Cuspeditions present James Rushford & Joe Talia with support from Kelly Jayne Jones & Sam Weaver (Duo)
James Rushford & Joe Talia are two distinctive and exploratory voices in the contemporary Australian underground. They first caught our ear with their wonderful ‘Manhunter’ release on Graham Lambkin’s KYE label. Drawing upon strategies from contemporary composition, music concrete and improvisation, it weaves together greyscale electronics, dehumanized drum machines, amorphous vocal fragments, domestic detritus and sundry devices into a clouded, submerged narrative fabric. Although the duo’s working methods and sound sources have changed radically between releases (and even performances), all of their work breathes the same peculiar air of lingering obsession and decayed virtuosity.
Support comes from two local exponents of the underground scene Kelly Jayne Jones & Sam Weaver revisiting there past duo project 'Laid Back Never Holding Back"
£5 (Unwaged) / £7 (waged)
James Rushford is an Australian composer-performer. His work is drawn from a familiarity with specific concrète, improvised, avant-garde and collagist languages. Currently, his work deals with the aesthetic concept of musical shadow.
As a composer, James has been commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Glasgow), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Neon (Oslo), Speak Percussion, Synergy Percussion, Ensemble Vortex (Geneva), Ensemble Offspring, Soundstream, The Song Company, Decibel, Melbourne International Arts Festival (2006/2008), Norway Ultima Festival (2011), Unsound Festival (New York 2014) and Liquid Architecture Festival (2010).
As a performer, he has presented work at STEIM Institute (Amsterdam), Logos Foundation (Ghent), Issue Project Room (New York), Instants Chavirés (Montreuil), Constellation (Chicago), Super Deluxe (Tokyo), Blank Forms (New York), Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Cave12 (Geneva), Send & Receive Festival (Winnipeg), WORM (Rotterdam), Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw), Only Connect Festival (Oslo), Now Now (2011/2012), Adelaide Festival (2014), Melbourne International Jazz Festival (2011) and the Tectonics Festival (Adelaide 2014, New York 2015, Tel Aviv 2015). He has also performed live with the Krakow Sinfonietta, Australian Art Orchestra, Michel Pisaro, Eyvind King, David Behrman and Jon Rose.
James has collaborative projects with Joe Talia, Golden Fur (with Samuel Dunscombe & Judith Hamann), Ora Clementi (with crys cole), Will Guthrie, Oren Ambarchi, Klaus Lang, Kassel Jaeger, Annea Lockwood, Graham Lambkin, Francis Plagne, Tashi Wada, the visual artist Michael Salerno and the writer Dennis Cooper.
His music has been published by Pogus (US), Prisma (Norway), Bocian (Poland), Penultimate Press (UK), Black Truffle (AUS), Holidays (IT) and KYE (US).
James holds a Doctorate from the California Institute of the Arts, and was a 2018 fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart.
Joe Talia is an Australian drummer, composer and record producer based in Tokyo. He first established his reputation as a drummer in contemporary jazz and improvised music fields in which he is now active as a member in numerous collaborative projects, including a long-term duo with Oren Ambarchi. In the last few years a great deal of his work as a drummer has taken place alongside outsider singer-songwriters (such as Ned Collette, Yuko Kono and Francis Plagne), in groups which synthesize his adventurous, exploratory drumming with the demands of song form. His longstanding musical partnership with Ned Collette has resulted in four records, on which Talia acts as both drummer and producer/engineer, most recently Networking in Purgatory (Bronze Rat 2013).
Talia also works in the realm of electro-acoustic composition and performance, working with reel-to-reel tape machines and other analogue devices. Following the release of his musique concrete suite in/exterior in 2006, he established a duo with composer James Rushford. Although the duo’s working methods and sound sources have changed radically between releases (and even performances), all of their work breathes the same peculiar air of lingering obsession and decayed virtuosity. Having worked with extended instrumental timbres and rapid-fire electro-acoustic techniques on previous releases, their most recent LP Manhunter (Kye 2013) develops a unique palette of submerged synthesizers, expiring drum machines and domestic detritus.
In addition to the collaborations above he has performed with Jim O'Rourke, Keiji Haino, Oren Ambarchi, Toshimaru Nakamura, Akira Sakata, Marco Fusinato, Tetuzi Akiyama, Richard Pinhas, John Duncan, Koichi Makigami, Eiko Ishibashi,Thembi Soddell, Anthea Caddy.
Kelly Jayne Jones is a Manchester artist making work that combines performance, installation and sound. Mostly self taught, she began working in DIY noise music expanding her practice to include dance, sonic drawings, stone sculpture and film scores.\ She is interested in creating multi-sensory experiences, often exploring animist ideas around the breath and spirit of mountains and rivers. Her work traverses the emotions of desire and anxiety, the comfortable and uncomfortable edges of our inner spaces and social co-existence.
KJJ has collaborations with Hannah Ellul (White Death), Greta Buitkute (Clout then Grappling) and Dan Valentine from Rainer Veil. She was one half of the group part wild horses mane on both sides, which disbanded in 2016.\ She has performed across Europe, presenting work for the Venice Biennale, Tate Modern, ICA London, Le Plateau Paris, Borealis Festival Norway, Tectonics and hcmf.