The Other Side of Life is proud to present:
Thursday, September 24th, 2026
at MaybeIt’sFate (1st Floor Gallery)
1425 Story Avenue
Louisville, KY 40206
TICKETS ARE VERY LIMITED FOR THIS EVENT!
$15 advance tickets, $20 day of show — PAY WHAT YOU WISH option also available!
Advance tickets available online at TicketLeap;
Physical tickets on sale Friday August 21st for in-person purchase at Surface Noise (cash only), 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204
ALL AGES
7:00 PM Doors
8:00 PM Music
TASHI DORJI is a Bhutanese-born, Asheville-based experimental guitarist whose fiercely intuitive improvisations have carved out a unique space in the contemporary avant-garde. His expansive discography includes deeply felt solo works like Stateless (2020) and we will be wherever the fires are lit (2024), and his most recent electric album low clouds hang, this land is on fire (2026) on Drag City. TASHI DORJI is one half of Manas, the dynamic duo with drummer Thom Nguyen, and a founding member of the free jazz trio KUZU, alongside saxophonist Dave Rempis and drummer Tyler Damon. His collaborators span a wide spectrum: from Mette Rasmussen, Susie Ibarra, Efrim Manuel Menuck, Alex Zhang Hungtai, John Dieterich, Audrey Chen and Joe McPhee to more recent partnerships with Tony Buck, Terrie Ex, Andy Moor, bassist John Edwards, and drummer Steve Noble. Across his solo and group projects, DORJI’s playing, rooted in alternate tunings, prepared guitar, and spontaneous gesture, articulates an aesthetic of resistance, deep listening, and collective transformation.
TASHI DORJI turns to the electric guitar. After the furious acoustic improvisations that drove [his previous two albums] —Stateless and we will be wherever the fires are lit — it’s easy to imagine [his new] album of electric guitar improvisations as an encompassingly incendiary essay. Especially when titled low clouds hang, this land is on fire. After all, this is a man capable of tearing up the place with the tactile musical violence of Bill Orcutt and Derek Bailey! And yet, this knowledge serves to set up a greater shock: the album’s disarmingly gentle musical drift. When asked why he turned the knob down from 11 for this album, TASHI says simply, “To find the silence.” As ever with TASHI, this is a political statement. Even the search for silence takes intention and happens for a reason. In this time of such institutional inhumanity, what is there to feel but exhaustion? When seeing the faces of the deprived, what is there to feel other than hopelessness? In the face of such grief, what words are there to say? So, TASHI got a couple amps, moved from the shed where he’d done his first two [Drag City] titles, set up in a room in the family home with high ceilings and dialed in the reverb. Once the sound was in the space, reflecting in a manner that he felt congenial with his mood, he taped it. It’s a striking signal, meditative and melancholy, with a delicacy comparable to the lineage of Loren Connors or Bill Frisell, the songs at times developed with the deliberate exposition of themes in raga’s alap form. It’s a sound that lives within silence. Once he’d laid down the sound, TASHI went back and listened to the composition of each piece. Then the words came easily. They’re the titles of these songs, they provide the narrative — or a prism, to allow us to gaze unblinking upon the awesome rot of empire. These are TASHI DORJI‘s punk anthems for the year 2026… for all the years, really— to be thrown to the people outside the walls, to aid them in their quest to be allowed in.
Currently FLANGER MAGAZINE is the trio of Chris Bush (Caboladies, Equipment Pointed Ankh, Sapat), Ben Traughber (Sapat, Equipment Pointed Ankh), and Leidner (Sapat, YLEM) with occasionally Jim Marlowe (Equipment Pointed Ankh, Tropical Trash, Sapat), “Gathering samples, a River Doctor Limnologist inspecting the properties of [FLANGER MAGAZINE‘s 2022 album] After the Bend might note the specter of Leroy Jenkin’s free-violin heat-light deep in the water’s thermal stratification. Or mortgage the late-Maestro’s time with Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza to pay down the growing river heat budget. Or take one’s dirty buckets to the banks of the 19th laundromat where Walt Dickerson plays his vibraphone parts from Divine Gemini with dowsing rods. Or excavate the bedrock in the drainage basin, noting skeletal remains of a Shostakovich string quartet attempting to tune up a Kentucky Fiddle’s subsequent influence on the chemical composition of the water. Or consult the historical revisionist reenactment troupe’s episode of Fishing with John (Fahey) in which Codona, The Sea Ensemble and Nuno Canavarro guest host as their fleet of paddle boats churn river water into a regal lager, and all the fish get drunk in their quest for the leaner enamel Hosianna Mantra GPS coordinates of the Fattened Herb.” – Kris Abplanalp.
Special thanks to Ella Lumpkins, Kris Abplanalp, and MaybeIt’sFate.
Live music events in Louisville, KY. Show announcements, music and news, and other ephemera at: https://bsky.app/profile/theothersideoflife.bsky.social.
