ISSUE Project Room : an open and versatile environment in which established and emerging artists conduct, exhibit and perform new and site-specific work

Tonight (5/26/11) at ISSUE, we're bringing together two artists of ecstatic noise. The Italian group Jooklo Duo, having recently played in Philadelphia, Somerville, and around the U.S. in support of their new album The Warrior on Northern-Spy Records, and guitarist Bill Nace will each play their own sets, followed by a collaborative trio set. Also worth mentioning: Jooklo Duo will be on Scott McDowell's show The Long Rally tomorrow morning from 9 am.

The first time I heard Jooklo Duo (not until recently, unforutunately) I thought there was something wrong. This recording sounds a little like someone turned a microcassette recorder to full amplitude and dropped it down a saxophone. But, in that way, it sounds perfect—capturing the greater spirit of a live performance, without the inclination to make the instrument sound like it's in a real room, or to soften the edges. Instead, it's like an early bop track with so much to say and very little time to say it all. And after four and a half minutes, although there's an impression that they could have gone on longer, the track ends with a hit that seems like, even though they're getting cut off by the recording engineer, they'll finish up their allotted time and leave no room for a response. Bill Nace, always driving his guitar past the point of drive into a distortion, detaches from the solo electric guitar drone-set playbook. It's all about nearly breaking the instrument, or the amplifier, or your ears, and shaping a wall of sound that lacks the spectral coherence of Stephen O'Malley or Glenn Branca's open strings while still containing an internal logic.