Some locals-only announcements

A few events of note to San Francisco locals that we thought we'd mention...

• Our pal Peter, one of the amazing artists from Creativity Explored, dropped by the other day to remind us that CE's 2008 Holiday Art sale begins this week. The opening reception is Friday, December 5th, from 6pm to 9pm, and the sale/show runs through Dec. 30th. Original art by over 100 artists! Check it out.
Creativity Explored, located at 3245 16th St. in the Mission near Guerrero, is a non-profit visual arts center devoted to artists with developmental disabilities. Click here for more info on the holiday sale.

• There's some particularly interestin' experimental music stuff going on at The Lab the weekend after next. Details as follows:

23five Incorporated will be hosting two nights of work by the experimental sound art project Illusion Of Safety at The Lab, in celebration of the 25th anniversary for the Chicago based ensemble. These performances will take place on Friday, December 12, 2008 and Saturday, December 13, 2008, and will also include appearances from Thomas Dimuzio, Wobbly, RK Faulhaber, Leticia Casteneda, and Barn Owl.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12:
Illusion Of Safety (Chicago)
Barn Owl (SF)
Leticia Casteneda (LA)

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13
Dan Burke + Thomas Dimuzio (Chicago / SF)
Wobbly (SF)
R.K. Faulhaber (San Jose)

Both performances start at 8pm with an admission of $8.00.

ILLUSION OF SAFETY:
Revolving around its principle artist and founder Dan Burke, Illusion of Safety is now entering its 25th year of existance, having produced a large and challenging body of sound art through performance, installation, and recording. In Burke's own words, "Illusion Of Safety intrepidly charts the terra incognita where sound, silence, noise and music intersect. Using conventional instruments, sound generating devices and random objects, IOS hews sonic sculptures that deliberately provoke, mesmerize and even affront listeners. IOS currently with electronic synthesis, computer composition, and manipulation of historical musical references and highly amplified handled objects. IOS uses semi-recognizable preexisting structural elements and rearrangements of the 'language of error' to convey external stimuli and personal internal context. The results are destroyed music, broken sound, disturbed ambience and the quest for the sublime." Previous participants in Illusion Of Safety include Jim O'Rourke, Thymme Jones, Chris Block, and Mark Klein; and Illusion Of Safety has performed over 200 times throughout the United States and Europe.

BARN OWL:
The San Francisco duo Barn Owl is comprised of Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti, who in the words of Foxy Digitalis, "work out their engaging blend of drone drift, spectral blues, and subterranean rumble to near perfection." Barn Owl has released music on Root Strata, Foxy Digitalis, and Not Not Fun.

LETICIA CASTENEDA:
Leticia Castaneda is an audio engineer and sound artist living in Los Angeles, California. Recent compositions examine the ability to abandon personal inhibitions while simultaneously reacting to acoustical interference. The quality or the protean nature of amplification has a direct affect upon Castaneda's composition. Her live work combines extreme external confusion with deep innate clarity to build a dramatic pause of time and sound.

THOMAS DIMUZIO:
San Francisco-based Thamas Dimuzio is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, sound designer, experimental electronic musician, collaborator and recording studio owner. Dimuzio has been busy doing his thing since the late 1980's, but is still only known to a small circle of electronic music enthusiasts. A true sonic alchemist who can seemingly create music events out of almost anything, Dimuzio's listed sound sources on his various CDs include everything from "modified 10 speed bicycle" and "resonating water pipe" to short-wave radios, loops, samplers and even normal instruments such as clarinet and trumpet. And while his wide range of musical interests make it impossible to pin a label on him, Dimuzio clearly has an insider's knowledge of older experimental musical forms such as musique concrete and electro-acoustic, as well as more current ambient-industrial, noise and post-techno styles.

R.K. FAULHABER:
R.K. Faulhaber is something of a mysterious figure, looming around such ensembles as Nurse With Wound and irr. app. (ext.) while keeping his own work of textured electro-acoustics a hermetic secret. Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton will be pulling Faulhaber out of obscurity, as Stapleton's United Dairies is to publish Faulhaber's debut album sometime in 2009.

WOBBLY:
Wobbly began as an improvised live mix radio program in Santa Barbara In 1990 and since 1994 has become the unintentional pseudonym of Jon Leidecker. Live performances are still laptop free and search for the extended narratives spun from countless layers of samples, polyphony improvised from musicians who have yet to meet. Tonight's concert will be the fourth performance of 'Refuge' for quarter-speed throat singing, artifacts captured from malfunctioning software, 1024 oscillators, tape echo, aluminum gamelan, bowed attic springs and falling grandfather clocks paused on impact. Selected recent albums are freely available online. Previous and ongoing collaborators include Thomas Dimuzio, People Like Us,
Matmos, Anne McGuire, Negativland, Tim Perkis, Antimatter, Blevin Blectum, Lesser, the Evolution Control Committee, Otomo Yoshihide, Zeena Parkins & MaryClare Brzytwa.

for more information:
http://www.23five.org

• Thursday, December 18th at Slim's, Yahowa 13 are back in town! If you missed 'em last year at Du Nord, you've got another chance to see this legendary spiritual psych rock outfit in action. Their first new album in over 30 years (!) "Sonic Portation" is also quite recommended, you can find our review of it here.

We're giving away 2 pairs of tickets to this show, as well. Send an email to store@aquariusrecords with "Yahowa 13 tix" in the subject line, and we'll enter your name in a drawing to win 'em.