Alan Licht News

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New Interview at Tinnitest.com

9 questions worth, covering Run On, Love Child, Jandek, Arthur Lee, Havens, Beat Happening, Smog, etc.

Brett Abrahamsen Has 9 Questions For Alan Licht

Alan Licht’s guitar work is intriguing, intense, and wildly creative; his fascinating technique is best displayed on the albums he recorded

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European Havens tour September/October 2025

European tour for Havens commences on September 19th:

Sep 19: Understage (Porto, Portugal)

Sep 21: Galerie Ze dos Bois (Lisbon, Portugal)

Sep 22: Cafe Oto (London)

Sep 23: Arts Centre (Colchester, England)

Sep 25: Glad Cafe (Glasgow)

Sep 26: Instants Chavires (Montreuil, Paris)

Sep 28: Salon de Ijzerstaven (Amsterdam)

Sep 30: Stuk (Leuven, Belgium)

Oct 2: Silent Green (Berlin)

Oct 3: Ikonst (Malmo, Sweden)

Oct 4: Mayhem (Copenhagen, Denmark)

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Solo concerts in Chicago (May 9) and Detroit (May 10)

The Havens touring continues with a solo set at the Hideout on Friday May 9 with support from Yr Knives (featuring Tortoise/Eleventh Dream bassist Doug McCombs), full info here

Then the next night I'm at Trinosophes in Detroit with support from Pete Larson, see pic above and link here for tix:

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Havens live at Thee Stork Club, Oakland November 17 2024

Good video of "Havens" live, one of my favorite performances from the fall 2024 west coast tour

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Live on KDVS 11/17/24

"Havens" and "1970" live on Brian Faulkner's "Nothing Exceeds Like Excess" radio show on KDVS 90.3, Davis CA, 11/17/24

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West coast tour for Havens starts this week! All solo sets

Thur 11/14 San Diego house show with Charles Curtis tix

Fri 11/15 Los Angeles 2220 Arts with Byron Westbrook and Shelley Burgon tix

Sat 11/16 Sacramento house with Old Million Eye RSVP to [email protected]

Sunday 11/17 Oakland Thee Stork Club with Sharkiface tix

Monday 11/18 Arcata CA Miniplex at Richard's Goat Tavern with Meg Baird tix

Tues 11/19 Portland Turn Turn Turn with Ilyas Ahmed & Matt Carlson, Bob & Lila tix at door only

Wed 11/20 Seattle Wayward Music Series at Good Shepherd Chapel tix at door only

[alanlicht]

Havens double album released 9/20/2024, fall tour Oct/Nov

Havens, a two-LP set of solo guitar (plus a teeny bit of mellotron and voice) is released Friday, September 20, 2024 by VDSQ/The Black Editions. I'll be playing solo shows on the east and west coasts this fall, full schedule above, more details to follow. Review above from Uncut magazine. Order here.

Track list:

Side 1--Havens, Five Chords and a Sword

Side 2--Nonchalant

Side 3--Frank Sinatra Drive

Side 4--The Daily Sit, 1970 (Stooges cover)

Recorded and mixed 2021/2022 by Eli Crews at Spillway Sound, except The Daily Sit, recorded and mixed by Ted Young at Outer Space, 2014. Mastered by Jeff Yellen, Ridgeline Sound

Cover photo by Alan Licht, album layout and design by Miles Wintner

Additional package photos by Laurent Orseau, and Young Ha Kim for Liquid Architecture

"Alan Licht returns to VDSQ with Havens, a sprawling double-disc set of exploratory guitar-based compositions forged from the myriad possibilities arising when strings collide with electricity & space. Licht is masterful and relentless in his negotiation of the often-unknowable intersections that exist between juxtaposing strands of sound. His work is marked by contrast & contradiction: maximalism versus minimalism; rockist inclinations versus avant, expanded-field expression; loose improvisation versus considered performance. What these dichotomies shouldn’t obscure, however, is the simple pleasure that transpires in his refracting of idiom, conjuring expansive pieces that collapse, stratify & convolve competing schools of music to wholly singular ends.

