L E G//M A C H I N E

Beast Nest is the primary performance vehicle for Sharmi Basu, a queer South Asian woman of color focused on creating experimental music as a means of decolonizing musical language. One day, Sharmi aspires to have an ensemble called “Dog Divas,” which will feature her lying in the grass surrounded by Casio keyboards played by overexcited 6-week-old puppies.  With that in mind: ongs For Puppie marks her Full Spectrum debut. A dense mosaic of textures and sonic ephemera, these recordings explore intersectional dualities, catalyzing a political – yet ethereal – aesthetic by combining her anti-colonial and anti-imperialist political leanings with a commitment to spirituality within the arts.  Over its duration, the listener is transported through densely layered aural environments that are at once becalmed and brutal; light and dark; ordered and collapsing utterly into entropy. Recalling, at times, the toothsome noise jams of the late Yellow Swans, or perhaps Rashad Becker’s biomimetic aural sculptures, we are thrilled to feature this remarkable work as part of the Full Spectrum catalog.

credits

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP US GET TO THIS PLACE. We don’t have enough to get there ourselves! We really really really don’t! We won’t be able to do it!  Marshall and I are scheming and scrambling however we can! 

OpCon: Research Strategies on Art and Resistance in the EU! ///

COMMUNITY + FAMILY + FRIENDS:

Sry to be bugging y’all with this, but I’m trying to hustle and hustling is vulnerable ....

As some of you may be aware, I am a part of a trio with Zachary James Watkins and Marshall Trammell (from Black Spirituals) called Oppositional Consciousness that does a workshop and performance series across various universities and various DIY communities, often in “sites of opposition”. We have brought various workshops such as Decolonizing Sound and Decolonizing the Imagination to UC Berkeley, UCSC, SF State, Mills College, and more and we have recently been invited to present our work in Switzerland at the International Society of Improvised Music Conference. We have already booked a tour around the project covering Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, and Geneva, and are hoping to get support in those places, but we cannot get to the conference without external help unfortunately! If you have the ability to give $5 or $20 or $100 or whatever OR can share the link with your network and community, it would be very much appreciated! The work we are doing is very legitimate and very important. We are rehistorisizing the influence of communities of color in moments of struggle and resistance, and are documenting the ways that artists have changed critical political moments, specifically through improvisation and music. At the end of this specific trip we will have a series of video interviews and are working on a new writing project documenting art and resistance intersections in the EU in 2015, and are planning a report back in the Bay Area in August.

The link for the indiegogo is here! Please please help us out if you can!

Diego of Decoder Magazine reviewed my new Beast Nest tape,  Songs for Puppies! It is so sweet and thoughtful! Please check it out!

Hey! I am sold out of my physical tapes! You can now download them online though, so if you have not done so please do! Thanks Full Spectrum Recordsfor putting out such a sweet thing. I should also have download codes at my shows, if that is more compelling to you. <3

Beast Nest is the primary performance vehicle for Sharmi Basu, a queer South Asian woman of color focused on creating experimental music as a means of decolonizing musical language. One day, Sharmi aspires to have an ensemble called “Dog Divas,” which will feature her lying in the grass surrounded by Casio keyboards played by overexcited 6-week-old puppies.  With that in mind: ongs For Puppie marks her Full Spectrum debut. A dense mosaic of textures and sonic ephemera, these recordings explore intersectional dualities, catalyzing a political – yet ethereal – aesthetic by combining her anti-colonial and anti-imperialist political leanings with a commitment to spirituality within the arts.  Over its duration, the listener is transported through densely layered aural environments that are at once becalmed and brutal; light and dark; ordered and collapsing utterly into entropy. Recalling, at times, the toothsome noise jams of the late Yellow Swans, or perhaps Rashad Becker’s biomimetic aural sculptures, we are thrilled to feature this remarkable work as part of the Full Spectrum catalog.

credits

I am going to put the prezi and audio from my talk/workshop at SFSU on the Patreon (so you can only access those if you are subscribed to me there), but will post them in the future on my website.

For now I wanted to share some of the links // music I played for the attendees!

Raven Chacon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1VohDKUL-g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_iAn39fsDY

Pamela Z

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBir0ev5iDc

Art Ensemble of Chicago <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y8V0t7UlyQ

Joseph Jarman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk5J9f5LFpI

and of course, Yetunde Olagbaju, Wizard Apprentice, and Now I Lay Me Down from Brown Noise which can be found on the MARA COLLECTIVE tumblr!

YOU GUYS! I have made this patreon because I really need funding to help continue the work I do. I work on hard on art and really believe that my presence in this community is contributing to some new modes of listening and playing and being with each other, especially with the MARA Performance Collective getting together. I play SO much and hardly ever get paid and rarely over $20 / a show (usually I get $5 if I get paid at all). I don’t complain really, but I’m struggling and could really use the support from community to help me focus on these things! Help a didi out! 

click on the picture above or this link! https://www.patreon.com/beastnest

I have not been posting all the work I do because, TBH, I am really embarrassed and critical of crowd funding. I made this Patreon 5 months ago and have been sitting on it for so long because I haven't felt like it was legitimate. I feel okay (well not okay, but less bad) about Patreon because basically you are giving me like a dollar for each project or even just a dollar a month, or whatever you can spare, and it is in exchange for ACTUAL WORK. If I don't produce something, you don't fund me!  Anyway if I have like zero funders at the end of the day I won't be offended because duh all of my friends are poor artists, but I'm trying to be creative with the ways that I exist in Capitalism and I'm hoping that folks can like get on board with that.

If you can't, which is cool, please spread the word, I am struggling but trying to be serious!

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