The Lab: February, 2025

Since this is a relatively quiet period, it is as good a time as any to start thinking about February in the wake of making plans for January. While things may not “get back in action” at The Lab until the final two weeks of January, February will be decidedly busier from the beginning to the end of that month. For those not yet familiar with the venue, The Lab is located in the Mission at 2948 16th Street. This is particularly convenient for those using public transportation, since it is a short walk to the corner of 16th Street and Mission Street. Busses stop at that corner for both north-south and east-west travel, and downstairs there is a station for the BART line running under Mission Street. As of this writing, there will be five performances in February. Doors open half an hour in advance of the performance; and specific information for each event, including a hyperlink to the Web page that provides both background material and hyperlinks for ticket purchases, is as follows:

Friday, February 7, 7:30 p.m.: Mayuko Hino is a former member of the Japanese noise group C.C.C.C.; and she will give a solo performance at The Lab in which she will continue to push the boundaries of sound, blending harsh noise with elements of industrial and psychedelic music. Lucas “Granpa” Abela will perform a solo set with a bell-less saxophone with sounds subsequently transformed by electronic gear. The remaining set will be taken by Rubber (() Cement, working with a diversity of experimental sounds including computer processing of genetic algorithms.

Saturday, February 8, 8:30 p.m.: For those seeking a more familiar repertoire, guitarist Shane Parish will give a solo performance of arrangements of a wide diversity of sources including works by John Cage, adventurous jazz by Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, and Alice Coltrane, and selections by Aphex Twin and Kraftwerk.

Sunday, February 16, 8:30 p.m.: Mundanas VII–XI is a collection of recordings made by John McCowen in Iceland. It involved the synthesis of his own recordings on wind instruments based on circular breathing with the natural sounds of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions near his home in Reykjavik. All the content was recorded in his basement studio. There will also be a set taken by the oakland reductionist orchestra, which is the “house band” for the West Oakland Sound Series presented by sfSound.The performance is acoustic, but the sounds tend to come across as electronic.

Lia Kohl (photograph by Leah Wendzinski, from the event page for her performance)

Thursday, February 20, 8:30 p.m.: This will be a solo performance by cellist, composer, and sound artist Lia Kohl. She recently recorded a solo album entitled Normal Sounds on Moonglyph Records. She will present a live rendition of the tracks on that album.

Thursday, February 27, 8:30 p.m.: The month will conclude with a collaboration with the Noise Pop Festival 2025. The program will begin with a set taken by Thomas Dimuzio, giving a solo performance involving a Buchla 200e modular synthesizer, live looping, real-time processing, and field recordings. This will be followed by Translucents, an expanded immersive, multi-channel audio configuration conceived by Byron Westbrook. This amounts to a series of “audio scenes,” each inspired by a color panel created by the abstract painter Blinky Palerma.