Eli Keszler at Tribes Gallery

ESP-Disk' will celebrate the arrival of the CD edition of Eli Keszler’s Oxtirn at Tribes Gallery, the famed Lower East Side loft space run by poet Steve Cannon and his organization A Gathering of the Tribes. Long-time ESP events MC Steve Dalachinsky, a Beat poet of increasing renown, will be reading his work between performances and introducing the evening’s musical performers. There will be sets by drummer/composer Eli Keszler, outsider folksinger Ed Askew (whose LP Ask the Unicorn came out on ESP-Disk' in 1969), and genre-smashing pianist Thollem McDonas, leader of Tsigoti (whose album Private Poverty Speaks to the People of the Party was released by ESP-Disk' last year)....

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ESP-Disk' will celebrate the arrival of the CD edition of Eli Keszler’s Oxtirn at Tribes Gallery, the famed Lower East Side loft space run by poet Steve Cannon and his organization A Gathering of the Tribes. Long-time ESP events MC Steve Dalachinsky, a Beat poet of increasing renown, will be reading his work between performances and introducing the evening’s musical performers. There will be sets by drummer/composer Eli Keszler, outsider folksinger Ed Askew (whose LP Ask the Unicorn came out on ESP-Disk' in 1969), and genre-smashing pianist Thollem McDonas, leader of Tsigoti (whose album Private Poverty Speaks to the People of the Party was released by ESP-Disk' last year).

“If Steven Stapleton ever updates his Nurse With Wound List, Keszler's name should be on it.”–Clifford Allen, Paris Transatlantic Magazine

ESP-Disk' has released some far-out albums in its 47 years, but Oxtirn raises the bar. On Oxtirn, Keszler plays drums, guitar, piano, prepared piano, motors, cymbal, crotales (bowed and unbowed), snare drum, prepared/riveted sheet metal, spring harp, bass board, and microphones. He’s joined by clarinetist Ashley Paul on two tracks, plus Andrew Fenlon (trumpet, tuba, French horn, trombone) and Sakkiko Mori (prepared piano) on one track each. The Italian Futurists of the 1920s would have loved this magnificent din, so full of startling timbres and arresting textural combinations, like a cross between Xenakis and free jazz. Connoisseurs of outside music will know Keszler from his work with Jandek. Oxtirn is Keszler’s ESP-Disk' debut and most widely distributed album after self-releasing micro-edition CDRs, tapes, and vinyl via his label REL Records.

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