Alvarius B /Tarkamt / Baskot live at Underflow
Alvarius B /Tarkamt / Baskot live at Underflow / Saturday 14/12/2019
Alvarius B
Alan Bishop (AKA Alvarius B.) is a founding member of Seattle's avant-garde and genre-defying Sun City Girls, whose career spanned 27 years and over fifty releases. His work in Sun City Girls, with Richard Bishop and Charles Gocher, alone stands as a testament to his fearless exploration of the outer reaches of improvisation and composition.
And as Alvarius B., Bishop has penned hundreds of his own original folk songs in a primitive “out” style that is unlike anything that anyone else is doing now. And as an interpreter of other people’s work, his songbook includes hundreds of cover songs from the obscure to the very familiar. This body of work is informed by an obsessive love of the singer-songwriter genre, folkloric music from beyond borders, Italian film soundtracks, and an extraordinary sense of humor. Over much of the past eight years, Bishop has been lurking in Cairo, composing & recording new Alvarius B. material while simultaneously establishing his own Egyptian-based band, The Invisible Hands and joining forces with Sam Shalabi and Maurice Louca in the trio Dwarfs of East Agouza. His latest solo album was released in October of last year; a triple album juggernaut entitled With a Beaker on the Burner and an Otter in the Oven.
Cherif El-Masri is a composer and multi-instrumentalist based in Cairo. For the past 20 years he has studied and performed in various musical idioms (jazz, free improvisation, punk rock, extreme metal, classical & folk Arabic, experimental electronic music). He's been an active member of several seminal Cairene bands such as Eskenderella, Procession Towards the Unknown. and Nadah El-Shazly's touring band. Since 2012 he's been a member of The Invisible Hands, a psych folk & rock band co-founded with Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls / Dwarfs of East Agouza / Sublime Frequencies).
El-Masri is currently recording and performing as Tarkamt, a solo project combining primitive analog electronics, electro-acoustic processes, visceral free improvisation, and unclassifiable progressive composition (at times combined or juxtaposed with more traditional forms) to form a maelstrom of chaotic yet focused energy that transcends the dichotomy of noise versus music.
in February 2018 Tarkamt's debut full length album, "Live at the Necropolis" (on tape and digital through Doom Trip Records), was released to great critical acclaim. The second Tarkamt release, a long-form piece. is currently in production, as is the third full length album from The Invisible Hands.
Baskot Lel Baltageyya - بسكوت للبلطجية
Under meters of concrete in central Cairo, a relentless buzz rebels and forms a melody. A tired man tunes his machines to catch a snatch of it, and accidentally creates a playground where these abandoned sounds can flourish. They develop a sense of humor and an acid tongue.
A few children with bent ears find their way to an alley with an entrance to the playground. They would later describe what they heard as a delicious hybrid: one part cream, one part bubble gum. So bend your ears and maybe you'll hear it too.
Mr. Dabbour can already hear some of you wondering with grimaced faces:
"Is this… rebellion?"
No. Just a brand new dance.
Tickets: 20 euro (soon available in store)
Doors open: 21:00