Che Chen is a New York-based composer and multi-instrumentalist, best known as a central figure in the group 75 Dollar Bill. [1]
Chen has collaborated with several influential avant-garde and improvisational musicians like Jorge Boehringer (Core of the Coalman), Rolyn Hu, Chie Mukai, Tori Kudo, Tetuzi Akiyama and Tony Conrad. [2]
Chen grew up in a family of Taiwanese immigrants in the DC suburbs of Maryland. [2]
In 2008, Chen began improvising regularly with fellow Brooklyn avant-rock improviser Robbie Lee, a collaboration that lasted for several years and first surfaced as the limited-release album Begin and Continue! (2008). Lee and Chen’s album The Spectrum Does (2017) was originally recorded in 2011. The album credits Lee with flute, tarogato, melodica, great bass recorder, electronics, percussion and Chen with violin, harmonium, bass recorder, tape machine, electronics, percussion. [3]
In 2010, Lee and Chen joined Dutch minimalist composer and lutenist Jozef Van Wissem in his project Heresy of the Free Spirit, playing music described by the Chicago Reader as “a sublime mixture of country blues, old-time mountain music, and minimalist drone that features Van Wissem playing his lute with a slide.” [4] The trio recorded an album in 2011, A Prayer for Light.
Chen was a member of the band True Primes before 75 Dollar Bill, initially a duo with drummer Rick Brown, formerly of V-Effect and Curlew. [5] Sasha Frere-Jones described 75 Dollar Bill's music as displaying "a certain kind of formal fullness and technical freedom," which he said has helped introduce jazz to a new generation. [5]
Chen studied Moorish music in Mauretania with Jheich Ould Chighaly in 2013. [6]
75 Dollar Bill's first full-length album, Wooden Bag, was released in 2015 by Other Music Recording Company. [7] Their second album, Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock, was released in 2016 on the Los Angeles-based label Thin Wrist. [8]
James Robert Jarmusch is an American film director and screenwriter.
...I Care Because You Do is a studio album by the electronic music artist and producer Aphex Twin. It was released on 24 April 1995 through Warp Records. It contains material recorded between 1990 and 1994 and marked James's return to a beat-driven sound following the mostly ambient album Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994), and pairs abrasive rhythms with symphonic and ambient elements. The cover artwork is a self-portrait of James.
In music, tape loops are loops of magnetic tape used to create repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns or dense layers of sound when played on a tape recorder. Originating in the 1940s with the work of Pierre Schaeffer, they were used among contemporary composers of 1950s and 1960s, such as Éliane Radigue, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who used them to create phase patterns, rhythms, textures, and timbres. Popular music authors of 1960s and 1970s, particularly in psychedelic, progressive and ambient genres, used tape loops to accompany their music with innovative sound effects. In the 1980s, analog audio and tape loops with it gave way to digital audio and application of computers to generate and process sound.
Bill Callahan is an American singer-songwriter, who has also recorded and performed under the band name Smog. Callahan began working in the lo-fi genre, with home-made tape-albums recorded on four-track tape recorders. Later he began releasing albums with the label Drag City, to which he remains signed today.
Charles Arthur Russell Jr. was an American cellist, composer, producer, singer, and musician from Iowa, whose work spanned a disparate range of styles. After studying contemporary composition and Indian classical music in California, Russell relocated to New York City in the mid-1970s, where he became involved with both Lower Manhattan's avant-garde community and the city's burgeoning disco scene. His eclectic music was often marked by adventurous production choices and his distinctive voice.
Leon "Lee" Konitz was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer.
Trevor Roy Dunn is an American composer, bass guitarist, and double bassist. He came to prominence in the 1990s with the experimental band Mr. Bungle. While performing with Mr. Bungle, Dunn would dress similar to the St. Pauli Girl. He has since worked in an array of musical styles, including with saxophonist/composer John Zorn, Secret Chiefs 3 and with his own avant-garde jazz/rock ensemble Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant. He is also a member of the band Tomahawk.
Jozef van Wissem is a Dutch minimalist composer and lute player based in Brooklyn. In 2013 Van Wissem won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for the score of Only Lovers Left Alive at the Cannes Film Festival.
