Thursday, March 26th, 2026 at Art Sanctuary (back room) 1433 S. Shelby Street Louisville, KY 40217
$15 advance tickets, $20 day of show Advance tickets available online at Art Sanctuary; Physical tickets available for in-person purchase soon at Surface Noise (cash only), 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204
7:00 PM doors 8:00 PM music
TAKAAT (duo version)
TAKAAT (pronounced tuh-cot), meaning “noise” in the Tuareg language Tamashek, is the trio of Ahmoudou Madassane, Mikey Coltun, and Souleymane Ibrahim, also known as the rhythm section of Mdou Moctar. TAKAAT is sonic chaos, improvisation, freedom of exploration, and the punk styles of bands such as Fugazi and Unwound, all mixed together with the guitar music from the Sahel. TAKAAT started during soundchecks while on the road with Mdou Moctar when the trio indulged their shared love for amps cranked to 11 and the sound of blown out speakers. Towards the end of 2023, the three started writing music together, inspired by their shared experiences with the sounds and energy of Hausa bar bands, gritty soukous, and 2000s post-punk. The music of TAKAAT is intense, dark, and energetic. Deeply inspired by the DIY ethos of punk, Ahmoudou, Mikey, and Souleymane capture that thrill of the new and the ecstasy of togetherness in these heavy rockers. TAKAAT follows in the spirit of the independent music culture that birthed hardcore basement shows, bedroom tape labels, and generator-powered pick-up wedding bands.
Please note that TAKAAT is performing as a duo on their Spring 2026 tour.
Friday, March 6th, 2026 Art Sanctuary (back room) 1433 S. Shelby Street Louisville, KY 40217
$15 advance tickets, $20 day of show Advance tickets available online at Art Sanctuary; Physical tickets available for in-person purchase on Wednesday February 4th at Surface Noise (cash only), 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204
18+ 7:00 PM doors 8:00 PM music
(Photo of Sarah Hennies by GlassHertzzPhoto)
SARAH HENNIES (b. 1979, Louisville, KY) is a composer based in Upstate NY whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer & trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is primarily a composer of acoustic ensemble music, but is also active in improvisation, film, and performance art. She presents her work internationally as both a composer and percussionist with notable performances at MoMA PS1 (NYC), Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Warsaw Autumn, Ruhrtriennale (Essen), Archipel Festival (Geneva), Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Time:Spans (NYC), and the Edition Festival (Stockholm). As a composer, she has received commissions across a wide array of performers and ensembles including Bearthoven, Bent Duo, Ensemble Dedalus, The Living Earth Show, Mivos String Quartet, Sarah Saviet/Joe Houston, Talea Ensemble, Nate Wooley, and Yarn/Wire.
Her ground breaking audio-visual work Contralto (2017) explores transfeminine identity through the elements of “voice feminization” therapy, featuring a cast of transgender women accompanied by a dense and varied musical score for string quartet and three percussionists. The work has been in high demand since its premiere, with numerous performances taking place around North America, Europe, and Australia and was one of four finalists for the 2019 Queer|Art Prize.
She works collaboratively in a duo with double bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause and in the percussion trio Meridian. As a scholar and performer she is engaged with ongoing research about the percussion music of Iannis Xenakis and a recording project to document music by the American percussionist and composer Michael Ranta. Sarah is currently Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College.
For 25 years, SAPAT has operated as a Louisville-based large-group ensemble, shaping slow-moving architectures of sound across drone, minimalist composition, and experiments in rock, jazz, and folk idioms. The work drifts between extended environments and tighter, song-shaped forms, allowing time, density, and volume to act as compositional forces. More recordings circulate under affiliated names and alternative identities than under SAPAT itself, and even so, the catalog only gestures toward a much larger body of work. Each performance becomes a new room to enter: a site where resonance is risked rather than managed, and where sound answers back through the interplay of players, space, and duration.
$15 advance tickets, $20 day of show Advance tickets available online at Art Sanctuary; Physical tickets on sale Friday September 5th for in-person purchase at Surface Noise (cash only), 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204. Surface Noise is open 12 to 6 PM every day except Tuesdays.
