before the Flight of Icarus (Arunas Matelis, 1991)
Earth of the Blind (Audrius Stonys, 1992)
Abstract films by August Varkalis (1995-2002)

Our latest Black Sun Cinema Trailer.

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:00:19 -0400

Our latest Black Sun Cinema Trailer.

Black Sun Cinema: WHITE NOISE -a film programme curated by Florian Wüst

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 07:02:00 -0400

Cork Film Centre presents:

Black Sun Cinema:
‘White Noise’
a film programme curated by Florian Wüst
in association with Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, and Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin

22 September 2012, 7pm
TDC, Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin St., Cork
www.blacksuncork.tumblr.com

Black Sun Cinema is partnering with Cork Film Centre this September 22nd to present
a very special evening of experimental films from Berlin’s famous Arsenal archive. We are delighted to welcome Florian Wüst, Berlin-based artist and film curator currently on residency at Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, who programmed and will present this selection of works with the theme ‘White Noise’.

‘White Noise’ centres on legendary German underground film icons Wilhelm and Birgit
Hein and gives Cork audiences the rare opportunity of seeing four of their films.

The programme as a whole reflects the deconstruction of cinema and television not only
as a monolithic system of representation and a dream factory, but also as an instrument
of corporate power and social control. Images of (human) disfigurement and the mysteries of childhood mix with the penetration of the senses on different levels. The combination of poetic collage, critical analysis, and radical abstraction intends to challenge the emotional as well as physical capacities of the audience.
‘White Noise’ also features works by internationally acclaimed artists and filmmakers:
Thorsten Fleisch, Christoph Girardet & Matthias Müller, Sharon Lockhart, Gunvor
Nelson, Richard Serra & Carlota Fay Schoolman, and Wolf Vostell.

Where possible, films in this programme will be projected from 16mm film prints.

Programme:

My Name is Oona, Gunvor Nelson, USA 1969, 10’
Rohfilm, Wilhelm & Birgit Hein, West Germany 1968, 22’
Sun in Your Head, Wolf Vostell, West Germany 1963, 7’
Khalil, Shaun, A Woman under the Influence, Sharon Lockhart, USA 1994, 16’
Charles Manson, Wilhelm & Birgit Hein, West Germany 1970, 5’

—- interval —-

Television Delivers People, Richard Serra & Carlota Fay Schoolman, USA 1973, 6’
625, Wilhelm & Birgit Hein, West Germany 1969, 34’
Energie!, Thorsten Fleisch, Germany 2007, 5’
Contre-Jour, Christoph Girardet & Matthias Müller, Germany 2009, 11’
Weissfilm, Wilhelm & Birgit Hein, West Germany 1977, 5’

www.corkfilmcentre.com
www.siriusartscentre.ie
www.arsenal-berlin.de
www.fwuest.com

Black Sun Cinema, August 12th Poster by Rouzbeh Rashidi

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 04:54:59 -0400

Black Sun Cinema, August 12th

Poster by Rouzbeh Rashidi

Black Sun Cinema: A Day of Experimental Film at Triskel Christchurch - Sun August 12th

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:39:00 -0400

Presented in association with Triskel Christchurch, Black Sun, Cork’s weirdo/outer limits music/film event, is presenting a day of unsettling experimental film, a host of rare cinematic shadows flickering mysteriously at the darker fringes of the mind. On a Sunday afternoon this August 12th (from 2pm) adventurous souls seeking haven from the harsh summer light will find sanctuary in Triskel’s Christchurch Cinema as three programmes of hauntingly dreamlike avant-garde visions fall through the church’s muffled darkness to take possession of all present:

- American underground legend James Fotopoulos’ feature The Nest (2003) “offers up a bleak and cryptically funny assault on suburban anomie… Fotopoulos creeps around the edges of character and drama, conjuring moods of paranoia and dread that suggest the carefully ordered routines of daily life are a kind of opiate administered by sinister forces. Shooting in harsh 16mm color, Fotopoulos renders The Nest in a typically Spartan, forbidding style that makes it seem as though he is some extraterrestrial visitor photographing humans for the first time.” (Scott Foundas, Variety) Ideal mind-warping viewing for admirers of David Lynch who think they’ve seen everything…

- Frans Zwartjes is arguably Holland’s preeminent experimental filmmaker. His highly stylised, poetically claustrophobic films achieve a unique level of sensual intimacy in their renditions of sexual and domestic tension, and voyeurism. These wordless works draw on performance art but are equally distinguished by their oneiric visuals, disconcerting editing rhythms and hypnotically minimal sound design. Once Zwartjes has caressed the surface of your eyeballs, you will never see cinema in the same way again. Black Sun will present a mini-retrospective of five of his most accomplished short films from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