Speechless is a 1981 solo album by English guitarist, composer and improviser Fred Frith of the group Henry Cow. It was Frith's third solo album, and was originally released in the United States on LP record on the Residents' Ralph record label. It was the second of three solo albums Frith made for the label.
James Blackshaw is an English, Hastings-based folk fingerstyle guitarist and pianist. Blackshaw primarily plays an acoustic 12 string guitar and has been compared to Bert Jansch, Robbie Basho, John Fahey, Jack Rose, and Leo Kottke. He has released albums on the labels Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Barl Fire Recordings, Static Caravan, Digitalis Industries, Important Records, Tompkins Square, and Young God Records.
Live electronic music is a form of music that can include traditional electronic sound-generating devices, modified electric musical instruments, hacked sound generating technologies, and computers. Initially the practice developed in reaction to sound-based composition for fixed media such as musique concrète, electronic music and early computer music. Musical improvisation often plays a large role in the performance of this music. The timbres of various sounds may be transformed extensively using devices such as amplifiers, filters, ring modulators and other forms of circuitry. Real-time generation and manipulation of audio using live coding is now commonplace.
Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments with the basic elements of the genre. Artists aim to liberate and innovate, with some of the genre's distinguishing characteristics being improvisational performances, avant-garde influences, odd instrumentation, opaque lyrics, unorthodox structures and rhythms, and an underlying rejection of commercial aspirations.
Only Lovers Left Alive is a 2013 gothic fantasy comedy-drama film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, starring Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, Anton Yelchin, Jeffrey Wright, Slimane Dazi and John Hurt. An international co-production between the United Kingdom and Germany, the film focuses on the romance between two vampires and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
Sonic Protest is a yearly music festival in France focused on left field music genres like experimental rock, electroacoustic music, improvised music, noise and avant garde music.
The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete is a compilation album of unreleased home recordings made in 1967 by Bob Dylan and the group of musicians that would become the Band, released on November 3, 2014 on Legacy Records. It is the ninth installment of the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, available as a six-disc complete set, and as a separate set of highlights – in a two-disc format common to the rest of the series – entitled The Basement Tapes Raw.
Roulette Intermedium is a performing arts and new music venue located in Brooklyn, New York City. Founded in 1978, it has been located in the neighborhoods of Tribeca and SoHo in Manhattan, and now resides in a renovated theater in downtown Brooklyn. Roulette is a nonprofit organization focusing on fostering experimental dance, new music, and performance.
75 Dollar Bill is a musical duo formed in New York City in 2012. Its members are Che Chen (guitar), formerly of True Primes, and Rick Brown (drums), formerly of V-Effect and Curlew. Sasha Frere-Jones described their music as displaying "a certain kind of formal fullness and technical freedom," which he said has helped introduce jazz to a new generation. Other critics have noted that their music shows signs of Mauritanian influences, because Chen studied Moorish music in Mauritania with Jheich Ould Chighaly in 2013. Their first full-length album, Wooden Bag, was released in 2015 by Other Music Recording Company. Their second album, Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock, was released in 2016 on the Los Angeles-based label Thin Wrist.
Guitar, Drums 'n' Bass is an album by free improvisation guitarist Derek Bailey, released by Avant Records in 1996. After spending several years improvising his guitar to the sound of jungle and drum and bass music on pirate radio, Bailey proposed to collaborator John Zorn that he make an album of his musical fusion. Zorn then contacted Birmingham-based drum and bass producer D.J. Ninj to provide the musical backing, who recorded his contributions in spring 1995. After a failed session with engineer Mick Harris, Bailey recorded his overlaid guitar improvisations in Bill Laswell's New York City studio in October 1995, slightly altering Ninj's contributions to remove electric piano passages.
Robbie Lee is an American, New York-based composer and multi-instrumentalist. He specializes in improvisation, incorporating historical and early music instruments, in the intersection of experimental, classical and jazz music. Lee also releases music under the name Creature Automatic.
American Dollar Bill – Keep Facing Sideways, You're Too Hideous to Look at Face On is a collaborative album between Japanese free improvisation/noise music artist Keiji Haino and American post-metal band Sumac. Serving as Haino's 86th and Sumac's third studio album, American Dollar Bill was released on February 23, 2018 through Thrill Jockey.