Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O'Rourke

Eiko Ishibashi is a Japanese multi-instrumentalist whose work has ranged from acclaimed singer-songwriter albums to scores for film, television, theater and exhibitions to improvised music. She has collaborated with international artists such as Keiji Haino, Charlemagne Palestine, Merzbow, Giovanni Di Domenico, Phew, and many others. Her own records have been released by Drag City, Black Truffle, and Editions Mego, amongst others. Amongst her film scores is Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 2021 Academy Award winning  film “Drive My Car” for which she won the  “Discovery of the Year” award at The World Soundtrack Awards. She can also be heard on  her radio residency on NTS Radio.

Jim O’Rourke has been working in music and film since the late 80’s, as a producer for Wilco, Sonic Youth, Beth Orton, Stereolab, John Fahey, Joanna Newsom and many others, including the Grammy Award winning “A Ghost is Born” by Wilco. He has been a member of Gastr Del Sol, Fennoberg (with Christian Fennesz and Peter Rehberg), Loose Fur (with Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche), The Red Krayola, and Sonic Youth. In film he has scored films for Werner Herzog, Koji Wakamatsu, Olivier Assayass, as well as musical consultant for The School of Rock. His own work ranges everywhere between his series of albums on Drag City like Eureka and Insignificance, to his work with Merce Cunningham, commisions for the Ina-Grm, as well as his work championing underappreciated artists like Tony Conrad, Loren Connors and Roland Kayn both through his own reissue labels and archival work to secure the future of their music.

The duo of Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke came naturally from their work playing in each other’s bands for their Drag City records over the last decade. Both also have backgrounds in electronic and improvised music, as well as their trio with Yamamoto Tatsuhisa, Kafka’s Ibiki, so that it was inevitable a duo would be born. Drawing on their omnivorous natures, their duo draws on the spontanaeity of improvised music, the sound world of classical electronic music, and the tangible possibilities of instrument/computer hybrids.

«Perhaps a ritual gathering, perhaps a silent sisterhood in sound» is what Rea Dubach once called her collaboration with Catia Lanfranchi. In any case, two worlds meet here that obviously belong together. The two instrumentalists – one from Biel and in recent years often heard with the band Omni Selassi, the other from Zurich and mostly on the road with her band Kush K or solo as Junge Eko – also incorporate songs from their respective solo sets into their live project. And create new worlds, which they feed from their own rich sound spaces and are sometimes capable of making into something even greater.