ICA ASSOCIATES: Blackest Ever Black presents Jac Berrocal trio, Officer!, Af Ursin and Raime DJs

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 evening session will feature a live performance from the trio of Jac Berrocal, David Fenech & Vincent Epplay, with support from Officer!, Af Ursin and Raime DJs.

Visionary trumpeter Jac Berrocal, born 1946, is a legend of the French avant-garde: a musician, poet and sometime film actor who came of age in the 1970s Paris improv scene. Inspired by bebop, chanson, free jazz, beat poetry, early rock ‘n roll and myriad Eastern influences, his anything-goes approach to instrumentation and technique would later align him with post-punk sensibilities. He has collaborated with the likes of Nurse With Wound, Sunny Murray, Lol Coxhill, James Chance and Pascal Comelade; in his current trio with David Fenech and Vincent Epplay, ice-cold outlaw jazz meets musique concrète, DIY whimsy and dubwise studio science: think Chet Baker falling through the glacial sound-world of early PiL or Scott Walker’s Climate of Hunter. “Thank f**k for Jac Berrocal.” – The Wire

Mick Hobbs’ Officer! perform live for the first time in some 25 years, with a five-strong line-up featuring Flaming Tunes’ Mary Currie and Joey Stack. Londoner Hobbs, a cult hero of the ‘80s DIY/art-rock underground, was closely associated with This Heat and their Cold Storage studio in Brixton, and under the banner of Officer! produced his most compelling work: Megaphone Records, responsible for the recent reissue of Officer!’s 1982 debut album, Ossification, describe it as “one of the most unusual, pleasurable and character-filled ‘pop’ records anyone has heard…a timeless anomaly in the history of recorded music.” In 2014, Blackest Ever Black released Officer!’s “lost” 1995 album, Dead Unique, a masterpiece of English song-based experimentation.

Af Ursin is the alter ego of Finnish autodidact composer/improviser Timo van Luijk. He founded the Noise-Maker’s Fifes collective with Geert Feytons in ’89, before focussing on his solo work in the 90s. He now collaborates regularly with Christoph Heeman (as In Camera) and Andrew Chalk (as Elodie), and his live performances usually consist of applied mechanics and motorised percussion combined with a variety of acoustic instruments, objects and tape manipulation. In early 2016, Blackest Ever Black will reissue his highly regarded 2005 album Aura Legato: a profoundly psychedelic synthesis of acid-folk, musique concrète and ceremonial drone currents.

DJ support comes from Raime, the duo of Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead whose work—which combines cutting edge sound design with influences drawn from post-punk, industrial, techno, dub, jungle and avant-metal—has been synonymous with Blackest Ever Black ever since its inception.

This is the ticket page for the second 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.