Indexical presents ecstatic improvisation and high-volume microtonal drones by the duo of John Krausbauer & Kaori Suzuki (Oakland) on violins, voices, bells, and strobe lights; tape loops and hypnotic live-drawing by The Swinging Chandeliers (LA) Joseph Hammer of the Los Angeles Free Music Society with artist/hypnotist Sayo Mitsuishi; and microtonal lap steel guitar by Henry Birdsey (Vermont) of drone duo Tongue Depressor. Expect a night of trance-inducing sounds from a variety of strings instruments and electronics.

John Krausbauer & Kaori Suzuki

John Krausbauer and Kaori Suzuki will present their free ecstatic durational music for voices, amplified strings, electronics, and bell percussion. High-volume, sustained tones, and stroboscopic lighting build a collective, radiating, ur-drone in exploration of psychotropic sensorial experience.

John Krausbauer is a composer/multi-instrumentalist based in Oakland, CA and co-founder of the Los Angeles publishing label, Besom Presse. A long time purveyor of the ur-drone and trance-psychedelia, his compositional work involves audio transmissions for TOTAL/immersive experience. Transcendence through repetition, duration, alternate tunings, maximum volumes, and stroboscopic lighting. In recent years he has returned to improvisational playing and sought out particular collaborations to further explore his interest in improvisatory music making.

He has performed and presented his music across N America, Europe, and Japan in a multitude of settings - from basements, sidewalks, and rock clubs to colleges, churches, and art museums. Over 20 recordings of his have been released on independent labels in the US, Europe, and Japan. His group and solo music can be found on Important, Beta-Lactam Ring, ANTS, Fabrica, Debacle, Autumn, Thin Wrist (upcoming), and a number of other international labels.

His current music projects include the Ecstatic Music Band (a 10+ member-collective of strings players); solo music for amplified violin and tape; his collaboration with partner, Kaori Suzuki, with bells, voices, strings, electronics; the Minimalist psych-punk group Night Collectors; his systems-based phase compositions; as well as past and ongoing duo collaborations with Louisville resonator guitarist R. Keenan Lawler, NYC bagpiper David Watson, and Tokyo based guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama.

Kaori Suzuki is a Tokyo-born music maker/composer living in Oakland, CA. Her spiraling sound visions often take form in long durations, using electroacoustic sound technologies, high-register electronics, modified acoustic instruments, and tape. She seeks to create heightened listening states, emphasizing finding ‘music’ within activated space-time.

She has toured and performed her music in numerous venues and settings across the US, Japan, Europe, Mexico, and Canada, and has released her music on independent labels in Germany and the US.

Her current projects include her solo compositions involving modified instruments and electronics; drumming in the Oakland-based Minimalist psych-punk group Night Collectors; playing cello and guitar in the Ecstatic Music Band; her durational music for vhf-combination tones; and on-going collaborations with John Krausbauer in immersive light/sound happenings. 

The Swinging Chandeliers

Ecstasy and fatigue, according to the neuro-psychologist Richard Gregory, go together.   Webster’s Dictionary, (1815) describes Ecstasy as, ‘Any passion by which the thoughts are absorbed, and in which the mind is for a time lost; excessive joy, rapture, enthusiasm, excessive elevation of the mind; madness, distraction’.   “… the cut glass chandelier, of immense length, representing the jet d’eau of a fountain and playing from the centre of the room up into the painted sky, reflected in the four pier glasses opposite, which repeat each other, and the lesser chandeliers in endless repetition.”     (Sitwell, British Architects and Craftsmen, 1945, p176)

Sayo Mitsuishi artist/hypnotist draws live on an overhead projector using both hands simultaneously, as an attempt to create symmetry as gesture rather than representation, using drawing as a way of recording the body’s intricate dance with music.

Joseph Hammer uses tape loops, a mode that offers fodder for metaphorical reflection and also, in his hands, very involving music. Unlike many people’s art loops but like all real-life loops, Hammer’s are always changing — sources and lengths of sample altered, cycles often completed at irregular intervals. While his aesthetic is identifiable within the trio Solid Eye, his solo stuff is more sensual and calm, focusing on the way recorded sounds (instrumental, electronic and found) move around in your headspace. (Greg Berk, L.A. Weekly)

Henry Birdsey

Henry Birdsey is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and recording engineer from Vermont, working primarily with pedal steel + lap steel, microtonal organ, violin, and homemade instruments. His music is often drone-based and involves microtonal tunings, the amplification of metal, and fragments of church music. He will be performing microtonal music for lap steel guitar.