Institute of Contemporary Arts

The Experiment: November 2008

Welcome to an early winter podcast. As usual we have chosen a lovely list of illuminating sounds: sounds to question and probe your understanding of what can be, and music which is fit and healthy and living in a perhaps-undiscovered country near you.

Some of the artists on this month's podcast are actually very near us. In fact, three are based in North London. Firstly we have the rarely exotic charms and chants of Ebe Oke. This North American-born, London-based, occult-influenced singer-songer is a unique gem, sounding like an early American frontier puritan singing heartwarming Burroughs-esque dream poems. A delight to discover.

Next we have an Athens-born recording artist, again based in London: Jack Shirt, who can only be described as an explorer of the weird - between a slowed-down Pere Ubu and Battles, Jack is so talented and unique he can only be said to be a 21st century musical scientist!

Finally from our North London stable we have Death to the King, which is the solo project of The Experiment's very own Kevin Quigley - you might think it would be a dangerous loop to showcase ones own work, like some crazed 1950s horror or sci-fi action where when two entities meet, causing the galaxy to collapse and implode into itself. Don't worry, this podcast will not cause any mini-black holes or space-time tears - but if sound could do that you would bet that Death to the King would surely give it a try.

Next we have an innovative hybrid of tropicana vs lo-fi slacker blues - Sam Callow, aka 4TrecK is a multi-instrumentalist mixing geography and ethnic folkways to make blissful unique music.

From Portugal, the promised land of occult dreams and pioneering explorers - we offer you Margarida Garcia, a multi-talented multi-instrumentalist, playing a range of stringed instruments and exploring new extended ways of playing. If Derek Bailey had a Portuguese daughter then she would look a lot like Margarida.

And finally, with the last word, is the lost tribe of uncanny composition. Not a lot is known about our next artists, in fact noone is even sure who was in the band. But Cro-Magnon definitely existed, if only for a one record from which we have a few tracks. But, as you will hear, psychedelic bagpipes is a real and very dangerous concept. Perhaps they thought it would disrupt the time-space continuum. Who knows, anything seemed possible in 1968.

The Experiment is a monthly podcast commissioned by the ICA and presented and produced by Kevin Quigley. This month's guest presenter is Rita Vozone.

Keep Listening!

www.myspace.com/deathtotheking
www.4track.co.uk
www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Cromagnon-(band)
www.myspace.com/jackshirt
www.myspace.com/ebeokemusic
www.creativesourcesrec.com/artists/m_garcia.html

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