Havens documents a new sound for Licht, building on a previous VDSQ release "Currents," his last major solo outing from 2015. Playing those solo acoustic tracks live on tour, their lyricism translated through the power of a PA, Licht was taken by the overtones surging atop those song-like pieces, transforming them into something new. The compositions here, particularly the mesmeric title track, luxuriate in that newfound sense of possibility, infused with a rock-born urgency by way of lightning-fast, urgent strumming gradually unfurling layers of phantom harmonics. Celestial punk, if you will; guitar soli of such ever-surging vitality as to blur & distend dense chord shapes to phantasmagoric effect. The record is rich with considered, contained explosivity, firmly minimalist in its patient pace & ear for hallucination but expressed in defiantly, deliciously rock terms, each piece its own lyrical hybrid built of scant elements unfurled with painterly grace. This is firmly a "guitar" record, despite what your ears mighttell you; barring a short mellotron intervention, Havens is almost unbelievably wrought from guitar alone, ably deployed straight or perverted into abstracted spectres & illusions.

The central pairing of sidelong epics, "Nonchalant" & "Frank Sinatra Drive", feel as succinct an encapsulation as any as to the magic of this new approach. On the former, a focal acoustic figure is put through the most beautiful of wringers over its peripatetic duration, Licht moving up the fretboard with intuitive precision to properly excavate the possibilities of the melody as wraith tones take hold & thrust it all upward. The latter, moving over to electric and adding a brief, enigmatic vocal, is a full-throttle beauty, a multi-movement set of variations on a single chord progression realized through a cascade of resplendent guitar that feels like infinite rapture, accelerating towards the ether before plateauing in splendid drone. Elsewhere, the same tools are put towards more contained ends to no less glorious results. "Five Chords and a Sword" (calling back to his idiosyncratic 2022 covers collection Three Chords and a Sword) finds a delirious slide-strewn refrain swallowed by a dense swarm of bliss a la Jim O’Rourke’s Happy Days albeit exclusively by way of ebowed acoustic guitar. "The Daily Sit", the oldest composition here, takes a similarly bright tune & lets it wander down labyrinthine paths with deft control, before we head out on an extended, climacticcover of the Stooges’ "1970," the unbridled repetitive glee of the original set adrift in minimalist fantasia, jutting out in ever more angular shapes & circling back to a place far removed from where it all began.

This loving dislocation & reframing of the rock lexicon remains true to the Licht M.O., Havens being a resoundingly deep listen teeming with visceral energy, a glorious love letter to the still-unexplored potentialities of a simple guitar thrust into the hands of an individual who simultaneously reveres its known nooks but steadfastly continues to push it into crannies uncharted."

—Edward Beaver, Nature Strip Records

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Havens, new solo guitar double album, out September 20th from VDSQ

First major solo release since 2015's Currents, also on VDSQ, I'm proud to announce this new double album, nine years in the making. Find all the details here. Tour dates to be announced soon.

[alanlicht]

New duo album with Loren Connors, The Blue Hour, out now from Otoroku

Now available: "The Blue Hour," a new album documenting the second night of the Loren Connors/Alan Licht duo residency at London's Cafe Oto in May 2023. Find it at bandcamp here.

Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long time collaborator Alan Licht. 

Celebrating thirty years of collaboration, Loren Connors and Alan Licht performed for two nights at OTO on May 5 and 6th, 2023. On the second night, with the stage lit in blue, Connors took up a seat on the piano stool whilst Licht picked up the guitar. What followed was the duo’s first ever set with Connors on piano - one of only a few times Connors has played piano live at all - here captured and issued as The Blue Hour. Its spacious warmth came as a total surprise live, but makes complete sense for a duo whose dedicated expressionism takes inspiration from a vast spectrum of emotion.

