Art Metropole

01 Jan. 2003

LEE RANALDO with DAVE DYMENT: New Life After Fire (for Tom Thomson)

Artists

Lee Ranaldo and Dave Dyment

We are pleased to announce the publication of the audio CD New Life After Fire (for Tom Thomson) by Lee Ranaldo with Dave Dyment. The recording is the complete set from a live performance at Lee’s Palace in Toronto, on September 5, 2001.

Playing alongside his own experimental films, Ranaldo coaxed a wide range of sounds from his guitar while pre-recorded voices from prepared tapes floated in and out of the mix. Working with a sampler and CD deck, Dyment added bursts of noise and ambient bed-tracks. The entirely improvised set ranges from quiet ambience to destructo wall-of-noise.

About the Artist
Lee Ranaldo, musician, writer, and visual artist, is an original member of the group Sonic Youth, formed in 1981 in New York City. They have recorded and performed around the world since that time. In 1999 the group recorded Goodbye 20th Century, interpretations of compositions by John Cage, Christian Wolfe, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich and others.

Among Lee’s solo records are Dirty Windows, a collection of spoken texts with music, and Amarillo Ramp (for Robert Smithson), pieces for the guitar. His books include Bookstore, Road Movies and Jrnls80s. A full-length book of writings on Moroccan travels and music, as well as a book of new poems, Lengths & Breaths, will be out soon. Recent visual work has been included in exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery in London and the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art.

Dave Dyment is a visual & sound artist living and working in Toronto. His work can be seen in the travelling exhibition Soundtracks and a forthcoming sound anthology published by YYZ Books titled Aural Cultures.

Founding member of Sonic Youth, now in 30th year; composer/visual artist/writer etc. Recent live performances with partner Leah Singer, Contre Jour, have been large scale, multi projection quadraphonic sound+light events, with Lee performing suspended electric guitar phenomena.

Leeʼs visual and sound works have been on view this year in gallery and museum shows in Bratislava, Slovakia; Auckland, New Zealand; Salt Lake City, Tampa, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.

Other recent solo recordings include Les Anges Du Peche: Thurston Moore/Jean-Marc Montera/Lee Ranaldo: guitar duets [Dysmusie, 2011]; and Afternoon Saints: The Shirley Jangle (with Christian Marclay, Gunter Muller, David Watson) [Kraak, 2009].

Sonic Youth’s most recent recordings include Simon Werner a Desparu, a film soundtrack [SYR9, 2011] and The Eternal [Matador 2009]. Lee’s latest collections of writings, How Not To Get Played On The Radio [SoundBarn, 2011], and Against Refusing [Waterrow Press, 2010], enlist internet spam as a springboard for poetry. A major collection of Leeʼs writings and poetry will be published by Salt Press [U.K.] in late 2012.

Dave Dyment is an artist and writer based in Toronto. His work has been exhibited in Edmonton, Ottawa, Halifax, Toronto, Philadelphia, Dublin and Varna, Bulgaria. He is currently the artist in residence at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown, Scotland. Examples of his work can beheard on the YYZ/Walter Phillips Gallery publication “Aural Cultures” and on “New Life After Fire”, a collaboration with Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. He is respresented in Toronto by MKG 127.