BIRDS (Frans Zwartjes, 1968)
VISUAL TRAINING (Frans Zwartjes, 1969)
SPARE BEDROOM (Frans Zwartjes, 1969)
SPECTATOR (Frans Zwartjes, 1970)
LIVING (Frans Zwartjes, 1971)

- And three of Ireland’s most uncompromising contemporary experimental filmmakers, Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh and Black Sun film programmer Maximilian Le Cain, will be on hand to present a series of their more disturbing short films. Strange atmospheres, tense self-portraits, troubled meditations on the ghostly power of cinema itself… Filmmaking at its most eerie and obliquely personal.

Although best known as an experimental music event, Black Sun is also Cork’s only year-round platform for screening experimental film. For over two years, Black Sun’s film programmes have given Cork an all-too-rare taste of the more far-out side of cinema. It has established an impressive track record of world-class film programming, introducing Irish audiences to the work of several major underground filmmakers for the first time. This is the first of what will become regular Black Sun events devoted exclusively to film.

Black Sun presents: With Lumps, Woven Skull, Aonghus McEvoy & Divil A' Bit - Saturday June 16th / Plugd Records 10pm

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 19:32:00 -0400

Hullo all!

This will be the final Black Sun music-event in Cork, for the foreseeable future at least. Those keeping an eye on us last week will have seen the news that we’re teaming up with the Triskel Arts Centre to continue our programming of experimental cinema. If you live in Ireland, please take a minute to check out our first programme! We’re as proud as anything to be presenting day-long events devoted exclusively to experimental cinema at Triskel Christchurch.

Gigs-wise, it’s time to take a rest I think. Emigration looks like a possibility and I’m determined to get the most out of my time here while I have it. If we remain in Cork after the winter, then I’d like to set about about working on something annually rather than a sporadic series of events.

Love and thanks to everyone who’s ever played at a Black Sun, Irish or International.

Massive thanks for their kindness and generosity: David Murphy, Paul Hegarty, Max Le Cain, Kevin Kennedy, Albert and Jim (Plugd Records), Rachel Warriner and James Cummins (SoundEye), Sharon McCarthy and Kevin Tuohy (ArtTrail), Mick O’ Shea & Irene Murphy (The Guesthouse), Janice and the rest of the staff at the Pavilion, Tony McCleane Fay (Granary Theatre), Bertrand Perennes (Camden Palace Hotel), The Triskel Arts Centre, Holly Burgess, Paula Larkin of Sugar Moon Vegan Cakes, Aoife Barry, Declan Synnott, John Byrne, the Sacred Harp Singers of Cork, Patricia Klich, Andy Ferreira, Marcin Lewandowski, Tanja Warkentin, Bernard Clarke, Conor O’ Toole, Michael Carr, Stephen Graham, Brian Hayes Curtin, Mike McGrath-Bryan, Gary Meyler, Graham Lynch and Eoin Bold Lump and everyone who’s ever come along to a show.

Most of all, I’d like to thank my daughter for putting up with me spending hours of our time together over the past three years hunched over a laptop or on a phone sending emails, for her patience as I pushed her around town in a buggy, sticking up posters in the pissing rain, for giving up her bedroom so many times so that mysterious, friendly strangers could sleep deep surrounded by Moomin and Foxins and all the lads. Sionnach, I owe you big time. x

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Now! For our last proper gig! Please share this post!

Black Sun presents: WITH LUMPS, Woven Skull, Aonghus McEvoy, Divil A’ Bit

Plugd Records

10pm - 12.30am

7 lumping euros

WITH LUMPS
With Lumps is a duo of Fritz Welch and Neil Davidson chundering forth fetid sci-fi with quivering robot skins both mildewed and expansive. Their other group work includes Peeesseye, Asparagus Piss Raindrop, Aporias Trio, Muris, Brittle Hammer Trio, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, Age of Wire & String and FvRTvR. Neil (guitar) is from the Borders and Fritz (drums, objects, voice) is from Texas. They live in Glasgow.

http://www.neildavidson.org.uk/
http://humansacrifice.net/

WOVEN SKULL
Woven Skull formed in 2008 and are based in Co. Leitrim, consisting of core members Natalia, Aonghus and Willie, and occasional guests. Their mostly acoustic, recurrent, and resonant sounds and structures are inspired by the woods and bogs that surround them.

