Amirtha Kidambi: Vocals, Harmonium, Synthesizer, Compositions Matt Nelson: Soprano Saxophone
Eva Lawitts: Bass
Lester St. Louis: Cello
Max Jaffe: Drums and Electronic Sensory Percussion
Sometimes the eye of a storm can draw upon the chaos around it, taking on its energy and consolidating it for use. Something like that is going on in Elder Ones, the quartet led by the vocalist and harmonium player Amirtha Kidambi. She creates drones on the harmonium — an old, air-powered keyboard — and coaxes her bandmates into ripping them apart. Then her voice funnels that energy out in a scorching beam. In its best moments, it’s like a mix of a Cuban sonero’s citrusy cry and a riot grrrl yowl. - New York Times, Giovanni Russonello
As Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times, “the aggressive and sublime first album by the band Elder Ones, Holy Science, is a kind of gauge for how strong and flexible the scene of young musicians in New York’s improvised and experimental music world can be.” Seth Colter Walls writes in Pitchfork, “This sound isn’t merely the product of well-chosen reference points; in its abstract way, it makes a unique argument for the virtue of cross-cultural curiosity. Appropriately, the nature of this music is constantly morphing. When a muted introduction gives way to a more celebratory aesthetic, the change is achieved gradually, through small changes in the arrangement. When a demonstration of rage reaches a peak that cannot be sustained, the musicians in Elder Ones are able to navigate back to a more stable feel, without losing the passion and awareness that has animated those foregoing blasts of harshness. The result is an astonishing debut for a composer, and her band.”
From Untruth builds upon the bedrock foundation of Kidambi's previous compositional and conceptual work with Elder Ones, while forging uncharted territory. After a journey into wordless abstraction on Holy Science, Kidambi felt the urgency of the political moment required a direct and verbal call to action. The lyric fragments critique power structures of capitalism, racism, colonialism and fascism, distilling theory into visceral battle cries of protest. The instrumentation adds a layer of technology, with Kidambi on analog synthesizer and Max Jaffe's drumming talents extended to electronic Sensory Percussion. The frenzied improvising of Matt Nelson on soprano sax and gravity of Nick Dunston on bass, anchor the music in the tradition of free jazz, while it pushes into new futurist realms. The aesthetic seamlessly reels from modal meditation, atonal expressionism, free improvisation and melodic invention, to unabashed bursts of punk rock energy. In its most recent incarnation featuring Eva Lawitts on bass and the addition of Lester St. Louis on cello, the compositions reflect the themes of the tumultuous years of the pandemic and global unrest of violence against Asian Americans, the crises of late capitalism and inequity exemplified by vaccine apartheid, the rise of global fascism and odes to the racial justice movement and labor movements.
Antifahorn might be a jamdemic blues experiment from Iowa City with a revolving line of poets taking lead. They dream of antifascist rainbows mixed with an anarchy of instruments, moods, zines, and noise. Some people say they make it all up as they go along.
For this live show, it will probably be Antifahorn providing the spoken word content in some combination of live and sampled / found words. As with everything we do, it will be an unrepeatable experiment involving guitar-synth-drum sounds and poetry / word art.