Tongue Depressor + John McCowen

There’s a new concert ‘association’ in town: Vereniging van Horen Zeggen. On January 12th, they’ll present their edition nul with “a humble sort of supergroup” consisting of Tongue Depressor + John McCowen. An evening of unplugged drone, with Scottish smallpipes, double bass and contrabass clarinet. “Is it DIY basement folk? Experimental classical? 20th century minimalism? Neo-drone? We’re not completely sure, and that’s precisely why we’re hooked” (Boomkat).

Tickets for the event can be purchased here. The limited free spots for Subbacultcha members have unfortunately all been taken.

Tongue Depressor

Tongue Depressor is a duo, consisting of Zach Rowden and Henry Birdsey, who write, improvise, and perform drone-based music with fiddles, double bass, bagpipes, pedal steel, organ, bells, and tapes—often using microtonal tunings. They have teamed up with John McCowen for Blame Tuning, released on Full Spectrum Records in 2023. Their album Bones for Time, released on Worried Songs the same year, has been awarded a spot on Bandcamp’s ‘The Best Experimental Music of 2023’ list. 

John McCowen

John McCowen’s musical life has become an obsession with discovering a polyphonic language on a historically monophonic instrument—the clarinet. This obsession has guided McCowen into an unique acoustic vocabulary that is akin to a shifting soundscape of electronic feedback. His multiphonic approach is based in drones and beating harmonics, as a means to showcase the compositional potential within a single acoustic sound source. His work has been described as “the sonic equivalent of microscopic life viewed on a slide” (The New Yorker), and as “an astonishing demonstration of pure sound and human will” (The Wire).