Tag Archives: Joseph Hammer

Airway
Live At MOCA
Helicopter, CD/Digital
HEL 98071
Release Date: August 8, 2018

Airway began as a solo project of Los Angeles Free Music Society member Joe Potts. The first release was the Airway 7-inch, which featured subliminal messages to coincide with an art exhibition in Tokyo. Since their August 1978 live debut at the LACE Gallery, the group has performed many concerts with different large lineups, always with Joe Potts’ subliminal message experiments as a central feature. Airway’s “Live At LACE” LP, first released in 1978, and introduced to Japan by Takuya Sakaguchi, was a direct influence on the projects Hijokaidan and Merzbow. In their 42-year history Airway’s discography to date includes the albums “Live At LACE”, “Beyond The Pink Live”, a split LP with Hijokaidan, “Live At Mark Moore Gallery”, and now “Live At MOCA”.

“Live At MOCA” was recorded January 30, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. The line-up includes: Ama, Ted Byrnes, Chip Chapman, Dennis Duck, Ace Farren Ford, Juan Gomez, Joseph Hammer, Kevin Laffey, Maya, Fredrik Nilsen, Joe Potts, Rick Potts, Tom Recchion, Dani Tull, Vetza, John Wiese, with additional sounds contributed by Team Airway Japan: Takayuki Hashimoto, Jojo Hiroshige, Kazuya Ishigami, Katsuyoshi Kou, Toshiji Mikawa, Masahiko Ohno, Atsushi Reizen, Takuya Sakaguchi, Shizuo Uchida. The recording was made by Tamaki Ueda, and was mixed by John Wiese. The cover was designed by Tinytown.

Joe & Joe
s/t
Helicopter, CD/Digital
HEL 98072
Release Date: August 8, 2018

Joe & Joe is the duo of Los Angeles Free Music Society staples Joe Potts and Joseph Hammer. Utilizing the Chopped Optigan and phonomontage techniques respectively, they create an immersive environment of great detail and gravity. Their performance at this year’s No Response Festival in Cincinnati marked the project’s first excursion outside LA. Their subsequent midwest tour is documented by this release.

Joe Potts has composed electro-acoustic music exclusively since 1973, creating art/sound installations and performances internationally. A founding member of the LAFMS, he is also the man behind the curtain in Airway, combining walls of sound with subliminal treatments, utilizing both live musicians and the audience itself as electronic signals which are processed and manipulated. For the past 20 years he has been composing for an instrument known as the Chopped Optigan, a seventies optical sampling console organ that he has customized and rewired in order to create dense undulating chords of up to 64 notes at a time.

Joseph Hammer has focused on tape loops since the early 80s, using phonomontage as a live process to assemble source material by hand with vintage magnetic audio gear. As part of the LAFMS, his groups Solid Eye, Points of Friction, Dimmer, and Dinosaurs with Horns have had an active presence alongside his constant solo practice.

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