Creative Time's
MUSIC IN THE ANCHORAGE '96

The Music series, July 12 - July 27, drew over 6,000 people to the Anchorage and attracted press coverage from the New York Times, The Village Voice, CNN and The Wire.


This year's exhibition coupled with the fresh new sounds generated by the music series, marked the celebratory union between art and music audiences. The contagious energy created by this mix drew thousands of visitors to our exhibition (closed August 25th).


So you didn't get to the Anchorage, or maybe you did and just want to refresh some fond memories. Tap into the sounds from the Bridge through SonicNet's Cybercast archives.

Sponsors:




Friday, July 12

Cultural Alchemy's Soundlab

"Experiments For The Electrotechtural Now" A full blown sound immersion in the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Utilizing all seven chambers Soundlab's Illbient Posse: D.J. Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Olive, Soulslinger, The Bedouin and Singe with Live Techno Organix by We, Byzar and MC Verb plus Many Special Guests in the Meltdown Mix, created the ultimate in ambient environments!


Saturday, July 13

Pee Shy, Drunken Boat, Home

Pee Shy's special mix of poetry and unorthodox instrumentation reinvents pop music with honesty, passion and humor. Self-described as a schizophrenic, progressive collective for the discerning ear, their music is both absurd and beautiful - a mental map of fin-de-siecle romance and fun.

Drunken Boat's brand of poetry-kissing-punk-rock leaves a-rhythmic jolts of noise banging in your head, forcing you to shake your booty. If Culture Club, Wire and the Buzzcocks all decided to have a party, Drunken Boat wouldn't be invited.

Home's articulate pop vocabulary makes for calculated/brainy songs that whip between quirky and conceptual. They released their first seven"albums" on homemade tapes and every Home song is like Turkish candy: the more you hear, the more you'll want. You might as well sing along.


Wednesday, July 17

Trans Am, Ui, Byzar

Trans Am is a rock band that says they get bored with rock really easily. This instrumental trio was raised on prog-rock and they lay ultra-precise drumming and sizzling guitars over cheap electronics for a retro sound that owes more to the future than the past. While many bands tout primitive technology, Trans Am may single-handedly revive Casio samplers' cool status.

Ui's work contains repetitive patterns, narratives, sounds to test your equipment with, and impressions of places they haven't been - subversive anti-rock, if you will. Their percussion often implies where the beat is, instead of playing it directly. They say "genre is bad." They hope to get really popular before anyone notices.

Byzar's illbient sounds returned to the Anchorage for a command performance. After playing during Soundlab's historic moment at the Bridge, we had to have them back so that Akin could join in on the fun. Olive insisted.


Thursday, July 18

The Foetus Symphony Orchestra with Lydia Lunch,
Spanish Fly

The Foetus Symphony Orchestra is the latest vision of Jim (Foetus) Thirlwell, a relentless aesthetic terrorist and committed cultural subversive. A true alternative to "alternative", FSO is draining, upsetting, and mesmerizing (this performance was recorded).

Lydia Lunch is a confrontationalist who makes a rare appearance with FSO. She's currently working on a new Shotgun Wedding album, and working in photography and sculpture for upcoming exhibits.

Spanish Fly is a genre-blending trio of virtuoso polyglots, wry improvisers, and subtle stylists. With a trumpet, a tuba, and a slide guitar, they are equally at home in NYC's concert halls and opening for rock bands at CBGB. Whirling jazz, folk, and blues, the sophisticated results are both angular and swinging.


Friday, July 19

Emergency Broadcast Network's Expo '96
Dr. Nerve

Emergency Broadcast Network's live show unleashes the full force and fury of multimedia. Multiple video screens overflow with thousands of broadcast images crushed into a high-speed information overload that borders on a futuristic political rally. Warning: audiences often can't watch television for several days after and EBN performance.

Doctor Nerve is a New York septet which injects the furious energy of rock into tightly composed twentieth-century music. The result is an intense and precise live show, infused with spontaneous improvisation. Drastic and unpredictable, Doctor Nerve stomps cliches all day long.


Saturday, July 20

Emergency Broadcast Network's Expo '96

WordSound I-POWA

WordSound I-POWA is a local hip-hop reggae dub outfit with music that sets listeners loose in a world of fantasy dubadelic. Their performances are innovative underground guerilla actions, and they advise you to strap in before blast off.


