UPCOMING EVENTS
Date Title Description Location More Info
05 May 2008 Mirror Mirror w/ Marina Rosenfeld NY, NY Below, and the Merce site.
18 May 2008 Benefit for Myat Moondog Haggart NY, NY Below, and at the CMJ site.
See the Timeline for past events.

  

  

MIRROR MIRROR

JG Thirlwell will appear with Marina Rosenfeld on 05 May 2008 at Merce Cunningham Dance Studios in New York, accompanying her for her piece titled Mirror Mirror.  JGT will provide vocal sounds and treatments.  More info at the Merce site.

 

 

FOR THE BENEFIT OF MYAT

JG Thirlwell will appear at a benefit for two-year-old Myat Moondog Haggart, who suffers from health problems relating to an undiagnosed brain disease. The fundraising event is at St. Mark's Church on 18 May 2008, and is intended to help offset his medical bills being incurred by his musician parents, Scott Haggart and Kara Bohenstiel.  Also appearing are David Grubbs, Backworld, Little Annie, Vito Acconci, Lary 7 w/Scott Haggart, Captains Sons and Daughters, and more.  More info at the CMJ site.

 

 

NARCISSUM ESCENDA

JG Thirlwell exhibited a new sculpture at the Teleport Färgfabfriken exhibition at the new Färgfabriken museum in Ostersund, Sweden.  The sculpture is entitled "Narcissum Escenda." It was constructed with plywood, Plexiglas, mirrors and two way mirrors, LED's with circuit board and other materials.  The opening was 1-3 April 2008.  www.fargfabriken.se

                                       

 

 

NEW FOETUS REMIX ALBUM
Just out is a new album consisting of remixes from the Foetus studio album, LOVEFoetus - VEINEntitled VEIN, it features Mike Patton, Matmos, Fennesz, Donna Summer (a/k/a Jason Forrest), Tweaker, Tujiko Noriko, Trztn (Services), Jay Wasco, Tom Recchion and J.G. Thirlwell.  The album also includes a video of the track Time Marches On by Sam Sohlberg.  Available in the shoppe on this website, as well as finer retailers worldwide.

   

   

JGT AT THE WHITNEY

J.G. Thirlwell played a free concert at the Whitney Museum in NYC on 02 Nov 2007.  He presented a set by Manorexia and a cycle of pieces for LEMUR robot instruments and string quartet, including several world premieres. The lineup of players for this Manorexia show were Leyna Marika Papach - violin, Elena Moon Park - violin, Karen Waltuch - viola, Felix Fan - cello, David Cossin - percussion, David Broome - piano and JG Thirlwell - laptop. The material was drawn from the two Manorexia albums, Volvox Turbo (2001) and The Radiolarian Ooze (2002). JG also presented several pieces he has composed with the LEMUR robot instruments and string quartet. LEMUR is an acronym for the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. Click for more photos of JGT @ The Whitney The robots are self-playing machines, including a four-necked guitar, xylophone, and numerous percussion instruments. In addition to a commissioned piece he premiered earlier this year at Three Legged Dog, Thirlwell presented a brand new piece and two new pieces adaptations for robot instruments and strings: the Steroid Maximus piece L'espion Qui A Pleure and a special rearrangement of the theme song for  The Venture Brothers cartoon. For the LEMUR robots portion of the concert, the string section was Leyna Marika Papach - violin, Elena Moon Park - violin, Karen Waltuch - viola and Okkyung Lee - cello. JG Thirlwell served as conducter.  You can see J.G. rehearsing his piece for LEMUR here. The concert was a Composer Spotlight and part of the Friday Night concert series hosted by the Whitney Museum.  Click here for more photos (by Damien Neva).

 

NEW FOETUS STUDIO ALBUM

Ectopic Ents is proud to announce the release of DAMP, a newFoetus - DAMP Foetus album. It is available exclusively thru the shoppe on this website.  The huge 72+ minute album consists mainly of brand new and unreleased material, as well as some rare material.  The DAMP cover is a ten panel foldout with lyrics, featuring photos and design by J.G. Thirlwell.  The complicated printing process involves spot hi-gloss lamination which is un-reproducible here.
  

  

MANOREXIA LIVE IN LONDON

JG Thirlwell performed with a new Manorexia ensemble in a European premiere at St Giles in the Field in London's West End on 21 Nov 2007. The musicians for this debut European show were Angharad Davies - violin, Anna Cleworth - violin, Julia Davies - viola, Jessica Cox - cello, Tim Parkinson - piano, Dan Gresson - percussion and JG Thirlwell - laptop. Also on the bill was Simon Fisher Turner and The Stargazer's Assistant.

  

 

TOON TUNES
J.G. is currently scoring the third season of The Venture Brothers, which airs on Adult Swim/Cartoon Network.  Seasons one and two have already been released on DVD.  If you have discovered Thirlwell for the first time from The Venture Brothers and are looking to discover more of his music, may we direct you to the Foetus Shoppe.  If you dig the soundtrack of The Venture Brothers, you'll love Steroid Maximus and Manorexia.