Both opening with single notes to start, it doesn't take long before a surface rises and begins to shimmer. A run up the keys, the drop of a feedback layer on a sustained and bent note. The two begin to exchange notes in tandem and brief touches of melody and chord hover. After a while, Connors picks up the guitar, stands it in his lap and sweeps a wash of colour across Licht’s guitar. Sharp, glassy edges begin to form, open strings and barred frets darkening the space. When his two pedals begin to merge, Licht finds a dramatic organ-like feedback and it’s hard not to imagine Rothko’s Chapel, its varying shades of blue black ascending and descending in the room. When Connors goes back to the piano for the second side, the pair quickly lock into a refrain and light pours in. It’s a kind of sound that Licht says reminds him of what he and Connors would do when the duo first started playing together 30 years ago. It’s certainly more melodic than some of their more recent shows, and the atonal shards of At The Top of the Stairs seem to totally dissolve. What is always remarkable about Licht is that his enormous frame of reference doesn't seem to weigh him down, and instead here he is able to delicately place fractures of a Jackson C Frank song (“Just Like Anything”,) amongst the vast sea of Connors’ blues. Perhaps it's the pleasure of playing two nights in a row together, or the nature of Connor’s piano playing combined with Licht’s careful listening, but the improvisation on The Blue Hour feels remarkably calm and unafraid. There’s nothing to prove and no agenda except the joy of sounding colour together.   

credits

released June 28, 2024

Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Saturday 6th May 2023 by Billy Steiger Mixed by Oli Barrett Mastered by Sean McCann Artwork by Loren Connors Layout by Oli Barrett Screenprint by Tartaruga

Manufactured in the UK by Vinyl Press. 

Edition of 300 standard LPs, 200 CDs and 100 LPs with screenprinted artwork by Loren Connors printed as inserts - available at cafeoto.co.uk.

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First Love Child show in 30+ years! June 9 at Union Pool

Love Child is playing our first show since 1993, celebrating the recent release of the 2xLP comp Never Meant to Be: 1988-1993 and the forthcoming digital reissues of our albums Okay? and Witchcraft, plus the complete 1992 Peel Session, all via 12XU Records. Sharing the bill is Thalia Zedek's current band, E, and Subskin Cables. It all happens June 9 at Union Pool in Brooklyn--tickets are here.

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Love Child "Never Meant to Be: 1988-1993" 2xLP/digital comp out today

Out now: 26-song overview of Love Child's best work, including songs from early demos, radio sessions, and original LPs Okay? (1991) and Witchcraft (1992), in a deluxe gatefold package as well as streaming/download. Released by 12XU records, available from them as well as Forced Exposure. Review above from Uncut magazine. This has been in the works for a while, but it was worth the wait, it distills the band's essence perfectly. Great to have this music back in circulation.

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Phill Niblock in Artforum

@artforum asked me to write a remembrance of Phill Niblock, which is now in print in their March issue as well as online. Special mention should be made of Katherine Liberovskya for sourcing the archival photos that appear with the piece. https://www.artforum.com/columns/alan-licht-phill-niblock-19332024-549505/

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Chris Brokaw, Alan Licht, Bill Nace triple bill at Tubby's Kingston Feb 1

Looking forward to this triple bill with perennially cool cats Chris & Bill. Tickets and all info here.

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New books: Essay in Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine, mentions in books by Jesse Rifkin and Sasha Frere-Jones

The new 600-page catalog of the Bob Dylan Archive in Tulsa, titled Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine, contains an essay by me about Dylan's relationship to improvisation, inspired by an outtake from the 1976 Hard Rain TV special of "Tangled Up in Blue." In addition to scads of illustrations of the archive's holding, the book also has essays from Lee Ranaldo, Richard Hell, Ed Ruscha, John Doe, Greg Tate, Alex Ross, Greil Marcus, Lucy Sante, Michael Ondaatje, Clinton Heylin, and many others. Much appreciation to editor Mark Davidson, and to Michael Chaiken, who commissioned the piece and brought me to Tulsa to spend time at the archive. More info here.