7:00 PM doors 8:00 PM music
CHIKAMORACHI photo by Mark Rappaport
“The rhythm team of Darin Gray & Chris Corsano is especially incredible, ever-engaging, consistently creative and supportive.” – Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
“…arguably the most riotously energetic and creative drummer in contemporary free jazz” – The Wire
“One of the world’s great drummers.” –The Guardian
Since 2005 DARIN GRAY (upright bass) and CHRIS CORSANO (drums, percussion) have performed side by side as CHIKAMORACHI. Working either in a trio with Japanese saxophonist Akira Sakata or in expanded line-ups with the likes of Japan-based American producer/engineer and multi-instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke, dancer and actor Min Tanaka, Masami Akita (aka Merzbow), guitarist/vocalist Keiji Haino (Fushitsusha), koto player and vocalist Michiyo Yagi, and jazz pianist Masahiko Satoh, they’ve released six albums to date under the CHIKAMORACHI moniker, including 2011’s And That’s the Story of Jazz double CD (with Akira Sakata & Jim O’Rourke), 2015’s Flying Basket (with Akira Sakata, Jim O’Rourke, and Merzbow), and Live at Hungry Brain LP (with Akira Sakata). Neither member is a stranger to the possibilities afforded when the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic duties are left to an upright bass and drum duo. Their September 19th performance in Louisville will be their only North American appearance as CHIKAMORACHI, after taking part in the SOUND AND GRAVITY FESTIVAL in Chicago, IL on Thursday, September 11th as part of the SACCATA QUARTET with Wilco bandmates guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Glenn Kotche.
DARIN GRAY is best known as Jim O’Rourke’s go-to bassist for nearly 20 years, as half of the duo On Fillmore with Wilco‘s Glenn Kotche, and as the bassist for groups Grand Ulena, Dazzling Killmen, and Brise-Glace and many others. As an improviser he has performed and recorded with (among others): Loren Connors, Joshua Abrams, Jason Roebke, Axel Dorner, Kevin Drumm, Alan Licht, and Jim O’Rourke. As a session bassist he has played on recordings by Louisville’s Will Oldham, as well as Cheer-Accident, Bobby Conn, Early Day Miners, and Jim O’Rourke, among others. He has toured extensively around the world with Mavis Staples, Tweedy, Daniel Johnston, and William Tyler. He currently resides in Finland.
CHRIS CORSANO has been active at the intersections of collective improvisation, free jazz, avant-rock, and experimental music since the late 1990’s. He’s been the rim-batterer of choice for some of the greatest contemporary purveyors of “jazz” (Joe McPhee, Paul Flaherty, Mette Rasmussen, Zoh Amba) and “rock” (Sir Richard Bishop, Bill Orcutt, Jim O’Rourke), as well as artists beyond categorization (Björk, Michael Flower, Okkyung Lee, Ghédalia Tazartès, Merzbow).
CHIKAMORACHI last played Louisville at the Nachbar in January 2012, part of which you can watch here:
Supporting CHIKAMORACHI will be Louisville musicians STEVE GOOD (saxophones, clarinet) and DANE WATERS (keyboards, voice). A vital natural resource in the Louisville music scene for multiple decades, Steve Good‘s musical vocabulary orbits lightly through a vast expansive local history: doing time with The Web, E-Or, Juanita, Ut Gret, Sapat, Crappy Nightmareville, Parlour, The Liberation Prophecy and many, many others. He has documented via audio recording many thousands of local shows. Slint played in his basement, he recorded the first Will Oldham single, he ran sound and documented the weekly experimental music series at Artswatch through the 1990s, and yes, he shared a stage in Switzerland with Donovan back in the 1970s. Dane Waters is one of Louisville’s brightest musical talents. As a solo performer as well as member of Softcheque, Sapat, and The Phantom Family Halo, she displays an impeccable melodic sensibility, and has a voice so wonderfully haunting, it sends chills down your spine. Her most recent releases are available on Bandcamp as well as finer Louisville record stores.
Opening the show, YLEM is the Louisville-based trio of Chris Martin-Leidner, Dustin Marcum, and Eunoia Close. Their self-titled album was recorded by Jim Marlowe (Equipment Pointed Ankh, Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band) at End of an Ear in Louisville and was released in March, 2025.
The Other Side of Life 