Street Tentacle
Da Wei Wang photo by Ian Lambach; Jerome Bryerton photo by Melissa Venator; Jeff Chan photo by Chien Yuan
Guillermo Gregorio/Damon Smith/Jerome Bryerton
Weasel Walter Photo By: Peter Gannushkin
Guillermo Gregorio/Damon Smith/Jerome Bryerton
Weasel Walter solo
Street Tentacle
Guillermo Gregorio (NYC/Argentina) - Bb clarinet, A clarinet
Damon Smith (St. Louis) - double bass
Jerome Bryerton (Chicago) - Gretsch Drums, cymbals, gongs, bowed metal and percussion
https://balancepointacoustics.bandcamp.com/album/room-of-the-present-fsr-03-2021
Guillermo Gregorio
Born in Argentina in the early '40s, the peripatetic Gregorio also lived in Los Angeles (where he studied with saxophonist Warne Marsh) and Vienna, before eventually settling in Chicago. After moving to Vienna from California in the late '80s, Gregorio met and began collaborating with the free jazz flügelhornist Franz Koglmann. The Swiss hatART label discovered Gregorio through his association with Koglmann. The company released his first album, Approximately, in 1996; two subsequent efforts -- Ellipsis and Background Music -- were later released on the label's hatOLOGY offshoot.
Growing up in Buenos Aires, Gregorio's first jazz influences were early jazz clarinetists Pee Wee Russell and Jimmy Noone. He eventually became interested in the music of pianist Lennie Tristano and his circle; their cool aesthetic would have a decisive impact on his mature concept (Ornette Coleman's innovations also had their effect). Gregorio studied modern classical music, as well as art and architecture. He's worked in the latter two fields and teaches Art Appreciation at Purdue University. In the '60s, Gregorio played experimental music in and around Buenos Aires; some of his work from that time is documented on the Atavistic release Otra Musica: Tape Music, Fluxus & Free Improvisation in Buenos Aires 1963-70.
Damon Smith
Damon Smith studied double bass with Lisle Ellis and has had lessons with Bertram Turezky, Joëlle Leandré, John Lindberg, Mark Dresser and others. Damon’s explorations into the sonic palette of the double bass have resulted in a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. Visual art, film and dance heavily influence his music, as evidenced by his CAMH performance of Ben Patterson’s Variations for Double Bass, collaborations with director Werner Herzog on soundtracks for Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, and an early performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Damon has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including: Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra’s Arkestra), Henry Kaiser, Keith Rowe, Jaap Blonk,Roscoe Mitchell, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith, Weasel Walter, Marco Eneidi, Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald. After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and six great years in Houston, Texas working regularly with Alvin Fielder, Sandy Ewen, Thomas Helton, David Dove & Chris Cogburn. Damon moved to the Boston area in the fall of 2016 and began working with Jeb Bishop, Pandelis Karayorgis, Joe McPhee and Ra-Kalam Bob Moses and many others. Damon has run Balance Point Acoustics record label since 2001, releasing music focusing on transatlantic collaborations between US and European musicians.
Jerome Bryerton
Jerome Bryerton has been working as a free improvising percussionist for the past eight years. In this time, he has worked with some of the most respected players in the world. In October he was once again acquainted with Berlin multi-reedist Wolfgang Fuchs and San Francisco bassist Damon Smith; presenting two concerts as well as recording on CD (balance point acoustics). In September he worked with bass saxophonist Tony Bevan; with Bevan, he performed in San Francisco with local improvisers Scott Looney and Damon Smith. Last winter Jerome toured in Paris and Monacco with Chicago improvisers Carol Genetti and Andrea Polli. These performances were aligned with the multi media festival I.S.E.A. as, well as the Monacco dance forum. Jerome´s style strikes a resemblance close to the likes of European percussionists Paul Lovens, Paul Lytton, and Le Quan Ninh. Intent on using multi ethnic percussion as well as western percussion - simultaneously furnishing them with an odd assortment of orchestral metal and Chinese cymbals/gongs. Jerome believes that it is necessary to keep intact many of the European aesthetics revolutionized in the sixties and seventies; but which is also crucial is the synthesis of wit and experience of a modern American improviser. As a side note, Jerome has also worked with the following people: trumpeter Axel Dörner, reed player John Butcher, guitarist Henry Kaiser, reedist Peter van Bergen, reedist Jack Wright, cellist Fred Lonbergholm, trombonist Jeb Bishop, and also bassist Kent Kessler.
