Ronald Cornelissen

Extended Organ is Tom Recchion, Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen and Paul McCarthy with Alex Stevens. Mike Kelley was a longtime member of the group and continues to be a contributing member by virtue of the sound recordings he provided to the group before his death: “in case I can’t make a gig, I can still play.” Tom, Joe and Fredrik are founding members of the seminal West Coast experimental noise cult collective, the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS).

The roots of the LAFMS trace back to 1972 when disparate groups of improvising sound experimenters in eastern Los Angeles discovered their mutual interest and banded together to design modes of self production and distribution of recordings and publications, helping to develop and propel the DIY movement. Paul McCarthy began collaborating with the LAFMS in the late 70’s and has been an integral participating supporter since the mid 90’s.

Formed in 1994, Extended Organ produce a dynamic otherworldly ambience that can be simultaneously hilarious and ominously frightening. Overlaying the carpet of sound produced by Joe Potts and his self-engineered drone instrument the “Chopped Optigan” is Paul McCarthy’s vocal and guitar improvisations channeled and processed by Alex Stevens. Tom Recchion, simultaneously renowned as an inventor of crude homemade instruments and as an innovative composer of electronic and tape music, performs an array of sounds blending lush beauty and horror sensibility into the matrix. An antique Rheem Mark 7 organ is layered in by Fredrik Nilsen along with electronic sound and the aforementioned recordings provided by Mike Kelley. Mike Kelley’s varied array of sounds are unprocessed mouth generated tugs, gurgles and bubbling masterfully recorded in 2010 by Scott Benzel.

Opening is the Detroit collective Princess Dragonmom (Davin Brainard, Warren Defever, Dion Fischer, Claire D’Aoust and Ronald Cornelissen), celebrating their 20th year of noise-making and performance-staging.

Photo’s performance: Gregory Hallock. Video: MOCAD.
Many thanks: Greg Baise and The Netherlands Consulate General in New York.
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I Rip You, You Rip Me (honey, we’re going down in history) was a project that Ben Schot and I organised for the Centre of The Arts (CBK) Rotterdam in June 1998. The project zoomed in on the radical and psychedelic underground of Detroit in the late sixties, early seventies with bands and collectives like Iggy & The Stooges, The MC5, Destroy All Monsters and the White Panther Party under the leadership of The MC5’s manager John Sinclair. I Rip You, You Rip Me consisted of exhibitions, a workshop, film screenings, a symposium and performances at local institutes and venues with special guests Destroy All Monsters (Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Cary Loren, Dave Muller, Art Byington), Charlemagne Palestine, Scanner, John Sinclair, Leni Sinclair, Princess DragonMom (Warren Defever, Davin Brainard, Ronald Cornelissen), in collaboration with artists and musicians from Rotterdam.

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