Search - If, Bwana :: Assemble. Age!"

The music of If, Bwana (Al Margolis) represents a vigorous, original and informed continuation of the experimental traditions of American music, responding as it does to the sounds and materials of late 20th and early 21st century American life with a keenly sensitive ear and a marvelous feeling for form, balance, and texture in music. The five works on this recording all utilize and reprocess the performances (both studio and live) of the musicians and vocalists. Their work has been processed, edited, selected and assembled into strange and mutated pieces which in many cases are quite some way removed from the realms of the familiar. Active since 1984 under the If, Bwana name, Al Margolis has been making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented compositions. He ran the cassette label Sound of Pig Music in the 1980s and co-founded and continues to run the experimental music label Pogus. Margolis plays bass guitar in the long-lasting, legendary punk/post-punk band The Styrenes. Recordings of his work have been released on the Tellus, Anckarstrom, Ants, Absurd, GD Stereo, Odradek, Monochrome Vision, and Pogus labels. Recent projects have included a sound art commission by WDR Koln, collaborations with video artist Katherine Liberovskaya on "Take-off", Rant Dance . and Frogfield , all of which have been shown internationally, and the premiere of "Three Songs in Search of a Voice", a "nohtopera" with MutaMYTHeatre - music by Margolis and text and voice, Lisa Barnard Kelley..