Psychedelic Cinema Orchestra: Improvisational Music & Film!

Psychedelic Cinema Orchestra. Saturday, October 9th. Doors 8pm.

Ken Winokur of the world-renowned Alloy Orchestra brings his new film and live music project, Psychedelic Cinema Orchestra to the Epsilon Spires sanctuary! Revitalizing cult filmmaker Ken Brown’s Super-8 films created between 1967 and 1969 that were projected as the traveling light show for live performances by Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Sly Stone, and The Velvet Underground, Winokur and his accomplices overlay their signature repurposed-junk percussion, electric sax and flute, bass and guitars with recorded samples of archival sound bites and artifacts for a dazzling, kaleidoscopic effect. TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee1qtuYVDQg

The Films:

Experimental filmmaker and cartoonist, Ken Brown describes himself as “a survivor of the psychedelic wars of the 1960.” Between 1967and 1969, Brown shot super 8 films to projected with the light show at Boston’s premiere rock club The Boston Tea Party. The resulting films, cobbled together to make the current PSYCHEDELIC CINEMA, stand today as an amazing window on another time. Swirling colors and lights, clip art animations, girls in flowing skirts, candles, flowers, and more than a few references to drugs, meld together in a complex montage of images that transport the viewer to another time and place. “The light show" was a fixture in most of the major city music venues.  It was usually a mixture of overhead projections, slides, strobes and often films.  Even though the original experience of the light show and the music and cultural context of the light show could never be replicated, the film remains at a hard copy that has come down to us over time.” Brown’s films were projected over the great bands of the era  - including Jimi Hendrix, The Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, Sly and the Family Stone, Neil Young, The Who, Pink Floyd and The  Grateful Dead. 

This incarnation of Psychedelic Cinema Orchestra will be accompanied by a new band, made up of “survivors of the silent film wars”. Ken Winokur (Alloy Orchestra), Jonathan La Master (Cul de Sac) and Russ Gershon (Either/Orchestra) will meld their signature repurposed junk percussion, bass clarinet, baritone sax, electric violin, guitars, and recorded samples of music, speeches and audio artifacts from the 60’s. 

The Musicians:

Percussionist and clarinetist, Ken Winokur leads the group.  His unique percussion style, incorporating unconventional rhythms and junk percussion leads the group into unexpected new territory with each twist and turn of this amazing film. Winokur previously directed and performed with Alloy Orchestra, and played in Boston’s 4 drummer extravaganza, Concussion Ensemble.

Jonathan LaMaster is a multi-instrumentalist (violin, guitar and bass guitar), vocalist and songwriter who also has extensive experience as a concert promoter, publicist and founder of the Sublingual Records recording label. He was a member of the internationally known rock bands Cul de Sac and Damo Suzuki's Network (with Damo Suzuki, x-vocalist of the legendary German rock band "Can") with whom he regularly toured Europe, the UK, Japan, Russia, Canada and the USA from 1997 to 2009. He currently plays with The Psychedelic Cinema Orchestra, Smitt E. Smitty and the Feztones, and Brian Carpenter and the Confessions.

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Russ Gershon is the founder of Boston's Either/Orchestra, frequent collaborator with Ethiopian legends Mahmoud Ahmed and Mulatu Astatke, and member of Hypnosonics and Orchestra Morphine, both associated with the late Mark Sandman. He has also performed or recorded with headliners from Cab Calloway, the Four Tops and Medeski Martin & Wood to Throwing Muses and Willie Loco Alexander. Gershon was nominated for a Grammy for his composition “Bennie Moten’s Weird Nightmare.”