By Nolan Fedorow
Wanakena, NY – All welcome to a Tuesday night of experimental music out in the forest of the foothills along the Oswegatchie River in Wanakena, NY. The disco light will be spinning in the Gazebo at 7:00 p.m. on July 11. You are invited and encouraged to join Otto’s Abode as they welcome the return of Jaguardini. Perhaps some of you will remember—from five years ago—the electronic grooves, guitar shreds, film projection, bodily decoration and physical amplification through oscillation, and more. Virginia-based Jaguardini is currently on a summer tour that will range from Florida to Montreal and heaping handfuls of stops and stays in between. Welcoming Jaguardini to the stage are local north country noise enablers Claude and Ola. The artistic shapeshifting of Claude and Ola has a good chunk of their most recent available-attention as co-founders and members of Public Service Initiative, a Potsdam, NY-based free jazz ensemble. What else? Otto’s Abode encourages $5 – $15 suggested donation help make projects like this possible! No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Rain or Shine! Ask about camping!
From the Jaguardini website:
“Jaguardini treats music like a science project, combining the sounds of old video games and synthesizers to create a live blend of lofi synthpop and energetic dark wave. Christo manipulates a gameboy, a vocoder, synths, and an electric guitar with a CRT TV set on his head. Influenced by Crystal Castles, Pink Floyd, The Cure, Ghostland Observatory, Beethoven, Ladytron, MGMT, and Disasterpeace.”
From the Claude and Ola website:
“Claude Aldous earnestly started with music playing the snare drum in the sixth grade, though the band program was cut at his tiny rural school the following year. Undeterred and inspired by the rock music of his era, he taught himself the bass guitar and music theory after three lessons from a friend’s older brother, and never stopped playing music for very long thereafter. College found Claude performing in numerous punk bands and attending as many underground performances as possible. His interest in industrial music led him to finesse his way into three years of electronic music composition classes at his alma mater’s attached music school. A college radio show, working at a record store, booking live music and running the soundboard, running a recording studio, and starting a record label were all natural activities he undertook that surprised no one. When he and Ola first connected he was active in five different music ensembles, traveling hours away to perform “locally”, and taking off to perform in NYC, Boston, and Montreal as often as possible.”
“Ola Aldous emigrated from Ukraine as a child in 1991, where she had studied in the Kharkov Special School of Music for Gifted Children, a rigorous school for young musicians. Ola received her bachelor of music degree in piano performance from Crane School of Music and a Bachelors of Fine Arts concentration in painting and drawing at SUNY Potsdam.
Ola’s oil paintings have been shown in numerous juried shows in NYC, and she has won various awards including 1st place in the 43rd Annual Juried Art Exhibition in Lebanon, PA, 1st and 3rd place in the 14th Annual Juried Art Show in Sackets Harbor, NY, and Best in Show in the Juried Landscape Show in Lancaster, PA . She has completed residencies at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY, and the Vermont Studio Center Center in Johnson, VT, among others.
Ola has released multiple experimental music albums in Europe, both as a solo artist and with her partner. She illustrates the experimental music publication Deft Esoterica and contributes regular illustrations to the British experimental music publication TQ. She maintains an active practice as both a visual artist and a musician.”
A shift of attention for another degree, and a growing sense of unfinished business with electronic music, lead to the purchase of a reproduction of the semi-modular synthesizer from the music school’s electronic composition studio. This snowballed into building a fully modular synthesizer, designed more for abstract sound design than for playing beats and sequences, and soon he and Ola were on the road, both as a duo and with the experimental quartet Figure From Ground. This led to the first issue of Deft Esoterica, Aldous Estate Mastering, and most importantly, a sense of connection to a greater community of like-minded and similarly-inclined artists and listeners.”
About Otto’s Abode:
Housed within a former grocery store, turned art gallery and back onto a grocery store in the hamlet of Wanakena, NY, nestled in the knobby north-west foothills of the Adirondacks, Otto’s Abode is a store/visitors center/performance + exhibition space its four creators view as a collaborative public art project. The aim of the project is to cultivate an environment that showcases positive and enlightening experiences; where the professional and the amateur, the performer and the spectator, can entertain, puzzle and inform, grab a snack, a map, and a bag of ice, and be informed, entertained, and puzzled.
