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Alexis Gideon’s Video Musics II: Sun Wu-Kong, Lily Taylor, Alee KarimPost an Event »

The Lab

April 21 - April 21, 2011

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2948 16th Street San Francisco, CA
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Alexis Gideon’s Video Musics II: Sun Wu-Kong, Lily Taylor, Alee Karim
$7 - $15 Sliding Scale Building on his genre-busting animated/stop motion video opera Video Musics (2009 Sickroom(US) / Africantape(EU)), Alexis Gideon, after two years of dogged research and collaboration, is set to showcase that work's follow-up, Video Musics II: Sun Wu-Kong. A one-hour multimedia video opera based on the 16th-century Chinese novel The Journey to the West, Video Musics II joins the brightest lights of contemporary animation (Becca Taylor (Punk Planet, Arthur); Cynthia Star (Coraline, Moral Orel, Robot Chicken); Ezra Claytan Daniels (The Changers and Black Violet)) with the most promising talents of contemporary music (Rachel Blumberg (M Ward, Arch Cape); Cory Gray (Norfolk & Western, Carcrashlander); Shelley Short (Hush)) to create an aural and visual universe that gleefully transcends both media. Is it film or music, high art or pop? Gideon's work would fit snugly at either the Whitney Biennial or SXSW, which is to say it cannot be contained, really, by either venue. Marked throughout by the ambition, commitment to detail, and refusal to settle that have earned Gideon a cult following on both sides of the pond. Alexis Gideon has toured nationally with Dan Deacon and Shelley Short as well as played with Barr, Marnie Stern, Panther, Tune Yards Parts and Labor, Zs, People, Matt and Kim, and many, many others. "There isn't anyone doing anything remotely like Alexis Gideon. The songwriter/guitarist has just completed his second multimedia-animated-hiphop-film-opera, Video Musics II: Sun Wu-Kong, and it's an absolutely mind-boggling piece of work-Interpolating themes and motifs throughout, he's written something compellingly unique, combining hiphop, prog, Eastern modes, and some very psychedelic rock. The music didn't need to be excellent in order for the project to be impressive, but Gideon's compositions are weird and gorgeous, more than strong enough to stand on their own." Ned Lannamann, Portland Mercury http://www.alexisgideon.com/ Lily Taylor is a vocalist, musician, and artist based in San Francisco. She is involved in multiple projects including her solo material, recently featured in the Noise Pop Festival, which involves a looping pedal, effected vintage keyboards, and effected vocals to create synth & vocal soundscapes; experimenting with different compositional strategies centered around the equipment limitations and harmony structure. She also locks harmony and tours with San Francisco’s darling, Karina Denike. In addition, Taylor collaborates with dancers/ performance artists from San Francisco & Oakland, CA- exploring the circus, the art of Drag, dive rock clubs, vintage jazz halls, SoMA theaters, Parlors, galleries, and underground venues of The Bay Area. http://www.lilytaylormusic.com/ Alee Karim is a composer and guitarist living in San Francisco, CA. My work is aural cinema, in that I arrange sonic textures & motifs like scenes in a film. In my work, harsh dissonance gives way to gentle themes; alien juxtapositions veil sentimental tropes in order to trace the dense emotional architecture of the modern psyche. Growing up in Los Angeles amidst speed metal and Top-40 radio, my constellation of influence expanded to include composers Gyorgy Ligeti and Trey Spruance, director David Lynch, and author Philip K. Dick. In 2007, I received an MFA in Music from Mills College. My collaborators include composer/engineer The Norman Conquest, electro-acoustic chamber pop duo Myrmyr, and percussionist Shayna Dunkelman. I perform solo and with my band, The Atomic Bomb Audition. http://aleekarim.com/