Carla Bozulich at ausland / Saturday, 22.10.2016

Carla Bozulich is an art-punk provocateur: a writer, producer, curator, interdisciplinary artist and prolific musician with one of the most unique voices in any genre. Her work is brutally raw and weirdly visionary.

Carla has traveled between 4 continents. She plays, composes and records as she goes. She has worked with over 300 artists ranging from Sonic Youth to Silver Mount Zion. Time and again she has headed up bands that sound like nothing else and arguably stake out genres unto themselves: the bent agit-prop of Ethyl Meatplow; the ferocious roots-tinged epic rock of The Geraldine Fibbers; the vocal-driven sound-art of Scarnella and Evangelista; her large-scale performances including the ongoing Eyes For Ears series.

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Carla’s first appearance on record is Gary Kail’s album from 1982 called Zurich 1916, on which she does dada-inspired worldplay, “you know, telephone and vacuum cleaner stuff”. She sang in a couple of groups – the Neon Veins and Invisible Chains, the latter of which recorded an album for The Minutemen’s New Alliance label when Carla was 18 years old.

Carla disappeared from daylight for a few years, re-emerged, and was soon causing traffic jams as the gamine howler in the confrontational sex/sound assault outfit Ethyl Meatplow. In 1993, before Ethyl’s last gasp, Carla founded Geraldine Fibbers, going on to record and tour incessantly with that band until 1998. Scarnella followed, a duo formed with Nels Cline, and a decidedly non-commercial, open, experimental project.

In 2001 she scored a Los Angeles production of Jean Genet’s The Maids and the award-winning feature film By Hook Or By Crook, which she also scored and for which she compiled the soundtrack, went to Sundance in 2003.

That same year saw the release of Carla’s new rendition of Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger — with Willie Nelson as a special guest. She has also explored mixed media and performance art, including a commission for The Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

In 2005 Carla rekindled a decade-old connection with Montreal-based musicians affiliated with the Constellation label, leading to a recording at that city’s legendary Hotel2Tango studio, and the release of her Evangelista album on Constellation.

In 2007, Evangelista became the official band name of Carla’s project, and her follow-up record for Constellation was once again recorded at the Hotel2Tango in Montreal, with core co-conspirators Tara Barnes and Shahzad Ismaily, and contributions from a large cast of Montreal-based musicians.

Since 2008, Evangelista has coalesced around a core trio, with Bozulich and bassist Tara Barnes now joined by keyboardist/sound artist Dominic Cramp. Montreal sound-artist Lisa Gamble is also a regular contributor to Evangelista’s writing and recording, and has occasionally joined the band on the road.

More recently, Carla has temporarily stepped away from Evangelista to develop more primarily solo work, though regularly accompanied by multi-intrumentalist John Eichenseer (JHNO). Her most recent release, her self-described “pop” album Boy, was released to widespread critical acclaim in March 2014.

The London Sunday Times had this to say: “If Boy emerged from the oeuvre of a broadsheet-friendly icon such as Nick Cave, Patti Smith or Tom Waits it would be lauded as an uncompromising work of genius”.

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Bozulich condones “clawing your way out from underneath the band-aid doll skin stretched over our eyes and mouths”. Every project is sniffed with the lust of a primordial eater, asleep and dreaming to love and/or devour. She bites. Please feel free to touch her.