Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Saturday 03 August
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Location
Plenary 3 at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
1 Convention Place South Wharf Victoria Australia
Get directions
Thurston Moore may be one of the most innovative, influential electric guitarists living today. With Sonic Youth, Moore and his bandmates connected America’s thriving experimental underground with the realm of punk, grunge and alternative rock – forging an unmistakable sound with their detuned, often dissonant and always loud guitars.
Within the band, and outside of it, Moore has kept a relentless schedule of performance, collaboration, recording and writing. A staple of New York City’s experimental art and music scenes, he’s worked with the likes of Yoko Ono, Merce Cunningham, Cecil Taylor, Rhys Chatham, Lydia Lunch, John Zorn, Beck, Takehisa Kosugi, Gus Van Sant, Glenn Branca and Bernie Sanders (yes – you read that correctly). Heavily influenced by the Beat poets, he’s edited music and literary fanzines, and published his own work through various imprints. He’s the founder and senior editor of Ecstatic Peace Library – who publish art books and records – as well as of the poetry imprint Flowers & Cream Press. He’s on faculty at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University.
Now based in London, Moore is returning to Melbourne for MIFF – performing new scores to four short films by pivotal mid-century Ukrainian-American filmmaker Maya Deren. In conversation with Jacinta Parsons, he'll discuss his career in music and writing, and his latest foray into the world of cinema.
MIFF Talks presented by the Melbourne International Film Festival.
Featuring
Thurston Moore
Thurston Moore moved to NYC at eighteen in 1976 to play punk. He started Sonic Youth in 1980. Since then Thurston Moore has been at the forefront of the alternative rock scene since that particular sobriquet was first used to signify any music that challenged and defied the mainstream standard. With Sonic Youth, Moore turned on an entire generation to the value of experimentation in rock n roll – from its inspiration on a nascent Nirvana, to Sonic Youth’s own Daydream Nation album being chosen by the US Library of Congress for historical preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2006.
Thurston records and performs in a cavalcade of disciplines ranging from free improvisation to acoustic composition to black/white metal/noise disruption. He has worked with Yoko Ono, John Zorn, David Toop, Cecil Taylor, Faust, Glenn Branca and many others. His residency at the Louvre in Paris included collaborations with Irmin Schmidt of CAN. Alongside his various activities in the musical world, he is involved with publishing and poetry, and teaches writing at Naropa University, Boulder CO, a school founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman in 1974. Thurston also teaches music at The Rhythmic Music Conservatory (Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium) in Copenhagen.
Presently he performs and records solo, with various ensembles and in his own band, The Thurston Moore Group (with mbv’s Deb Googe, Steve Shelley & James Sedwards). In 2014, the band released The Best Day which critics described as 'optimistic and sun-drenched in beauty' and '[has] experimental attitude dovetailed with instantly accessible pop melodies.' The Best Day was a record defined by positivity and radical love.
The Thurston Moore Group’s new full-length album, Rock n Roll Consciousness was recorded in The Church studios in London with producer Paul Epworth. The songs are expansive, anthemic and exploratory with lyrics that investigate and herald the love between angels, goddess mysticism and a belief in healing through new birth. Ranging from opener 'Exalted', an unfolding and emotional journey in homage to sacred energy and exaltation, to 'Cusp' a charging, propulsive piece with a feeling of Sonic Youth mixing in with My Bloody Valentine. 'Turn On' is a pop-sonic poem to holy love both intimate and kosmiche to the contemplative mystery of life-defining time travel in 'Smoke of Dreams'. The record concludes with 'Aphrodite', a strange and heavy no-wave rocker in salutation to the idol of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.
Jacinta Parsons
Jacinta Parsons is a broadcaster, writer and public speaker who currently hosts the Afternoon program on ABC Local Radio Melbourne. She released her debut memoir, Unseen: The Secret Life of Chronic Illness in 2020 and ...