4iB Records | For intrinsic Beliefs

Saturday 9 June 2012

Door Times : 8pm
Tickets : £12 advance / £14 on the door

For the first event in Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ series at Cafe OTO Elodie played the quietest set we’ve ever hosted as the snow fell outside and Eyvind Kang & Jessika Kenney took us on a trip through the resonant possibilities of ancient harmony. Properly magical!

The second concert in the series promises something very special, too. This time we’re bringing over Phurpa from Russia to present their own slowed-down, extra-heavy take on the rgyud-skad tradition of Tantric overtone chanting alongside a rare solo performance by Colin Potter of Nurse with Wound and the bass heavy organ pedal/synth/guitar drone of Slomo (Chris McGrail / Howard Marsden).

Phurpa were responsible for the now sold out first issue on O’Malley’s Editions Mego facilitated imprint, the stunning 2LP set ‘Trowo Phurnag Ceremony’.

PHURPA

This voyage began in the middle of the 1990’s in Moscow, when a group of artists and musicians led by Alexei Tegin and based at the legendary Fabrique of Cardinal Art commenced their studies of traditional ritual music, drifting away from the field of contemporary electroacoustic and industrial music with the intent to delve deeper into the ancient musical cultures of the ancient Egypt, Iran and Tibet.

The original 2003 lineup of the project that emerged as a result was dubbed Phurpa (one of the five tutelary deities of the Father Tantra in Bon tradition), and all the members have carried on with their research in the field of Bon and Buddhist liturgies up to the present day.

http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=2260361641/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/

Before Buddhism reached Tibet, local people had practiced involved shamanic rites derived from various ancestral cults. Later on, circa the VI-IX century AD, a conflict between the local tradition, namely, the pre-Buddhist religion of Bon (which originates from Central Asia) and Tantric Buddhism (hailing from the North of India) gave birth to a unique cultural phenomenon known as Tibetan Buddhism, which combines an extensive metaphysical corpus and an advanced philosophical system with pristine ceremonial practices that reach down through many centuries. In the X-XI century AD the monastic ensemble came into being. It has got a lot in common with the Chinese court ensembles of the Tang dynasty; nevertheless, the Tibetan ceremonial ensemble has preserved its authenticity and kept a large number of primordial elements stemming from the ancient Tibeto-Burmanese music intact to this day. A typical ensemble usually includes a pair of nga drums, several rolmo cymbals and a pair of gyaling oboes, as well as telescopic dunchen horns, dunkar shells and short wandun horns. One of the unique features of the Tibetan monastic choir is a specific kind of overtone chanting, called “rgyud-skad”, or the Tantric voice, which is based on the principle of the singer’s transmogrification during the so-called “chanting meditation”.

COLIN POTTER

Colin Potter is a sound engineer and musician. He has been involved in the field of electronic and experimental music for over thirty years. Based at his own IC studio, he has recorded, produced and distributed a wide array of projects. He has gained a reputation for innovative mixing and sound processing, working with artists such as Current 93, Fovea Hex, Ora, Organum, Monos, Andrew Chalk, Jonathan Coleclough and, most notably, with Steven Stapleton on many albums by the renowned Nurse With Wound. Several solo works have been released, as well as many collaborations.

In the late Nineties, a desire to return to live performance has led to appearances at the Beyond Music festival in Los Angeles, 7Hz in San Francisco, the Liverpool Biennial, the Termite festival in Leeds, the Earational festival in Holland, the Donau festival in Austria, Brainwaves in Boston, All Tomorrow’s Parties, Ether festival at London South Bank, Villette Sonique in Paris, Resonator festival in Preston, REC festival in Reggio Emilia, Radar festival in Mexico City, Settembre Musica in Turin, the AvantGarde festival in Hamburg and numerous concerts in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Moscow, Berlin, Munster, Warsaw, Wroclav, Kracow, Gdansk, Paris, Venice, Ghent, Brno, Vienna, Porto, Barcelona, Brighton, Bristol, Nottingham, Edinburgh and London.

ICR distribution

SLOMO

Slomo is the duo of Chris ‘Holy’ McGrail on Moog Taurus II, Sunn Mustang and ‘Clatter’ and Howard Marsden on Korg MS10 & MS20 and ‘Hiss’. Together they create a brooding wasteland of subsonic bass and desolate drone. Their two releases ‘The Bog’ and ‘The Creep’ are available from Important Records.

“If the doom metal of Khanate is the ideal soundtrack to the 21st Century Odinists’ hanging upon the tree of Yggdrasil, then the vegetal music of Slomo is the unfolding, nurturing, ever-becoming ur-ooze that titanically irrigates the roots of that sacred tree. Slomo restores our timeless beginnings and fulfills the Ginnungagap — motherfuckers.” Julian Cope