“…reminiscent of the pastoral side of Faust, Amon Düül or Ghost (Jpn), but with an aggressively minimalist and repetitive slant. At times it could pass for an unusually focused ’60s commune jam. Elsewhere the impression is of something far more and ancient and ritualistic. Mesmeric, mantric and mysterious.”
-Fort Evil Fruit on Moods of the Hill People cassette.
http://wovenskull.bandcamp.com/

AONGHUS MCEVOY feat. members of Wölfbait & Patrick Kelleher and His Cold Dead Hands.

Trashed Psychedelic Improvisations.

DIVIL A’ BIT
Debut of brand new collaboration from Dave Colohan (Raising Holy Sparks, Agitated Radio Sparks) and Natalia Beylis (Woven Skull, The Creaking Willow String Band)!! Mischievious drones of the barren mountain created on traditional instruments.

Bolide, PCP and Max Le Cain at the Triskel Auditorium -June 2nd 2012

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 04:45:00 -0400

http://www.thebolide.tk/

We’re celebrating the bank holiday/summer/being alive with a visit from our favourite freaks, Bolide! And, they’re bringing chums along for the trip! We’ll be taking over the Triskel’s TDC for a night of wild outness, free, joyful, unhinged improvisation and super8 brutality…

Lunar phase on Saturday 2nd June 2012 is Waxing Gibbous. Come join our heroes as they escape from the British Isles’ pack of Jubilee cock-eyed mouthbreathers and welcome them to the southern streets of Cork City, where the paths are paved with Beamish and Lennox’s.

You can expect sets from Bolide (UK), Hexenverfolgung (UK), a super-8 tape/film piece from Maximilian Le Cain and the bauld PCP!! (Phil Collins Project)
!
Also, you guys remember Daniel Spicer’s (The Mystery Lesson/ Bolide /The Wire journo) killer set in Gulpd during last year’s Avant festival? The time he sent local rugger buggers scampering to the hills armed only with his heart-bursting free-jazz collection?) well, I think Spiceberg and F. Ampism are gonna join up for some cosmic tag-team DJing, along with your regular Black Sun DJs (myself and the beard)

- - €8 - -

Bolide

“Gonzo free music and guerrilla jazz from this drug and ale gorged Brighton sextet. A lot of reeds, tapes, percussion, vocal hollerin’ and the likes all captured in mysterious crud-fidelity. Come and enjoy this unseasoned brew.”
Dylan Nyoukis of Chocolate Monk on ‘The Authority of Omar.’

“As a launching pad to tomorrow, free jazz remains one of the most potent, if hermetic, of conceptual formulas due to its foregrounding of the spontaneous, its focus on exploration as opposed to mere tourism. In recent years players from the more traditionally omnivorous disciplines of drone, psychedelia and noise music have combined to broker a rapprochement with the form, mostly focussed on its harnessing of energy as a structural solvent – groups like Michigan’s Graveyards, New York’s Owl Xounds, Brighton’s Bolide.”
David Keenan, The Wire, November 2008.

————

Max le Cain’s Super-8 piece Dark, Plastic, Reversal
Described as “a terrorist action performed on a piece of celluloid”, Maximilian Le Cain’s Super-8 film/tape DARK, PLASTIC, REVERSAL envelops viewers in thick plastic darkness rythmically shattered by flashes of the scratched, slashed, scribbled-on remnants of what might once have been images. This “suicide cinema” squeezes out the basic, brutal beauty of a dying medium…

———-

PCP
Our favourite messers (Kev First Blood Part II and Paul from SAFE) have just returned from a one stop tour of Frankfurt and are ready to confound folks with their shambolic and compelling Phil Collins Project. The best kind of wrong.

Black Sun, Cork presents: OKKYUNG LEE -Tuesday April 24th

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 11:11:00 -0400

Black Sun are delighted to host Okkyung Lee for a special and very intimate performance on Tuesday April 24th in the Guesthouse, Shandon.

Okkyung is one of the most dynamic forces in improvised music today, a fearless and powerful performer whose playing incorporates a love of noise, extended technique and elements from the outer fringes of contemporary composition, together with a sensitive ear and a sense of suspense worthy of Bernard Hermann. A native of Korea, Okkyung Lee has been developing her own voice in a contemporary cello performance and improvisation. Using her classical training as a springboard, she incorporates jazz, sounds, Korean traditional music, and noise with extended techniques.

