A unique live performance at Issue Project Room gathered the former Sonic Youth member and artist Kim Gordon and the legendary minimal blues master and artist Loren Connors in 2014.
In December 2014, the Issue Project Room venue in New York City offered the first-time duo with the legendary Brooklyn- based guitarist Loren Connors and the rock icon Kim Gordon. From this almost 1 1⁄2 hour set, Gordon and Connors decided to archive their favourite movement on a physical record which is a 12" vinyl now available from the french label Alara.
Through this long improvised session, Kim Gordon and Loren Connors do dialogue and browse between installations of deep soundscapes at the limit of drone, and distorted, abrasive sonic attacks wrapped in reverberated harmonics. In this unprecedented exchange between two legends, the languages are as borrowed from one to the other: Kim Gordon plays on the land of the first inventions of Connors in rumbling / growling "unaccompanying" strings pinch, when Loren Connors envelops the entire hall of distorted harmonics that Gordon would not have denied in her loudest attacks within her solo or group experiences from decades.
Just through the story of each of the protagonists and thanks to the quality of the recording and the mastering that bring the intensity of this meeting to life as if we were physically attending to the show, this album is a unique opportunity to witness the exceptional meeting between two legends of sonic and experimental music.
Kim Gordon (born 1953 in Rochester) is an American musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the bassist, guitarist, and vocalist of
Sonic Youth,
which she formed with Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo and Richard Edson in 1981.
After graduating from the Otis College of Art and Design in L.A. she moved to New York, and worked for several Soho art galleries in the early 1980s. At Jo Bear's request she compiled an exhibition for his new White Columns gallery in 1982.
Mike Kelley and
Tony Oursler were participants.
Dan Graham invited her to join a performance of an all female rock band, which marked the start of her first band, CJM.
In addition to her work as a musician, Gordon has had ventures in record producing, fashion (X-Girl), writing, acting, directing and has worked consistently as a visual artist throughout her musical career. Gordon is also a founding member of the musical project Free Kitten, which she formed with Julia Cafritz in 1993.
One of the world's most singular guitarists, Loren Mazzacane Connors (born 1949) is among few living musicians whose prolific body of work can be said to be wholly justified in its plenitude. On more than 100 records across almost four decades, Connors has wrung distinct shades of ephemeral blues from his guitar, its sound ever-shifting while remaining unmistakably his own. From his early, splintered take on the Delta bottleneck style through his song-based albums with Suzanne Langille and on to the painterly abstraction that defines his current work, Connors has earned the admiration of many, leading to collaborations with the likes of John Fahey,
Jim O'Rourke,
Alan Licht,
David Grubbs,
Keiji Haino, and
Kim Gordon.
