Light and free-spirited psychedelia opens the fifth season of ‘Electrify’, Trafó’s concert series focussing on contemporary music. Performers on the night are musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner Laraaji; the renaissance man and an emblematic figure in California’s experimental music community, Sun Araw; and deranged Hungarian new generation guitarist Raymond Kiss. Expect mythic landscapes and mysterious, joyful jungle music.
Edward Larry Gordon, also known as Laraaji is a musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner who started out as a street musician in New York City. He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising trance-inducing jams on a modified autoharp processed through various electronic effects. Brian Eno saw him playing one night in Washington Square Park and famously left a message in Laraaji’s busking case asking if the pair could record together. A year later, his second vinyl record ‘Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance’ was released. Laraaji went onto release a prolific series of albums for a wide variety of labels, many of which he recorded himself at home and sold as cassettes during his street performances. In recent years he has had his career celebrated with dozens of reissues, and has collaborated with a new generation of underground musicians. Deeply rooted in Eastern mysticism, his music has always served as a meditation aid to reveal the path towards truth. Almost all of his music features his twinkling zither playing, and almost all unfurl with grace and patience, but, within those parameters, his releases pull in different directions – from weirdo trip-hop to spectral noise rock, from music made in caves to tapes laid down in bedrooms. Nowadays, the 73 year old Laraaji splits his time between making music and running instructive ‘laughter workshops’, while radiating light just as powerfully as always.
Over an evolving canon of full-length albums, astrally-aligned collaborations and some arresting visual work, Cameron Stallones aka Sun Araw has evolved as a singular purveyor of expansive, contemporary psychotropic music that encompasses tweaked-out dub, free-wheeling improvisation and deep-focussed stumble-funk. In recent times Stallones has blessed hi-fis everywhere with the gleaming refracted glory of 2014’s ‘Belomancie’ LP, the follow-up to ‘Icon Give Thank’, an incredible collaborative album between Cameron, M. Geddes Gengras and roots reggae vocal legends The Congos. 2014 also saw a serendipitous glide round Europe, in tandem with ambient pioneer Laraaji, under the moniker The Play Zone. The latest configuration of the Sun Araw Band (aka S. Araw “Trio” XI) brought us last year's ‘Gazebo Effect’, a full length album of nocturnal strolls into the depths of a garden of ‘non-dimensional’ sonic objects. The current Sun Araw live core is Cameron and percussionist Jon Leland, who, presented handsome semi-improvised reframes of material taken largely from ‘Belomancie’.
2015 brought Laraaji and Sun Araw even closer when they revisited their The Play Zone project. A steady and glorious aural pursuit of the eternal, drawing on both ancient and modern strains of sound therapies, is what unites these two serious and mischievous mavericks, and their sharing of the performance space refracts their daring cosmic musics into new dimensions. An album document of their sonic partnership, called 'Professional Sunflow', was released on the 17th June this year. On this special night the two artists will perform with their respective projects, as well as together as The Play Zone.
The third performance of the night is from Raymond Kiss’ guitar-focussed solo project, Bulk. Kiss’ musical path started in the Electronic Music and Media Arts faculty at the University of Sciences in Pécs, as well as a trio project (Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Bitch) that formed in the city, and the experimental music community that shaped around UH Fest. These initial influences quickly led him to start more projects, including the noise rock trio King Pepper, the erratic sample-based solo project Thee Representative, and the power electronics duo Céh. What connects all these different experiments is Kiss’ unbending devotion to the freedom to do as he wishes. At Electrify he will perform as Bulk, using a single guitar and a few pedals to shake out improvised, irregular compositions.
Edward Larry Gordon, also known as Laraaji is a musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner who started out as a street musician in New York City. He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising trance-inducing jams on a modified autoharp processed through various electronic effects. Brian Eno saw him playing one night in Washington Square Park and famously left a message in Laraaji’s busking case asking if the pair could record together. A year later, his second vinyl record ‘Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance’ was released. Laraaji went onto release a prolific series of albums for a wide variety of labels, many of which he recorded himself at home and sold as cassettes during his street performances. In recent years he has had his career celebrated with dozens of reissues, and has collaborated with a new generation of underground musicians. Deeply rooted in Eastern mysticism, his music has always served as a meditation aid to reveal the path towards truth. Almost all of his music features his twinkling zither playing, and almost all unfurl with grace and patience, but, within those parameters, his releases pull in different directions – from weirdo trip-hop to spectral noise rock, from music made in caves to tapes laid down in bedrooms. Nowadays, the 73 year old Laraaji splits his time between making music and running instructive ‘laughter workshops’, while radiating light just as powerfully as always.
Over an evolving canon of full-length albums, astrally-aligned collaborations and some arresting visual work, Cameron Stallones aka Sun Araw has evolved as a singular purveyor of expansive, contemporary psychotropic music that encompasses tweaked-out dub, free-wheeling improvisation and deep-focussed stumble-funk. In recent times Stallones has blessed hi-fis everywhere with the gleaming refracted glory of 2014’s ‘Belomancie’ LP, the follow-up to ‘Icon Give Thank’, an incredible collaborative album between Cameron, M. Geddes Gengras and roots reggae vocal legends The Congos. 2014 also saw a serendipitous glide round Europe, in tandem with ambient pioneer Laraaji, under the moniker The Play Zone. The latest configuration of the Sun Araw Band (aka S. Araw “Trio” XI) brought us last year's ‘Gazebo Effect’, a full length album of nocturnal strolls into the depths of a garden of ‘non-dimensional’ sonic objects. The current Sun Araw live core is Cameron and percussionist Jon Leland, who, presented handsome semi-improvised reframes of material taken largely from ‘Belomancie’.
2015 brought Laraaji and Sun Araw even closer when they revisited their The Play Zone project. A steady and glorious aural pursuit of the eternal, drawing on both ancient and modern strains of sound therapies, is what unites these two serious and mischievous mavericks, and their sharing of the performance space refracts their daring cosmic musics into new dimensions. An album document of their sonic partnership, called 'Professional Sunflow', was released on the 17th June this year. On this special night the two artists will perform with their respective projects, as well as together as The Play Zone.
The third performance of the night is from Raymond Kiss’ guitar-focussed solo project, Bulk. Kiss’ musical path started in the Electronic Music and Media Arts faculty at the University of Sciences in Pécs, as well as a trio project (Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Bitch) that formed in the city, and the experimental music community that shaped around UH Fest. These initial influences quickly led him to start more projects, including the noise rock trio King Pepper, the erratic sample-based solo project Thee Representative, and the power electronics duo Céh. What connects all these different experiments is Kiss’ unbending devotion to the freedom to do as he wishes. At Electrify he will perform as Bulk, using a single guitar and a few pedals to shake out improvised, irregular compositions.
