R5 Productions presents Black Eyes, with Morgan Garrett, Ibah Baskette & The Wandering Talisman EnsembleBLACK EYES

In the fall of 2025, more than 20 years after recording their avant-punk swan song Cough, Black Eyes returned to Dischord with Hostile Design. The album’s six all-new songs were written directly in the wake of their April 2023 reunion shows and see the quintet pushing deeper into the ominous dubscapes and feral punk that defined their first two LPs.

In 2022, after nearly two decades apart, the five members decided to begin rehearsals with the goal of celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut self-titled album in the spring of 2023. What started as a few lowkey practices quickly built up steam, and the reunion revealed their essential intensity has remained undiluted. Once they wrapped the first weekend of shows, Black Eyes convened a meeting and immediately agreed to continue pushing forward. No longer in reunion mode, they took their next steps as a fully operational band. This album is the first output of the new chapter.

Written over a period of fifteen months between August 2023-November 2024, Hostile Design’s lyrics explore the political, sexual and interpersonal with poetic fluidity. As with all their work, the band skips didactic platitudes and turns the lens into the shadows. How does it feel to live through times of terrifying violence? How does it shape us, and how do we shape each other?

Hostile Design was recorded at Tonal Park studios over three days, with Ian MacKaye resuming his role as producer and Don Godwin engineering. The instrumentation returns to Cough’s two drums, bass, guitar and sax lineup, but adds some fresh elements. Live multichannel dubbing, now a standard of their shows, has been integrated into the performances, as have electronic drum triggers and samples as well as the occasional bass clarinet passage. Taking the breathless density of Cough as their starting point, the arrangements unfurl into something more spacious and, in moments, haunting. Having workshopped these songs across previous dates in the winter of 2023-fall 2024, the new songs explode with the same cathartic fury that the group is known for.

In the years since their initial dissolution, each member has pursued their own creative paths, including drone rock, avant techno, ambient, sonic collage, visual art, video work and more. In coming back together, the breadth of their collective practices are all integrated into the music, but it will only take a second for listeners to hear the unmistakable sound of Black Eyes.

MORGAN GARRETT

Purity was created in response to finding a neighbor’s dead body. The experience eviscerated my sense of safety and my feeling of home. This record is an attempt at grappling with the stress of the situation and unfolding events, honoring and documenting its effects on my mind and life. Alex Nagle and I worked closely, weekly, to create Purity. The music is maximal and precise. The songs are spacious and free. The sound and production is unreal, I have no true reference for it.

IBAH BASKETTE & THE WANDERING TALISMAN ENSEMBLE

Introducing Ihba Baskette & The Wandering Talisman Ensemble.

Prepare for an immersion into Experimental Free-Form Music. This is an exploration of sound at its source—unscripted, borderless, and profoundly raw led by Ihba Baskette, leading conceptualist and Multi-instrumentalist (saxophone and percussions).

Featuring: the powerful percussion of Karen Smith, the textured saxophone and rhythmic ingenuity of Ryoko Ohara, Eric E+ Green on guitar, and the deep, anchoring resonance of Ryan Ficano on upright bass, the ensemble is redefining what it means to create sound in the moment.

The journey begins now. Shift your frequency. 

BUY TICKETS HERE 

FEMINISMS AGAINST AUTHORITARIANISM: A Bridging Dyke and Trans Feminisms EventIn an authoritarian political moment strongly defined by overt anti-trans, anti-disability, anti-poor, anti-queer, racist and misogynist policy-setting in the context of an ever-growing police state, it is necessary that our intersectional communities build a tighter web of defiance, looking to feminist principles of solidarity and resistance to guide us. The work in the Bridging Dyke and Trans Feminisms exhibit speaks collectively to the intersection of feminisms, community care, world-building, and the continuing fight for Trans and Queer liberation.The May 4 discussion will delve deeper into aspects of feminism, art, and organizing that are at the heart of the exhibit.Our three Philly-based panelists are:

 More info HERE

RESCHEDULED FROM SUNDAY FEB 22 DUE TO BLIZZARD!!

I Can Do Bad All By Myself, A Rick Watson stage play to encourage breaking the cycle of abuse in a relationship. Performances at 4pm and 7pm. Admission is FREE

RESCHEDULED FROM SUNDAY FEB 22 DUE TO BLIZZARD!!

I Can Do Bad All By Myself, A Rick Watson stage play to encourage breaking the cycle of abuse in a relationship. Performances at 4pm and 7pm.

Gordon Kurowski considers his compositions as freeform aural paintings, each tone a stroke of the brush. Frequency and color a synesthetic experience. Gordon brings his history of playing classical, rock, jazz, and free improvisation to bear on each performance to share the emotion and experience of a moment in time with listeners. Gordon uses traditional and electronic instruments both analog and digital in the construction of his sonic environments. p.s. – an Aubstraction is an aural abstract.

Laura Feathers is an experimental sound artist whose compositional process relies heavily on improvisation using synthesizers and loopers. Her improvisations can be found on SoundCloud under the name Magic Sun. Laura has performed with the Dark Circuits Bunker Orchestra, whose album Ten Minutes Late with No Bus in Sight and No Taxi Either was released on Gold Bolus Recordings in 2017. She is also featured on the recently released Dark Circus Orchestra Tribute to Phill Niblock Concert at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn on Philippe Petit’s label Modulisme available on Bandcamp.

Johnny Lancia realizes blissed-out ambient works and concerts under the name Huron. His music is filled with heady drones and intriguing rhythms that reflect the natural world – filtered through a variety of modular synthesizers, analog electronics and digital manipulation processes. Lancia’s synthesizers, a paradise of hidden synergies, conspire with the composer to realize a beautiful, untouchable sonic realm – as electrical currents spill out into the world with a charged dreamy glow.

Admission is FREE

Bowerbird is thrilled to welcome back Laraaji, a key figure in the evolution of ambient music whose distinctive sound has been captivating listeners for decades. Philadelphia-born and New Jersey-raised, Laraaji has pursued spiritual transcendence through music since the mid-1970s. After years of developing an aesthetic shaped by Eastern philosophies and transcendental research in his longtime Harlem home, Laraaji’s breakthrough came when Brian Eno discovered him busking in Washington Square Park in 1979, improvising celestial meditations on his electric zither. This encounter led to a collaboration on Eno’s influential Ambient series, resulting in the 1980 album Day of Radiance.

Since then, Laraaji has become a defining figure in new age and ambient music, known for his commitment to hand-crafted sounds over synthesizers and his embrace of a human presence in his performances. Whether playing monochord instruments, singing, or using electronics-kissed percussion, his music remains rooted in a cosmic African-American tradition. His soundscapes are as hypnotically beautiful as they are rich with moments of tension and dissonance, bringing depth to his trance-inducing explorations. For over four decades, Laraaji’s work has continued to evolve, inviting listeners into deep states of reflection while remaining grounded in a deeply personal musical journey.

Admission is FREE