Thursday, July 25

Phil Kline & Harvestworks presents: Jose Halac & ensemble, Ahmed El-Motassem & ensemble and The Koan Pool

Phil Kline is a boombox virtuoso who created "Carol", a twist on the caroling tradition with people carrying tape players for a walking performance. His collection of boomboxes is like a chorus of singers who create unusual and unexpected harmonies when played together. As he says, everything vibrates and has a sound - we are always surrounded by music.

Jose Halac is a composer/vocalist creating instrumental and computer music exclusively. "Scream" was created on computer and is based on pure screams recorded and processed by the computer generating a musical background for the voice and the instruments.

Ahmed El-Motassem's songs are judgemental, critical, sharp, and observant but never reach the depths of cynicism or disillusion. For this event, El-Motassem performs with Edward Ratliff, Evan Gallagher, Heather Paauwe and Tony Corsano.

The Koan Pool is a new musical collaboration featuring players from both sides of the Atlantic. Drawing upon diverse backgrounds these three improvisers and composers: Ulrich Kreiger (Berlin), David First (New York) and Elaine Kaplinsky (New York), have come together to create a seething field of sound in which all of these musical threads find a place to entangle.


Friday, July 26

Harmony Rockets, EAR, Elysian Fields

Harmony Rockets is an experimental side project of Mercury Rev, colored with flashes of drone, jazz, ambient and distortion in an effort to fill the void, thill ve foid and vill fe thoid.

Experimental Audio Research is the latest incarnation of Sonic Boom (Spaceman 3, Spectrum.) EAR's drug-influenced, hypnotic sounds will hook you, and the low-fi, introspective, abstract vibe will keep you twitching in the line.

Elysian Fields' sultry chanteuse, Jennifer Charles, casts a haunting melodic spell. Enigmatic and enchanting, the band's sound, steeped in seduction and caught between velvet and voodoo, creates deeply hypnotic music.


Saturday, July 27

VERNON REID: My Science Project
Scanner and Ben Neill
and Konkrete Jungle hosts
JOURNEY INTO JUNGLE

Vernon Reid: My Science Project is something of a band within a band, featuring members of Masque (Reid on guitars, DJ Logic on turntables, Beans as orator, and Leon Gruenbaum on a 'Samchillian tip tip tip CheeePeeeee.') As Reid says, it's "the palce where hiphop, trance, technology, ambient, and the great unknown collide."

Scanner, is Robin Rimbaud, a sound artist who splices technology, language and the power games of voyeurism into audio collages. Dubbed a "telephone terrorist," Rimbaud is a techno-data pirate whose scavenging of the electronic communications highways provides the raw materials for his fascinating and often disturbing aural collages.

Ben Neill's fluid dynamic of thought, feeling and actuality is unlike anything you've put on your stereo. On his Verve debut Triptical, he applies the full range of musical possibilities with the instrument of his own invention, the mutantrumpet (a multi-valved trumpet interfaced with a MIDI computer), into a rich mix of ambient techno.

Konkrete Jungle hosts JOURNEY INTO JUNGLE after midnight until dawn for the finale event of the Anchorage Music Series. Get ready for DJs: Delmar, Cassien, MC Panik and Scorpion.



DIRECTIONS

The Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage is located inside the base of the Brooklyn Bridge at Cadman Plaza West at the intersection of Hicks Street and Old Fulton Street in Brooklyn. Take the 2 or 3 train to Clark Street or the A or C train to High Street. Walk down Cadman Plaza West toward the river under the BQE overpass, the Anchorage entrance is to the right.



Mail to: staff@creativetime.org

©1996 Creative Time, Inc. Very Special Thanks to Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden; and the Heathecote Art Foundation, etant donnes, Pepsico, Evian, and Waste Management of NY and website design by Giannelli

CREATIVE TIME projects are made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; New York State Council on the Arts; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; Materials for the Arts; Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden; and New York City Councilmember Tom Duane. Programs are also made possible with funds from an anonymous donor; Harriett Ames Charitable Trust; AT&T Foundation Matching Gift Program; Bloomberg Information Radio; Capezio/Ballet Makers Dance Foundation; Chase Manhattan Bank; Con Edison; The Cowles Charitable Trust; Etant Donnes; The William & Mary Greve Foundation; The Gunk Foundation; The Harkness Foundations for Dance; Heathcote Art Foundation; Jerome Foundation; Jujamcyn Theaters; The Joe & Emily Lowe Foundation; The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation; J.P. Morgan & Co., Incorporated; New York Foundation for the Arts; Philip Morris Companies Inc.; Polo Ralph Lauren; Sandpiper Fund; Dr. Seuss Fund; and CREATIVE TIME's many friends and supporters.