(Thinking About Blue Almonds)
As part of the artist-led event series ‘Thinking About Blue Almonds’, Ormond Studios invited musical ensemble ‘THE BONK’ to perform ‘Haint Blues’ at our exhibition closing event on Thursday 19th April.
‘THE BONK’ is a broad-based musical project headed by Waterford songwriter and improviser Phil Christie (O Emperor). Gathering influences from 60’s garage, jazz and experimental pop, the band’s arrangements bring recursive rhythms and improvised melodies together in loose minimalist song forms.
‘The blues is an infinite loop, and the loop is elliptical, perhaps. As a structure, it limits the linear progression of time: an outward movement is always complimented and countermanded by a necessary inflection point, a turnaround.
The blues is the blues, I really believe. . . and it gives rise to an alternate time-space (by means of a portal that leads nearer away, into the lining of things). At this particular time-place, thoughts are stuttered and syncopated and lead back to themselves; temporal units (pronounced under the name ‘beats’) contract and/or expand as the moment requires. There is nowhere to go and it is this apparent limitation that uncloses the portal.’
– Philip Christie
Image credits: photo I & II Kate Bowe O’Brien, photo III & IV Ishmael Thoth Ra
Ormond Art Studios 