"Be it in indie rock groups, improv ensembles, or his solo compositions, guitarist and writer Alan Licht has spent his career smuggling ideas across the obscured bridge between harmony and noise." -- the WIRE.
Alan Licht is an American guitarist and composer, whose work combines elements of pop, noise, free jazz and minimalism. Guitarist from Love Child, the Blue Humans, Run On, Text of Light, Lee Ranaldo & the Dust. Touring in support of his new double album of mostly electric solo guitar stuff, Havens, out on VDSQ.
Doors 7:30pm. Music at 8:00pm with a supporting solo set from special surpise guest. 21+
Licht's music draws on a wide range of different styles, from tape-loops, to noisy guitar (sometimes using a prepared instrument), to pure pop music.
"Licht composes like the writer that he is. Ideas - simply stated and highly effective - emerge from a collage of everything from loops of raw guitar to radio weather reports." -- Christian Marclay, ARTFORUM.
His earliest musical influences, in the 1970s, were mainstream rock bands like the Bee Gees and Wings—he remarks in an interview with Paris Transatlantic magazine that 'What made me want to play guitar was that painting of Wings in concert in the gatefold of Wings Over America. It looked so exciting... I wanted to be part of it.' Later, in school, he listened to punk and no wave bands like Mission of Burma, Hüsker Dü and Sonic Youth. However, his musical trajectory was set when his guitar teacher gave him a copy of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, which would lead to his discovery of other minimalist music. Licht majored in Film Studies at Vassar College in New York. Since the 1980s, he has worked and recorded with the bands Love Child, Run On and The Pacific Ocean and with other avant-garde musicians including Jim O'Rourke, Rudolph Grey, and Loren Mazzacane Connors. He has also recorded several solo albums.[1] Licht participated as drummer 42 in the Boredoms 77 Boadrum performance which occurred on July 7, 2007, at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn, New York.