Weasel Walter
Weasel Walter is an American composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and founder of ugEXPLODE Records. Walter's work has been informed by techniques and traditions of music including Avant-garde, experimental, no wave, free jazz, extreme metal, punk jazz, hardcore punk, noise, new music and free improvisation. He coined the term "brutal prog" to describe the aggressively dissonant strain of prog played by groups like his band The Flying Luttenbachers.
Known as an unrelenting and abrasive provocateur whose performances trend toward overblown antics and "nihilistic glee", Walter has been described by renowned guitarist Mary Halvorson as "completely manic and extraordinarily sensitive" and by The Chicago Reader as "a splinter lodged beneath the fingernail". Avant-garde artist Glenn Branca once called him "one of the greatest rock composers who ever lived”.
He has performed as leader and sideperson in a number of bands, including Cellular Chaos and Lydia Lunch Retrovirus. Walter has worked with Marshall Allen, John Butcher, Tim Dahl, Peter Evans, Mary Halvorson, Henry Kaiser, Joe Morris, Jim O'Rourke, Evan Parker, Elliott Sharp, Ken Vandermark, and William Winant, as well as in bands including Sharon Cheslow, Bobby Conn, Cheer-Accident, Cock E.S.P., Curse of the Birthmark, Erase Errata, Harry Pussy, Lair of the Minotaur, Quintron, The Chicago Sound, The Scissor Girls, U.S. Maple, and XBXRX. He has produced albums by AIDS Wolf, Arab on Radar, Glenn Branca, Burmese, Lydia Lunch, Coachwhips, and Total Shutdown.
Weasel Walter photo by Peter Gannushkin
Street Tentacle
Jeff Chan: tenor saxophone
Da Wei Wang: guitar, electronics
Jerome Bryerton: Gretsch Drums, cymbals, gongs, bowed metal and percussion
https://balancepointacoustics.bandcamp.com/album/preserves
About Street Tentacle
Street Tentacle celebrates the release of its debut album, “Preserves”, on Balance Point Acoustics.
“Sights and sounds move from place to place with promiscuous gesture. Ships, airplanes, and churning whirlpools appeal more to mechanical economies than street feet sharing pulse rate interiorities. The people twist on metric rails. Oxygen converters reflect swinging diatonics. Blackouts resound. Triggers blackout pots, pans, tin cans, and appropriate Lydian roots, talking tanks, and time-sliced wildlife. By 1950, modernist cultural curdling sacrificed aesthetic convenience for intuitive production and versatility. Most vision is not aggressively enforced, but mutual, after skimming off the scum. Yet, from a simple sonic frame to galvanized iron bars my fight-or-flight electroplating radically changes.”
- travis (Ono)
(excerpt from the liner notes of “Preserves”
Jeff Chan
Chicago saxophonist/composer Jeff Chan is dedicated to advancing the understanding of the Asian American experience through music. He has worked with many of the leaders of the Asian American creative music movement, including saxophonist Francis Wong and bassist Tatsu Aoki as well as some of the top figures in the Chicago music scene such as saxophonists Jimmy Ellis, Ari Brown, Mwata Bowden and Edward Wilkerson Jr., trumpeter Ameen Muhammad, drummer Avreeayl Ra and pianist/vocalist/bandleader Yoko Noge. With a discography of more than a dozen recordings as a leader, sideman and producer, Chan has performed extensively in the Chicago area, across the nation and in Europe. Critics have said that Chan is “… a voice to be reckoned with… (Brian Gilmore, JazzTimes, April 15, 2010)” and that his work is “music of uncommon majesty, spirituality and emotional depth (Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune, October 11, 2005).”
Da Wei Wang
For nearly 16 years, Da Wei has been a veteran guitar hawk of the Chicago avant-rock scene. He is best known for his guitar work in the legendary industrial punk band, Ono. His fractured, atonal guitar voicing spans a multitude of styles—from Dadaesque funk to existential doom to ambient drones. He applies unique tunings and extended techniques on his guitar to conjure dense, textured landscapes. Using unconventional tools like a hand fan, electric drill, a hand-made bow and magnets, he delicately entices his guitar to produce ethereal timbres and resonances. In March 2021, Da Wei released Liquid Metal Core—a solo guitar album of melting, fuzz-driven drones and blistering soundscapes on Asian Improv Records. His duet with Tatsu Aoki, Yes Strings Attached, will be released on Sept. 30th on FPE Records.
Jerome Bryerton
See Above
$15 - Tickets Available at the Door