Since moving to New York in 2000, she has performed and recorded with numerous artists such as Derek Bailey, Jaap Blonk, Nels Cline, Anthony Coleman, Mark Dresser, Shelley Hirsch, Susie Ibarra, Vijay Iyer, Eyvind Kang, Alonzo King, Christian Marclay, Raz Mesinai, Min Xiao-Fen, Thurston Moore, Ikue Mori, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Jim O’Rourke, Zeena Parkins, Marc Ribot, Marina Rosenfeld, Elliott Sharp and John Zorn to name a few.
Okkyung holds dual bachelor’s degrees in film scoring/contemporary writing & production from Berklee College of Music, and master’s degree in contemporary improvisation from New England Conservatory of Music.

Also on the bill is an exciting duo comprising of Mick O’ Shea (The Quiet Club/Strage Attractor) and the newly Cork-based Swedish saxophonist Emil Nerstrand. O’ Shea and Nerstrand recently worked together on an improvised soundscape for the Arts Council of Ireland backed experimental feature film HE (2012) by Rouzbeh Rashidi. This will be their first live performance together.

Black Sun is proud to present four films by one of Ireland’s most gifted, distinctive and experimental young filmmakers, Wicklow-based Dean Kavanagh. His moody, heavily atmospheric and hauntingly mysterious works favour quiet but piercingly intense moments of solitary emotion and contemplation over plot. Distinguished by an exceptionally poetic visual style, Kavanagh’s films obliquely engage with home, memory, mysterious journeys and moments of rupture. Since he began making films in 2006, he has completed over 25 shorts and is now working on his first feature. Black Sun will be screening two brief, highly formalistic early works, The Girl With The Straw Hat and On Foot (both 2008), along with two of his longer and most accomplished films, Poor Edward (2009) and The Distance (2010)

Tea, coffee and some light food will be served. BYOB.
Suggested donation of €10.
Capacity for this concert is limited to 30 people so RSVP the.guesthouse.project (AT) gmail (DOT) com to reserve a place.

Sat March 31st - John Wiese, Wölfbait, Personal Discipline, First Blood Part II & Wölflinge

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:30:00 -0400

Black Sun returns to the Triskel on Saturday 31st March for a night of powerful intensity. We welcome artist and composer John Wiese (USA), Wölfbait, the Irish premiere of 80’s Serbian underground film ‘Personal Discipline’ and a performance from First Blood Part II & Wölflinge.

John Wiese (www.john-wiese.com) is an artist and composer from Los Angeles, California. He works primarily in recorded and performed sound with a focus on installation and multi-channel diffusions, as well as scoring for large ensembles. His ongoing projects include LHD and Sissy Spacek, but is known for his collaborations with many artists as diverse as Sunn O))), Wolf Eyes, Merzbow, Thurston Moore, Bastard Noise, No Age, Smegma, Kevin Drumm, Cattle Decapitation, and C. Spencer Yeh as well as his work as a solo artist. He has toured extensively throughout the world, covering Europe, Scandinavia and Australia as a member of Sunn O))), the UK as part of the Free Noise tour (a tentet including Evan Parker, C. Spencer Yeh, Yellow Swans, etc.), the United States alongside Wolf Eyes, and recently performed in the 52nd Venice Biennale with artist Nico Vascellari. While releasing albums on a variety of international labels, Wiese often releases work on his own label, Helicopter.

You’ve no doubt heard the rave reports regarding John’s recent album for the great PAN label, Seven Of Wands and know his astounding back catalogue that finds itself filed under noise but isn’t done justice by that narrow pigeonhole, with a technique more akin to the scientific precision of the late and legendary Maryanne Amacher, combined with tape collage, bloodyminded humour and a raft of sublime collaborations. Live, there’s a deft artistry to John’s work that sets him ahead of most others working in his area, his live shows as searing and explosive as they are intricately constructed.

This upcoming Black Sun will be shaken by a piercing cry of defiance swelling up from an astonishing and all-but-unknown zone of film history. Miroslav-Bata Petrović and Julijana Terek’s Personal Discipline (1983), without doubt the rarest film Black Sun has yet presented, is a product of the early ‘80s Serbian underground. Throbbing with punk attitude, it details a private ritual enacted by writer/performer Terek spilling onto the street in an irresistible upsurge of self-assertion in the face of repressive societal indifference. The pounding rhythms of Petrović’s aggressive editing combine with Terek’s beguiling concentration to create an experience liable to leave the viewer gasping for breath… We are delighted to be giving Personal Discipline its Irish premiere!

