$10 admission / 7:30 start / 7pm doors / seated & standing
Oakland experimental duo Grex returns to the LilyPad, joined by Boston-based musician/composer Forbes Graham and ambient band Mirror Stars (members of Fable Grazer). Grex celebrates the release of its new album “Auntie + Tebs,” which explores stories of revolution in the Philippines and South Africa.
GREX
Grex is an experimental/art rock band based out of Oakland, California. In biological terms, a "grex" is an entity composed of several smaller organisms. Grex (the band) explores the meeting point between surreal songcraft and the dark outer reaches of free jazz and industrial hip-hop. The group has been called an "otherworldly experience" (Eugene Weekly) and "true genre warping music" (KFJC), recalling at turns the ecstatic energy of Milford Graves, the electronic squall of Death Grips, and the lilting indie rock of Water from Your Eyes and Mitski. Grex has performed alongside the likes of Fred Frith, Andrew Cyrille, Tony Levin, and members of Irreversible Entanglements, Tune-Yards, and Dirty Projectors.
FORBES GRAHAM
Forbes Graham (b. 1977) is a composer, musician, sound artist, and visual artist whose work explores themes of simultaneity, perceptibility, transformation and collage. He was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Silver Spring, MD. He attended American University, studying music composition, in the mid to late 90s and was involved in the DC and Maryland hardcore scenes, playing in a number of bands and releasing music on his label RiceControl. In the early 2000s, he moved to New England, where he got involved with Boston's free jazz and improvised music scenes. His work Encounters I for trumpet, electronics, and voices premiered at Roulette in 2019. In 2020, he was selected to work with the JACK Quartet as a part of JACK Studio. The Overlook Quartet performed his string quartet Crossing in 2021 at Mass MoCA amongst Linda Sormin's installation Stream. He performed with Michael Pisaro at (the) co-incidence festival in 2017 and has appeared at other music festivals including High Zero, Vision, The Thing In The Spring, and The Festival of New Trumpet. Graham has appeared on over 40 albums, primarily on trumpet, but also on electronics. He is a member of Mobius Artists Group, a collective of experimenting artists. Past composition teachers include Chaya Czernowin, Eric Wubbels and Julia Werntz.
MIRROR STARS
Mirror Stars is an ambient/drone project based out of Boston, MA, emerging out of free improv collective Fable Grazer. Their music grows through cause-and-effect, accident and power struggle.