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Jim O'Rourke (musician)
Jim O'Rourke (born January 18, 1969, Chicago, Illinois) is a Tokyo-based American musician, composer and record producer. He has released albums across varied genres, including singer-songwriter music, post-rock, ambient, noise music, and tape experiments. He was associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene when he relocated to New York City in 2000. He now resides in Japan. O’Rourke is best known for his numerous solo and collaborative music projects, many of which are entirely instrumental, and for his tenure as a member of Sonic Youth from 1999 to 2005. Biography O'Rourke was born on January 18, 1969, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. He is an alumnus of DePaul University. O'Rourke has collaborated with Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Kim Gordon, Steve Shelley, Derek Bailey, Mats Gustafsson, Mayo Thompson, Brigitte Fontaine, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Merzbow, Nurse with Wound, Phill Niblock, Fennesz, Organum, Phew, Henry Kaiser, Flying Saucer Attack, an ...
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Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth was an American rock band based in New York City, formed in 1981. Founding members Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar) and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) remained together for the entire history of the band, while Steve Shelley (drums) followed a series of short-term drummers in 1985, rounding out the core line-up. Jim O'Rourke (bass, keyboards, guitar) was also a member of the band from 1999 to 2005, and Mark Ibold (guitar, bass) was a member from 2006 to 2011. Sonic Youth emerged from the experimental no wave art and music scene in New York before evolving into a more conventional rock band and becoming a prominent member of the American noise rock scene. Sonic Youth have been praised for having "redefined what rock guitar could do" using a wide variety of unorthodox guitar tunings while preparing guitars with objects like drum sticks and screwdrivers to alter the instruments' timbre. The band was a pivotal influence on the alternat ...
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Experimental Music
Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, institutionalized compositional, performing, and aesthetic conventions in music. Elements of experimental music include Indeterminacy in music, indeterminate music, in which the composer introduces the elements of chance or unpredictability with regard to either the composition or its performance. Artists may also approach a hybrid of disparate styles or incorporate unorthodox and unique elements. The practice became prominent in the mid-20th century, particularly in Europe and North America. John Cage was one of the earliest composers to use the term and one of experimental music's primary innovators, utilizing Indeterminacy (music), indeterminacy techniques and seeking unknown outcomes. In France, as early as 1953, Pierre Schaeffer had ...
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Merzbow
is a Japanese noise project started in 1979 by , best known for a style of harsh, confrontational noise. Since 1980, Akita has released over 400 recordings and has collaborated with various artists. The name Merzbow comes from the German dada artist Kurt Schwitters' artwork ''Merzbau'', in which Schwitters transformed the interior of his house using found objects. The name was chosen to reflect Akita's dada influence and junk art aesthetic. In addition to this, Akita has cited a wide range of musical influences from progressive rock, heavy metal, free jazz, and early electronic music to non-musical influences like dadaism, surrealism and fetish culture. Since the early 2000s, he has been inspired by animal rights and environmentalism, and began to follow a vegan, straight edge lifestyle. In addition to being a prolific musician, he has been a writer and editor for several books and magazines in Japan, and has written several books of his own. He has written about a variety o ...
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Loren Mazzacane Connors
Loren Mazzacane Connors (born October 22, 1949) is an American guitarist who has recorded and performed under several different names: Guitar Roberts, Loren Mazzacane, Loren Mattei, and currently Loren Connors. His music has touched on many genres, but often features an abstract or experimental version of blues and folk styles. Biography Connors was born in New Haven, Connecticut, United States, and studied art at Southern Connecticut State University and the University of Cincinnati in the early 1970s, before deciding to pursue music rather than painting. Best known as a composer and improviser on acoustic and electric guitar, Connors has released over 50 albums, on commercial record labels such as Family Vineyard, Table of the Elements, Recital and Father Yod as well as on his own Black Label, St. Joan and Daggett self-publishing imprints. They include spare solo and duo blues, ensemble experimental jazz, noise, drones, and avant garde rock. An early champion of his music w ...
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Brigitte Fontaine
Brigitte Fontaine, (born 24 June 1939) is a singer of avant-garde music. She has employed numerous unusual musical styles, melding rock and roll, folk, jazz, electronica, spoken word poetry, and world. She has collaborated with Stereolab, Michel Colombier, Jean-Claude Vannier, Areski Belkacem, Gotan Project, Sonic Youth, Antoine Duhamel, Grace Jones, Noir Désir, Archie Shepp, Arno, and The Art Ensemble of Chicago. She is also a novelist, playwright, poet, and actress. Early life The daughter of two teachers, Brigitte Fontaine developed her taste for writing and drama very early. She spent her childhood in small villages of Finistère, then in Morlaix. At 17 years old, she moved to Paris to become an actress. In 1971, she was one of the women who signed the Manifesto of the 343, publicly admitting to having an abortion at a time when it was illegal in France.
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Mayo Thompson
Mayo Thompson (born February 26, 1944 in Houston, Texas, United States) is an American musician and visual artist best known as the leader of the experimental rock band Red Krayola. Background His formal education includes Garden of Arts Kindergarten until Holy Rosary Elementary School through fifth grade, then Moye Military School until high school at Cascia Hall College Preparatory School, from which he received a diploma in 1962. He went on to study at St. Thomas University, trying variously, off and on, in some cases simultaneously, pre-Law, Creative Writing, English and American Literature, Philosophy, and Art History, before dropping out and starting The Red Crayola with Frederick Barthelme in 1966. In college, Thompson began to find an affinity for jazz, "I learnt an awful lot from jazz". He states in the Red Krayola 1994 live documentary of their Japanese tour, "I was more interested in composing new material than interpreting old material". 1950s In 1955, Mayo Thom ...