Also lined up is the debut Cork appearance from Wölfbait. I saw these guys in Dublin back in January and my eyes were rolling in their sockets it was so good. Delivering total UNGH! with perfect vocals.

First Blood Part II & Wölflinge return again for bewildering and raw, intimate action.

Black Sun presents: Petrović and Julijana Terek’s Personal Discipline (1983) // March 31st

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:37:23 -0400

The upcoming Black Sun will be shaken by a piercing cry of defiance swelling up from an astonishing and all-but-unknown zone of film history. Miroslav-Bata Petrović and Julijana Terek’s Personal Discipline (1983), without doubt the rarest film Black Sun has yet presented, is a product of the early ‘80s Serbian underground. Throbbing with punk attitude, it details a private ritual enacted by writer/performer Terek spilling onto the street in an irresistible upsurge of self-assertion in the face of repressive societal indifference. The pounding rhythms of Petrović’s aggressive editing combine with Terek’s beguiling concentration to create an experience liable to leave the viewer gasping for breath…

Personal Discipline was made under the amateur cine-club system that operated all over the former Yugoslavia up until the 1980s. A large and varied body of experimental filmmaking was produced in this way from the ‘60s onwards, resulting in films that could often hold their own with any avant-garde cinema in the world. Although certain famous filmmakers of the Yugoslav ‘Black Wave’ such as Dušan Makavejev began making films in this context, there is a wealth of extraordinary work that remains little known at home and almost unknown abroad in spite of a major retrospective at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in 2009. We are delighted to be giving Personal Discipline its Irish premiere!

Tonight at Plugd Records, the Triskel Arts Centre! Doors at...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 07:42:00 -0500

Tonight at Plugd Records, the Triskel Arts Centre!

Doors at 7.30pm / Luther Price screening not long after.

*break*

Music begins approx 8.30pm

Any queries email: sol.niger.ire@gmail.com, facebook.com/blacksuncork or get on the twitter: @blacksuncork

Thanks to wearenoise.com for the cool feature here: http://wearenoise.com/index.php/2012/03/black-sun-presents-mike-gangloff-and-more-at-plugd-records/

Reckon this’ll be pretty cosy so get down early. Thanks to Declan Q Kelly of Yawning Chasm for the poster. x

Black Sun shows March - June 2012

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:35:00 -0500

Mike Gangloff http://klang.org/artists/2-black-twig-pickers

Yawning Chasm http://yawningchasm.bandcamp.com/

Brigid Power Ryce http://brigidpowerryce.bandcamp.com/

Luther Price screening http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/29/lutherprice.php

John Wiese http://www.john-wiese.com/

Screening of Personal Discipline (Lićna disciplina, 1982) Miroslav Bata Petrović & Juliana Terek

Okkyung Lee http://okkyung.wordpress.com/about/

Bolide http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bolide/285710746803

With Lumps (Neil Davidson and Fritz Welch) www.humansacrifice.net/ & www.humansacrifice.net/

March 8th: Mike Gangloff, Yawning Chasm, Brigid Power Ryce + Luther Price screening

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:26:00 -0500

Mike Gangloff
Yawning Chasm
Brigid Power Ryce
Sacred Harp Singers Of Cork
Rare screening of Luther Price’s GREEN.
DJs Kind Joe Debt & the Great Poonaklaster spinnin’ and sinnin’.

Thursday March 8th

Plugd Records, Triskel Arts Centre

€5

More info soon,

Mike Gangloff

With US underground drone wizards Pelt and later the barnstorming Appalachian old-time band Black Twig Pickers, Mike Gangloff helped forge a unique blend of avant-garde freedom and dyed-in-the-(plaid)-wool backwoods traditionalism. But along the way, the multi-instrumentalist offered only rare glimpses of the music he plays alone. This March, Gangloff is journeying to Ireland for his first solo tour in years, performing fiddle, banjo and vocal tunes he learned from regional masters around his home in Southwest Virginia and stretching out into personal spaces claimed in nearly two decades of improvisational music.

His is an idiosyncratic musical landscape informed by knee-to-knee sessions with players ranging from guitar fire-breather Donald Miller of Borbetomagus to Charlie Parr, from the late Jack Rose (a bandmate in Pelt and frequent Twig collaborator) to pre-war recording artist Clayton Hall, from the Slate Mountain Ramblers to the Ivanhoe Wildcats.

Expect drones and hoots, full-on stomps and disconsolate dirges. Expect to be rocked back on your heels in a way you’ve never been before!

Photo

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 06:24:46 -0500