 

 

KRONOS QUARTET COMMISSION

J.G. Thirlwell's commissioned composition for the Kronos Quartet, entitled Nomatophobis, premiered 7th April 2006 at Zankel Hall in New York (along with pieces by Terry Riley and Glenn Branca). Subsequent performances have included Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco on 8th Jan 2007; Royce Hall at UCLA in Los Angeles on 20th Jan 2007; and Theatre d'Arras in Arras France on 1st June 2007. Nomatophobis is unrecorded as yet, and will be featured in future Kronos programmes as deemed appropriate.

  

 

NEW WRITTEN WORD

J.G. has written an essay for Arcana 2, a book compiled and edited by John Zorn.  In it, "thirty distinguished composer/performers illuminate and speculate upon method and practice in the process of making, experiencing and thinking about music."  It also includes writings by Uri Caine, Trevor Dunn, Annie Gosfield, Milford Graves, Lukas Ligeti, Jim O'Rourke, Marina Rosenfeld, Yamataka Eye, and many more.

  

   

?LSD?

Thirlwell recently appeared in the Love's Secret Domain, Contemporary Psychedelic Art show.

 

 

ART BRUT(e)

The 808 gallery is a myspace art gallery, and for August 2007 presented the artwork of one J.G. Thirlwell.

 

 

CLASSIC MUST-HAVE RE-MASTERED REISSUES
The classic Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel albums HOLE and NAIL have been reissued by Some Bizzare. They were re-mastered by Scott Hull with J.G. Thirlwell (Scott's credit was inadvertently left off the artwork - sorry, Scott!) and come as sensuous new digipak editions with lyric booklets. They should be orderable from Amazon UK as well as other online and physical retail outlets.

 

 

ALSO JUST REISSUED

Two more classic Foetus recordings, SINK (Foetus Inc.) and THAW (Foetus Interruptus), have been re-issued by Some Bizzare, in digipack sleeves.

 

 

GUESTING

JG has just written the lyrics and performed the vocals on a track with Anubian Lights, entitled "The Puppet Prince".  It will appear on a future Anubian Lights release.

 

 

TRIBUTARIES

Ambassador 21 from Belarus has remixed the Foetus track "Time Marches On", originally on the album LOVE.  It appears on Cut & Go, an album of their remixes 2003-2007, along with remixes of Snog, Sonar, The Shizit, and many more.

 

 

CURRENT 93 vs JGT

J.G. Thirlwell has remixed the Current 93 track Black Ships ate the Sky. The video was directed by Cam Archer and can be seen at here. It will be released as a CD and 12" Xmas 2007.

  

 

minim

J.G. is planning an issue of minimalist compositions from 1981-1983.  This will include works from the United Dairies compilation An Afflicted Man's Musica Box, and Coil's Bethel compilation, as well as unearthed compositions resurrected and newly completed. This area of his work has never been collected before and will contain unreleased material.  It will appear as a limited edition physical CD and download exclusively from foetus.org.

 

 

EXPAND YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS

J.G. Thirlwell has written lyrics and performed the vocals on a track entitled "Asphodel" by the group Strings of Consciousness. You can hear at at the Strings of Consciousness myspace page. 

    

   

FREQ_OUT
Bringing together artists, composers, architects, producers and musicians, the freq_out project invades architecture with sonic imagination. Structured as a collaborative sound environment in which authorship is determined by group effort, each of the thirteen participants is assigned a specific range of frequency with which to produce a sound piece. Over the last three years freq_out has appeared in Copenhagen, Oslo, Paris and Berlin. This January they ventured to Chiang Mai in Thailand and in February to Budapest. Some recordings have been released on Ash International.
 

The participants are J.G. Thirlwell, Finnbogi Pétursson, BJ Nilsen, Jana Winderen, Brandon LaBelle, Petteri Nisunen, Tommi Grönlund, PerMagnus Lindborg, Maia Urstad, Jacob Kirkegaard, Mike Harding, Kent Tankred and Franz Pomassl. The curator and capitane of the project is Carl Michael von Hausswolff.
  photo by Philip Lethen 

   

J.G.THIRLWELL ODDITIES ON YOUTUBE
Some odd things have surfaced on YouTube which could be of interest...
Foetus Verklemmt video directed by Alex Winter
Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel on The Tube TV show in 1985
Soft Cell perform Suicide's Ghost Rider with special guest vocalist Clint Ruin
  

 

NEW MANOREXIA, FOETUS, and…
JGT hopes to begin work on the long-overdue third Manorexia album. Currently no release date is scheduled. More news regarding this soon.

  

Thirlwell has been feverishly working on new Foetus material, for the follow up to LOVE.  However, it definitely won't see the light of day in 2007...

  

See the Timeline for events past.

  

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