Banana Nutrament

4/03/2006
Steve Reid and Kieran Hebden @ Issue Project Room April 2nd, 2006


I made it down to the Issue Project Room this past Sunday, this time getting the date right. The duo of Reid and Hebden erupted into quite a holy racket, audible several blocks away per a kindly cigar-chomping man painting landscapes of the Gowanus Canal.




One thing I noticed immediately was that though decades apart in age, Reid and Hebden both sport the same wiry frame. Both improvised off each other with similar telepathic intensity, Reid working his kit going in and out of a rolled back eyeball trance while Hebden slapped his tone pads with abandon, evoking sounds not dissimilar to a Bitches Brew era Joe Zawinul.

The Issue Project Room is a surprisingly intimate venue for these sorts of experimental events, I should try to get back there, their schedule is full of little wonders. Found a past William Basinski performance on the same bill as DJ Olive, it also would have been a great place to snap a verboten picture of Jandek. The room exists as a circle, being the uppermost part of a concrete silo, it has all sorts of speakers mushrooming out of the ceiing, which I am guessing are used for audio installations or creative panning when in use.

At the end of the performance Reid and Hebden stepped outside onto the metalwork stairs to greet the audience as they left. Not unlike leaving church.


Here's a, uh, repost from December:

Steve Reid and Kieran Hebden - Knives and Forks
The rest of their tour schedule is here