Last lowercase night at Húrra featuring Jara

Tonight heralds the last lowercase night at Húrra, a series of fascinating experimental music evenings organised by Nicolas Kunysz of Lady Boy Records. Tonight's performance will feature Jara, an aural explorer and audiophile, classically trained opera singer and piano player, composer and wanderer who has released two solo albums. 

The lowercase nights have taken place on Sunday nights at downtown bar/concert venue Húrra and amongst the artists featured have been Þóranna Björnsdóttir, Indriði, Russian.girls, Kevin Verwijmeren, Pyrodulia and Rafsteinn. Kunysz explains that the idea for Sunday evenings, surrounded by ambient / experimental / lo fi / discreet / drone / noise / soundscape music, was because that kind of music is underrepresented in Reykjavik. 

An underrepresented scene in Reykjavik

"That kind of music is not played much at Reykjavik venues because I guess, that kind of music is not climactic. And well that is that non climactic aspect that actually interest me personally," he says. "So when Harlem bar became Húrra, I asked if I could organise some nights with experimental live acts on Sundays. And that is how it started. The idea was to have no admission fee so that people could stumble inside and experience music that they might have not heard usually in a bar."  According to Kunysz the name of the nights  comes from the lowercase music genre that is a rather extreme form of minimalist ambient music, the term come from Steve Roden that made this album called "Forms of Paper" in which he uses amplified and modified recordings of himself handling paper in various ways.

A dramatic Sunday evening

Unfortunately, Húrra have decided to discontinue the lowercase nights but Kunysz is optimistic about finding a new and exciting venue for the evenings in the near future.  Tonight's performance by Jara, is, according to her, influenced by Parmenides, Zeno, Schopenhauer, Heisenberg and J.L. Borges.  "Something experimental, I guess. I never know what is going to happen when I play my new stuff, it involves a lot of live experiments, so the possibility of utter failure is always imminent. I guess that is what inspires me to play these days. But it´ll definitely be something fitting a Sunday evening. Something dramatic." Following Jara's performance, an improvised session will take place featuring some oft the artists which have been influential within the lowercase nights events. "To celebrate the end of things, and beginning of others," explains Kunysz.

The event starts at 9.15 p.m, tonight, Sunday. 

Listen to Jara on Soundcloud HERE.