Saturday, October 1, 2016, 8:30 pm, $8
Our tri-part OPTRONICA series—OC’s semi-annual fest of Audiovisual-Fusion— opens with a tribute to recently deceased drone demigod Tony Conrad, the minimalist confederate of Faust, La Monte Young, and the Velvet Underground. Tonight we groove both on his hypnotic performances—documented by SFAI grad Tyler Hubby—and on local A/V ‘avatars’ John Davis and Cyrus Tabar, performing pieces honoring Conrad’s legacy. They collaborate on “Tony! Tony!”, a live-violin cascade of resonating overtones, amidst flickers of “Strings” instructionals. Davis also debuts an analog-synth score to the ‘found’ Super8 sci-fi anomaly ‘Silver Robot’, as well as re-tracking a mid-century Soviet-tech rarity, per his obsession. Cyrus rounds out his third with a trio of asynchronous tracks– an oneiric take on Craig Baldwin’s twin-projection “Milk of Amnesia” (world premiere), the second an homage to Kalle Lasn’s undersung “Ritual Tokyo”, and finally, a new soundscape to Jean-Gabriel Periot’s meta-memorial “200,000 Phantoms”.
optron1:re-tracking