In other book news, I was interviewed fairly extensively about working at Tonic, the now-defunct Lower East Side music club, by Jesse Rifkin for his book This Must Be the Place: Music, Community, and Vanished Spaces in New York City. And my friend Sasha Frere-Jones has some nice things to say about a short-lived band we had together in the late 90s in his memoir, Earlier.

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New 7″

New 7″ available on Carbon Records, a remote collaboration with multi-instrumentalist John Krausbauer. Label copy: Alan Licht (electric guitar) and John Krausbauer (amplified violin/oscillators) have created two compositions on their new 7” that seemingly reside on opposite ends of the experimental/free-noise spectrum. Superstizione (Italian for "superstition") is a maximalist free-noise blast, seemingly chaotic, but with an intentional forward movement and flow. Licht's guitar playing starts off with a low end, thick fuzz, but quickly moves to an over-blown, frenetic pattern, all while Krausbauer's amplified violin proves the instrument can fit, and compete comfortably, in the mix of wild amp’d riffage. You can try to discern the notes, examine the interplay, or you can just let yourself be enveloped by the combined waterfall of tones and power. On the other side of the coin (and record), Lateral Tracer utilizes guitar (Licht) and oscillators (Krausbauer) to create drones and moiré-like patterns with interweaving signals, which elicits difference tones and interference beats, mesmerizing the listener with a soothing heartbeat. Similar to the use of the contrasting red and blue in the cover artwork, creating a chromostereopsis effect, the two sources of sound trade places back and forth, per the listener's focus, one sound (or color) retreating, while the other advances, and vice-versa. John Krausbauer is an American composer/musician, artist, writer, refusenik. He has performed his music and presented his A/V work in N America, Europe, Japan, and New Zealand. Additionally he has released around 30 recordings in solo, duo, and group contexts and will soon have his recent writings published by Witchhammer Press (NZ). Alan Licht is a musician and writer based in New York City. He is equally known for his guitar work in the underground rock bands Run On and Love Child and in the experimental groups the Blue Humans and Text of Light. He has released eight solo guitar albums and more than a dozen duo and trio records of improvised music. Licht is the author of Common Tones: Selected interviews with artists and musicians 1995-2020 (Blank Forms) and Sound Art Revisited (Bloomsbury).  Released May 5, 2023 recorded 2022 mastered by James Plotkin

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New release: May 99 by Charles Curtis, Alan Licht, and Dean Roberts

Never-before-heard 1999 recordings now on vinyl LP and download, available from Blank Forms and/or my Bandcamp page.

In the spring of 1999, Charles Curtis, Alan Licht, and Dean Roberts brought an unconventional mix of drone, improvisation, and experimental rock on an eleven-stop tour of Europe. The concept was straightforward, yet novel: each night, they would improvise a single piece while sustained sine waves played for the duration of the concert. May 99, culled from three shorter pieces recorded for a radio program at Amsterdam’s VPRO near the end of the tour, represents an early high watermark in the collision of minimal and rock sensibilities that started to become prevalent in the late 90s and is an ear-opening listen even for those familiar with the musicians’ other projects. May 99 combines resonant sine waves in the style of eminent downtown New York composer La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music with scratchings, scrapings, and warblings produced by Licht and Roberts’s guitars, Curtis’s cello, and a variety of electronics. Just as sine waves hold together these sundry improvisations, a shared tendency toward the minimalistic—Licht’s performances with the Blue Humans, collaborations with Loren Connors, and solo guitar records; Roberts in the band Thela and his solo project White Winged Moth; and Curtis performing with Young and his own Trio—brought together three musicians with very different backgrounds, creating fertile ground on which they generated the album’s unclassifiable sounds. Cello: Charles Curtis Guitar: Alan Licht Electronics: Dean Roberts 

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Loren Connors/Alan Licht two day residency at Cafe Oto, London May 5 & 6

Loren and I will be playing two nights at London’s Cafe Oto next week. Friday May 5 will start with a solo set by me, followed by our duo; Saturday May 6 will have a Loren solo set then the duo. Full details are here. The screen print pictured above will be on sale too.