In 2018, The Creative Independent and National Sawdust will work together to present new works from independent musicians, dancers, and other types of working artists. The series will focus on process, collaboration, and the time and space needed to complete a creative project.

This edition of TCI x National Sawdust features “Tongue Versions,” an interplay between piano and soprano sax by Anenon featuring New York based artist Bryce Hackford. Based on his hit LP, “Tongue,” a record that with aspects of downtown minimalism, ambient, classic era electronic, and free jazz, the live iteration will feature improvised music and sound alongside the original material.

The stage name of Los Angeles based Brian Allen Simon, the sound-artist and multi-instrumentalist Anenon recorded “Tongue,” his fourth LP, in the Italian countryside of Tuscany during a month-long residency program in April of 2017. Composed against the serene and quiet surroundings of Tuscany, the music of Tongue materializes through abstract articulations of love, loss, fear, addiction, confidence, longing, hope, and sadness. While deceivingly minimal on the surface, layers reveal themselves with each new listen, exposing a self contained universe of sound. Drawing on the palette of the piano’s keys, strings, and hammers as well as the soprano saxophone’s winds and human breath pushed through, the record is embellished with synthesizer and site specific field recordings. It touches on aspects of downtown minimalism, ambient, classic era electronic, and free jazz. Purposefully, the album never settles comfortably into any one of these genres, remaining a work of deep personal affect by Simon. Live, Tongue Versions uses the material recorded in Italy as well as recent material recorded at home in Los Angeles as a jumping off point for excursions into improvised music and sound. For this performance, Brian Allen Simon and collaborator Bryce Hackford will utilize the instrumentation and palettes of Tongue to blanket the audience with a dynamic, searching, and timelessly ephemeral sound.
National Sawdust