A triple bill of music makers arrive at MK Gallery this week, with Marisa Anderson, Laura Cannell and Bad Body out to capture your ears.
Marisa Anderson channels the history of the guitar and stretches the boundaries of tradition. Her playing is fluid, emotional, and masterful, featuring compositions and improvisations that re-imagine the landscape of American music. Her deeply original work applies elements of minimalism, electronic music, drone and 20th century classical music to compositions based on blues, jazz, gospel and country music.
Originally from Northern California, Anderson dropped out of college at age nineteen to walk across the US and eventually landed in Portland, Oregon, where she currently lives. Classically trained, she honed her skills playing in country, jazz and circus bands. In 2009 she released her first solo guitar record, The Golden Hour, followed by Mercury (2011) and Traditional and Public Domain Songs (2013).
More recently, she has been in demand as a collaborator and composer, contributing to recordings by Beth Ditto and Sharon Van Etten, and creating music for short films.
On her newest release, Into the Light Anderson leaves Appalachia and the Delta blues behind as she journeys west, into the heart of the sun. Written as the soundtrack to an imaginary science-fiction western film, the record’s ten songs trace the story of a visitor lost and wandering on the shifting borderlands of the Sonoran desert. Into the Light is shimmering and cinematic, the pieces built around pedal steel, lap steel and electric piano as well as Anderson’s signature guitar sound.
Laura Cannell’s work draws on the emotional influences of the landscape and the sometimes dissonant chords of early and medieval music.
With deconstructed bow and the extraordinary sound of double recorder, her music has grown out of unearthed fragments that became improvised pieces. It encompasses both wild animal calls and long forgotten liturgical fragments, which drawn through Laura’s music seem to originate from the same, ahistorical place.
With a background in traditional folk, early and experimental music, she creates a solitary minimalist chamber music, where one player makes all the harmonies.
2014s first solo album Quick Sparrows over the Black Earth has since been joined by the highly acclaimed Beneath Swooping Talons.
And Bad Body's crushing 'Do You Know I Live' album is a bitter distillation of suburban ennui and drained-of-power noise.
Thursday's event (Oct 27) starts at 7.30pm and tickets are seven quid.
