LCMF 2026
Hot with Excess
3 December
American Gothic
180 Box at 180 Studios
BOOK TICKETS
First release: £15/£25/£65/£115
Second release: £18/£28/£80/£130
On the door: £22/£32
Doors: 7pm
Music starts: 7.30pm
David Wojnarowicz / Ben Neill
ITSOFOMO (In the Shadow of Forward Motion) (1989)
Anthony Braxton
Composition No. 9:
For Four Amplified Shovels and A Pile of Coal (1969)
(world premiere)
Selection of work for double-bodied harmonics guitar and solo electric guitar by Reg Bloor and Glenn Branca
Performers
Plus-Minus Ensemble (Braxton)
Reg Bloor electric guitar
Ben Neill Mutantrumpet/electronics (Wojnarowicz/Neill)
Don Yallech percussion/electronics (Wojnarowicz/Neill)
‘My mind cannot contain all that I see. I keep experiencing this sensation that my skin is too tight; civilization is expanding inside of me. Do you have a room with a better view?’
— David Wojnarowicz
For our opening night, we present David Wojnarowicz and Ben Neill’s Gesamtkunstwerk In the Shadow of Forward Motion (ITSOFOMO), a visual and auditory onslaught, embodying the artist’s rage at America’s ineffectual reaction to the AIDS crisis. Performed by the composer Ben Neill and original percussionist Don Yallech, ITSOFOMO, one of the few live works by Wojnarowicz, premiered at The Kitchen in New York in 1989, shortly before he died from HIV/AIDS-related illness at the age of 37.
‘A formal, poetic meditation on acceleration... inspired by Paul Virilio's arguments regarding speed, violence, capital and technology in Pure War’ (Jennifer Doyle), ITSOFOMO remains vital and urgent, a terrifying mirror to the USA’s contemporary crisis, where marginalised bodies are undervalued, policed and threatened.
Alongside this, we present work by two other American visionaries. Plus-Minus Ensemble gives the world premiere of a work from 1969 by one of the great avant-gardists, African-American composer Anthony Braxton. Four performers enter the space, dressed in dark boilersuits, hard-hats and mining lamps. A dumpster offloads a heap of coal and they shovel, action and sound transmuted into an electronic hellscape.
And we welcome back composer and electric guitarist Reg Bloor, lead guitarist in the Glenn Branca Ensemble, who performed in our first festival in 2013. She will present a selection of startling work for double-bodied harmonics guitar, an instrument invented by her late partner, the composer Glenn Branca.