ICA ASSOCIATES: Blackest Ever Black presents Ashtray Navigations, Stefan Jaworzyn, Dalhous & supporting acts

London-born, Berlin-based record label Blackest Ever Black  was founded in 2010 to document a new gothic impulse in underground electronic music; over the past five years it has evolved into something far more idiosyncratic and genre-blind. A 2015 ICA Associate, the cult imprint presents two sessions of performances and screenings designed to showcase some of its current operations, future projects and enduring influences. The daytime session will feature live sets from Ashtray Navigations, Stefan Jaworzyn, F ingers, Dalhous and AD Jacques, and a DJ set from William Bennett.

Ashtray Navigations occupy a uniquely important, idiosyncratic and bloody-minded role in the global psychedelic underground, with a sprawling catalogue of releases to their name. Centered around Phil Todd, their inspired, improvised, ever-mutating sound is impossible to satisfactorily pin down, but suffice to say it touches on psychedelic rock ’n roll, ecstatic drone and molten electronics. “This is music stripped free of song into a perpetual crescendo by someone who loves music so much, he has to destroy it so no one else can have it. Welcome to the psychedelic mess that is Phil Todd and Ashtray Navigations’ universe.” – The Wire

Writer, musician and misanthrope Stefan Jaworzyn formed Skullflower with Matthew Bower in 1986, following a short stint in Whitehouse, before establishing the Shock label (home to releases from the likes of Coil and The Dead C), which, like the annual Shock Around The Clock film festival, grew out of Shock Xpress – the seminal horror/exploitation zine he edited. Since then Jaworzyn has been spotted vehemently debating the meaning of the word “integrity” with Michael Winner on Channel 4, playing guitar in Ascension (and inciting an audience riot when they supported Sonic Youth at Kentish Town Forum in ’96), publishing a monograph on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and releasing raw, sociopathic electronic music on Blackest Ever Black.

Dalhous is the brainchild of Edinburgh’s Marc Dall. The project’s most recent release was Will To Be Well, a double-LP of highly lyrical, sublimely melancholic electronic music (and the final part of a trilogy inspired by the life and arcana of R.D. Laing). Dalhous perform at the ICA ahead of the release of their third LP, The Composite Moods Collection, by some distance their most complex, ambitious and personal offering to date.

F ingers is a Melbourne-hailing group which includes Tarcar’s Carla dal Forno and Tarquin Manek in its ranks. Their brand of sleep-deprived, synth-daubed death-folk—like some suburban dream-meeting of Nico and Dome—is powerfully documented on acclaimed album Hide Before Dinner, recently released on Blackest Ever Black. “Outsider art from the afterlife” – Pitchfork

A.D. Jacques spent fifteen years selling avant-garde LPs and recording his own music in secret before spending another ten years as a recluse. His first release for Blackest Ever Black is due in 2016.

The daytime session opens with an informal screening of Jane Arden & Jack Bond’s Anti-Clock (1979, 105min). This experimental classic is often described as an “avant-garde sci-fi”, but that phrase, though not exactly inaccurate, scarcely does justice to its unforgettable imagery or the bleak poetry of its script (much of it derived from Arden’s radical social and psychological manifesto You Don’t Know What You Want, Do You?). “A complex and fascinating experimental exploration of time and identity…a film of authentic, startling originality” – Newsweek

This is the ticket page for the first part of the two-part (daytime and evening) event. Tickets can be bought separately for the daytime and evening sessions, or you can take advantage of our multi-buy offer and gain entry to both sessions at a discounted rate.

Multi-buy offer

Buy tickets to both events for £14 or £12 for ICA Members. Learn more about becoming an ICA Member.