BIG EARS FESTIVAL

Dougie Bowne & Matt Nelson

Transient Luminous Event

Sat   Mar   29   2025 - 10:00 PM The Standard

“Dougie Bowne has always been the most listening of musicians and surely that has sharpened his forthright approach. In Matt Nelson he has found a colleague up to his level. Therefore,if rambling can be precise, this record is proof!” -Arto Lindsay

Dougie Bowne is a producer, drummer, electric guitarist, and composer of remarkable versatility. An early member of the New York Downtown scene, he has worked with John Cale, Iggy Pop, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, The Lounge Lizards, Cassandra Wilson, Jack Bruce, Marianne Faithful, Cibo Matto, Choreographer Amanda K. Miller, film directors Edet Belzberg, and Jim Jarmusch,  and many, many others.    

Matt Nelson is a bass player, composer and improviser based in Knoxville Tennessee, who for years has been the hinge pin of Knoxville’s experimental improv scene, bringing together local improv stalwarts with outsider musicians from disparate corners of the creative woodwork for his weekly Out Series at the Pilot Light. He has worked within the jazz, rock, gospel, and classical communities, but it is through his solo improvisation performances, employing both traditional and extended vocabulary of the double bass, that he and Dougie met.

With The Stars are Indispensable, together with legendary mixing engineer Tchad Blake they have created a record that is singular – improvisationally based compositions, inhabiting a sonic world that is mysterious and compelling. Sometimes beautiful and intimate, at other times, powerful, and aggressive. Concentrating on what to leave out as much as what to add, the duo uses sounds both acoustic and electronic to build a startlingly unique world for us to spend time in, an experience that is felt as much as heard.

BIG EARS
03.27_03.30.25
Knoxville, TN · USA

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