Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable who's who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends (Rashied Ali, Derek Bailey) and electronic wizards (Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke) to turntable masters (DJ Spooky, Christian Marclay) and veteran Downtown New York composers (John Zorn, Rhys Chatham). Licht is also renown in the indie rock scene as a bandleader (Run On, Love Child) and supporting player to cult legends like Tom Verlaine, Arthur Lee, Arto Lindsay, and Jandek. With Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, he founded Text of Light, an ongoing ensemble which performs freely improvised concerts alongside screenings of classic avant garde cinema.
Licht was curator at the famed New York experimental music venue Tonic from 2000 until its closing in 2007, and has written extensively about the arts for the WIRE, Modern Painters, Premiere, Village Voice, New York Sun, and other publications. His book, Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Media, the first extensive survey of the genre in English, was published by Rizzoli in 2007.
There are no upcoming tour-dates for Alan Licht.
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Acclaimed guitar duo Loren Connors and Alan Licht celebrate their 30-year collaboration in 2023 with the release of their eighth album — At The Top Of The Stairs —and a series of performances. The duo will hold a two-night residence at Café OTO in London on May 5 and 6.
The album is available on streaming applications April 29, followed by LP release on June 9.
Out today: Alan Licht's "Jump" single -- or we should say, his American Primitive interpretation of Van Halen's number 1 hit from 1984.
"Jump" is streaming on all services now. The video produced by Eric Weddle.
This single is the rollout to the physical and amped up version of Licht's collection Three Chords and a Sword: Solo Cover Versions 1988-2021 - first self-released digitally last year. Now, as a CD it features two bonus covers: Stooges' "1970" and an insert with a text-based version of Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting In A Room” generated by artificial intelligence.
We'd been reading Alan Licht's views and conversations for what seems like forever, or at least, the early 1990s. Now 500-plus pages worth are collected in the weighty Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Musicians 1995–2020 (Blank Forms). The book features interviews with Matthew Barney, Glenn Branca, Tony Conrad, Milford Graves, Adris Hoyos, Ken Jacobs, Jutta Koether, Lou Reed, Kelly Reichardt, Rudy Wurlitzer, and many others...
Guitarist Alan Licht is heading out the road in June to perform music from Currents -- his solo acoustic LP (via VDSQ). This is the first time Alan will be playing a solo show in some of these cities. Check the tour dates here to see if he's rambling through your town...
One of our favorite duos took to the stage at Issue Project Room this week -- Alan Licht & Aki Onda. They also revived their trio with pianist Michael Snow. Hoping for another album from these gents. Photo from IPR's Instagram feed.
The ultimate Loren Connors overview has been written and compiled by the fine gents at The Out Door column over at Pitchfork. It is epic, beautiful and covers Loren's four decades as an artist and musician. It's got it all, from a summary of his many albums -- including many on FV -- and interviews with Suzanne Langille, Darin Gray, Alan Licht, Jim O'Rourke, some guy named Jandek and few others. Please, spend some time with this one.
