Nameless Sound - Paul Winstanley w/ NS Ensemble
Sat Oct 04, 2008 11:47 pm
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Nameless Sound presents . . .
Paul Winstanley (New Zealand)
with the Nameless Sound Ensemble.
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Paul Winstanley (a key member of the New Zealand experimental music scene) was a vital element of Houston's emerging improvised music community in the early/mid 1990's. He returns to Houston (after a 12 year absence) as an artist-in-residence with Nameless Sound.
Paul Winstanley with The Nameless Sound Ensemble
Sunday, October 12 2008
7pm
$10 General Admission, $8 Students, Everyone under 18 gets in for free.
Art League Houston
1953 Montrose Blvd.
For Information,
Call Nameless Sound at 713-928-5653
or go to [url=http://www.namelesssound.org]www.namelesssound.org
Nameless Sound Ensemble:
Chris Cogburn - drums, percussion
David Dove - trombone
Ryan Edwards - guitar, voice
Sandy Ewen - guitar
Sonia Flores - bass, vocals
Lucas Gorham - guitar, lap steel guitar
Jason Jackson - saxophones, reeds
In the summer of 1994, five musicians gathered weekly at Houston’s last hardcore punk club to play ‘free noise’. The heat was barely tolerable (no air-conditioning!) and the crowd could often be counted on one hand. Three of the five musicians made up the seminal underground band Charalambides, who were awkwardly compelling as they worked out a very personal transition from bedroom recording to live performance.
The other two formed an electro-acoustic improv duo. One guy looked like he was playing bass, but only sometimes sounded like it. Severe abstractions/deconstructions from a bass-triggered synthesizer took prominence over conventional electric bass playing. Meanwhile, a trombone player crudely clunked a microphone up the bell of his horn and plugged into an old amp, hammering away at some type of free-jazz filtered through a DIY punk aesthetic.
They were neighbors (and sometimes housemates) at Houston’s bohemian enclave of bands and artists, Lexington Street. They had been playing together almost every day, cultivating an idiosyncratic improvisation far from the geographic centers of contemporary music. Opportunities to hear ‘improv’, ‘free jazz’, or ‘new music’ in Houston were almost non-existent in those days. But Houston’s healthy noise/noise-rock scene set a precedent. And the two found inspiration from obsessive record collecting and a developing friendship with avant-garde legend Pauline Oliveros (who they met though Oliveros’ mother, Edith Gutierrez, who lived in the neighborhood).
The trombone player, Dave Dove, had spent the previous 6 years in the popular punk-funk band Sprawl. Puzzled fans (and friends) of Sprawl would sometimes show up to this weekly gig. They would often leave confused about what they had seen. Houston Press music editor Brad Tyre (an old friend of Sprawl himself) checked out one beer’s-worth (and one pool game’s worth) of a set. Running into Dove that week a local bar, he asked, “Hey Dave – does your band still suck?”
Paul Winstanley (AKA Paul Guilford), a transplant from New Zealand, had come to Houston 6 years earlier to play bass for a pop band in front of the wave pool at Water World®. He worked as a commercial soundman and picked up gigs as a reggae bass-player, all while quietly making art and recording experimental music projects in his bedroom.
They would play together for a couple years before they ever even considered a public performance. Little did they know that vital seeds of an Improvised Music scene in Houston were being planted.
As The Dave Dove/Paul Duo, the two recorded one CD release, the rugged “A” in 1995. In 1996, Winstanley left Houston and returned to his native New Zealand.
Now . . .
After 12 years, Paul Winstanley will return to Houston in a residency sponsored by Nameless Sound and Creative New Zealand. Winstanley’s residency will include performances/recording sessions with regional artists and workshops with The Nameless Sound Youth Ensemble. Workshops will also be held with students at Houston area public schools.
Bio
Paul Winstanley (AKA Paul Guilford) has been in the improvisational/experimental music scene under a never ending stream of assumed names for 15 or so years, each pseudonym corresponding to a new project, each one conceptually or stylistically different from the others.
In 1996 he was appearing as Paul Guilford, using a bass triggered synthesizer to play freely improvised music w/The Dave Dove Paul Duo and recording slabs of avant-ambient-squall as p.H.Locasta. Around exactly the same time he was just beginning to experiment with electronic feedback using a mixer and an effects processor and later in that year made the first Sci Hi solo recording.
His present list of instrumentation includes: electric bass guitar, electronic feedback, bass drum, percussion, balloons, and synthesizer.
In 2008 he has performed on electric bass w/trad. blues/gospel duo - Storehouse and modern jazz quartet - Lippizanas in addition to occasional stints w/the William John Hooker Trio, Audible<2, Joe Bell Trio, The Fertility Festival, The Calypso Kings, Sorry See-Saw, The Pacific New Music Ensemble and a variety of ad-hoc groups as well as taking Sci Hi to the Now Now festival in Sydney, Australia in March and to the I Am In Dust festival in San Francisco in October.
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