This November installment of Fire Over Heaven will celebrate the cassette release of ONDA/DORJI/CHEN's "'Haz-,Bins". A new project comprised of Aki Onda (cassette tapes, electronics, objects), Tashi Dorji (guitar) and Che Chen (guitar/etc.).The trio have been eager to reconvene since their noteworthy debut meeting at the Sunview Luncheonette last March, which found the the trio just beginning to explore their sound together. With Dorji and Chen's (a)synchronous extended guitar moves weaving thru and punctuating Onda's massed "objects as sound" approach, big sounds gave way to little ones, became frames, gave way to loaded near-silences and aggregated again...it was all caught on tape (or what passes for it these days) and has been documented on this release. Copies of "'Haz-,Bins" will be available at the show. Performances by Roe Enney are also a very rare thing, as she has thus far been more prone to appear thru obscure recorded missives like her first cassette, Damnatio Memoriae, on Phaserprone (which some of you may have heard playing between sets at previous FOHs) or last year's Glare, her first proper LP on Root Strata. At once distancing and eerily intimate, these are bedroom recordings to be sure, but one suspects that Roe Enney's room is a shifted, sideways place. Skeletal bass lines give the barest suggestion of grooves, keyboard stabs imply change that never comes, melodies are simply sung. The song and it's double. Two rare performances not to be missed.

Thursday, Nov. 16th
doors 7:30pm / music promptly at 8
$10-12 suggested donation

7:30pm doors
8:00pm Roe Enney
9:00pm Onda / Dorji / Chen

Roe Enney
"The electronic artist is always enmeshed in a battle of thresholds. What does one do? This is because she, the electronic spirit, is always in the process of change. This spirit is never stable, it is tenuous. It is a moving hierarchy, a royal island with a v. real topography, with its own guard, observation deck, casino. The music on this record firmly pledges allegiance to this island, and yet it is out somewhere on the shore, perhaps ‘dreaming of elsewhere.’ Yet one cannot help what one is. Perhaps the record is cast-off."
http://rootstrata.com/release/RS107
https://soundcloud.com/rootstrata/roe-enney-comme-everyone

ONDA / DORJI / CHEN
Aki Onda is a New York-based artist and composer. He is particularly known for his “Cassette Memories” — works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by using the cassette Walkman over a span of last quarter-century. He creates compositions, performances, and visual artworks from those sound memories. Onda often performs in interdisciplinary fields and collaborates with filmmakers, visual artists, and choreographers, including Ken Jacobs, Michael Snow, Raha Raissnia, Akio Suzuki, and Takao Kawaguchi. Onda’s work has been presented numerous institutions such as MoMA, The Kitchen, documenta 14, Pompidou Center, Louve Museum, Palais de Tokyo, Bozar, and many others.
http://www.akionda.net/

Tashi Dorji grew up in Bhutan, on the eastern side of the Himalayas. Residing in Asheville since 2000 and soaking up a vast array of music. Along the way, Dorji developed a playing style unbound by tradition, yet with a direct line to intuitive artistry. His recordings feature improvisations that spasmodically grow along tangential, surprising paths. All references break loose during a composition, as Dorji keys into his own inner world. His compositions drag the listener into a labyrinth of warbling tones, where each sound seems to jump out and replace the eerie silence that would otherwise occupy the atmosphere. The textures remain sustained in the reverberation as the vibration of the strings dwindle and ascend. The experience is one equally disorienting and reflective, in which Dorji’s musicianship brings haunting beauty and mindfulness to the listener. After a handful of releases on various labels since 2009, Dorji presented his debut LP on Hermit Hut, the label created by Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) in 2014. And since Tashi has released music both as a soloist, and with duo projects, notably with percussionist Tyler Damon and MANAS (w/ Thom Nguyen) on labels like Bathetic Records, Cabin Floor Esoterica, Blue Tapes, Marmara Records, Feeding Tubes, UNROCK, VDSQ, MIE, Ultra Violet Light, Family Vineyard and Astral Spirits.
https://tashidorji.com/
https://tashidorji1.bandcamp.com/

Che Chen is a musician and artist based in Queens and Stonybrook, NY where he works for the family cancer diagnostics business. Born in 1978 to Taiwanese immigrant parents, Chen studied visual art before turning his attention to sound and music. After a decade of rampant non-specialization, he went into the woodshed with the most prosaic of instruments, the electric guitar, which eventually led him to form 75 Dollar Bill (with percussionist Rick Brown) in 2012. While principally a duo, 75 Dollar Bill’s modal, polyrhythmic sound often manifests itself in expanded lineups varying in size from small ensembles to 25-piece marching band. Though mostly a self-taught musician, he took a crash course in the Moorish modal system from Jeich Ould Chigaly during two weeks he spent in Nouakchott, Mauritania in 2013, an experience to which his approach to guitar is deeply indebted. He also considers his first band, True Primes, and playing in groups led by Tony Conrad, Tori Kudo (Maher Shalal Hash Baz), and Chie Mukai (Che-Shizu) essential parts of his musical education. Other ongoing projects include a trio with Aki Onda and Tashi Dorji, duos with David Watson and Amirtha Kidambi, and the multi-generational, free jazz meets deep listening big band that’s name is always some variation of the esperanto word for orchestra, orkestro. He runs his own small label, Black Pollen Press, which has released recordings and texts by Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, Yoshi Wada and Catherine Lamb, among others.
chechen.bandcamp.com/
75dollarbill.bandcamp.com
blackpollenpress.com