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Mats Gustafsson
Mats Olof Gustafsson (born 29 October 1964) is a Swedish free jazz saxophone player. Career Gustafsson came to the attention of lovers of improvised music as part of a duo with Christian Munthe (started in 1986), as member of Gunter Christmann's Vario project and the band Gush (started in 1988). He later played widely with Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, Paul Lovens, Barry Guy, Yoshimi P-We, Derek Bailey, Magnus Broo, Otomo Yoshihide, Pat Thomas, Jim O'Rourke, Thomas Lehn, Evan Parker, Misha Mengelberg, Zu, The Ex and Sonic Youth. Since the early 1990s Gustafsson has been a regular visitor to the United States, forming a particular affinity with Chicago musicians Hamid Drake, Michael Zerang, and Ken Vandermark and recording for Okka Disk. He was awarded the 2011 Nordic Council Music Prize. Gustafsson has worked extensively with artists from the worlds of dance, theatre, poetry and painting. He has lived in Nickelsdorf, Austria since 2011. Festival curator Gusta ...
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Derek Bailey (guitarist)
Derek Bailey (29 January 1930 – 25 December 2005) was an English avant-garde guitarist and an important figure in the free improvisation movement. Bailey abandoned conventional performance techniques found in jazz, exploring atonality, noise, and whatever unusual sounds he could produce with the guitar. Much of his work was released on his own label Incus Records. In addition to solo work, Bailey collaborated frequently with other musicians and recorded with collectives such as Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Company. Career Bailey was born in Sheffield, England. A third-generation musician, he began playing guitar at the age of ten. He studied with Sheffield City organist C. H. C. Biltcliffe, an experience he disliked, and with his uncle George Wing and John Duarte. As an adult he worked as a guitarist and session musician in clubs, radio, and dance hall bands, playing with Morecambe and Wise, Gracie Fields, Bob Monkhouse, Kathy Kirby, and on the television program '' Oppor ...
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Steve Shelley
Steven Jay Shelley (born June 23, 1962) is an American drummer. He is best known as the longtime drummer of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, for whom he played from 1985 until their 2011 disbandment. Biography Shelley was born in Midland, Michigan and played in several mid-Michigan bands, including Faith and Morals and Strange Fruit, and was among the original lineup of the punk band The Crucifucks. Since 1985, he has performed with the noise rock band Sonic Youth, when he replaced Bob Bert. After leaving the Crucifucks, he moved to Manhattan with a friend, living in the apartment of Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon for dog sitting purposes while the band was in Europe. When the band returned, former drummer Bob Bert had left the band, and they hired Shelley as their drummer without an audition. In 1992 he founded the independent record label Smells Like Records, based in Hoboken, New Jersey. Along with friend and Two Dollar Guitar musician Tim Foljahn, he ...
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Lee Ranaldo
Lee Mark Ranaldo (born February 3, 1956) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, guitarist, writer, visual artist and record producer, best known as a co-founder of the alternative rock band Sonic Youth (guitar and vocals). In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked Ranaldo at number 33 on its "Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list. In May 2012, '' Spin'' published a staff-selected top 100 guitarist list, ranking Ranaldo and his Sonic Youth bandmate Thurston Moore together at number 1. Biography Ranaldo was born in Glen Cove, Long Island, studied art and graduated from Binghamton University. He has three sons, Cody, Sage and Frey, and is married twice, first with Amanda Linn in 1981 but later divorced, and now with experimental artist Leah Singer. Ranaldo started his career in New York in several bands, including The Flucts, and by playing guitar in ''Guitar Trio'' with Rhys Chatham before joining the electric guitar orchestra of Glenn Branca. In Branca's orchestra he played mainly ...
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Thurston Moore
Thurston Joseph Moore (born July 25, 1958) is an American musician best known as a member of Sonic Youth. He has also participated in many solo and group collaborations outside Sonic Youth, as well as running the Ecstatic Peace! record label. Moore was ranked 34th in ''Rolling Stone''s 2004 edition of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time." In 2012, Moore started a new band Chelsea Light Moving. Chelsea Light Moving eponymous debut was released on March 5, 2013. Since 2015, Chelsea Light Moving has been disbanded after one studio album release. Moore and the other members of the band continue to make music under his solo project and other bands. Early years Moore was born July 25, 1958, at Doctors Hospital in Coral Gables, Florida, to George E. Moore, a professor of music, and Eleanor Nann Moore. In 1967, he and his family (including brother Frederick Eugene Moore, born 1953, and sister Susan Dorothy Moore, born 1956) moved to Bethel, Connecticut. Raised Catholic, he attende ...
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DePaul University
DePaul University is a private university, private, Catholic higher education, Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Congregation of the Mission, Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th-century French priest Vincent de Paul, Saint Vincent de Paul. In 1998, it became the largest Catholic theology, Catholic university in terms of enrollment in North America. Following in the footsteps of its founders, DePaul places special emphasis on recruiting first-generation students and others from disadvantaged backgrounds. DePaul's two campuses are located in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Lincoln Park and the Chicago Loop, Loop. The Lincoln Park campus is home to the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Science and Health, and Education. It also houses the School of Music, The Theater School at DePaul University, the Theater School, and the John T. Richardson Library. The Loop campus houses the DePaul College of Communication, College o ...
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