BRATTLEBORO — The Psychedelic Cinema Orchestra will play along live on Saturday, Oct. 9, at 8 p.m., to a collection of films by Ken Brown, who in the late 1960s created light shows and animations that were projected over bands such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Grateful Dead, and the Velvet Underground.
Brown's Super 8 films, which were made entirely in-camera without the use of editing equipment, take images from magazines like Life and Look with trippy patterns and lighting effects and uses them in collages. As described in a news release, the effect is “an immersive viewing experience that mirrors the tumult and creative energy of the 1960s.”
“The films are a complicated stew of imagery that are propulsive to watch because it happens so quickly,” said Ken Winokur of the Psychedelic Cinema Orchestra. “It sends you into a reverie when you play along with them,” he said.
Winokur will be accompanied by musicians Jonathan LaMaster and Russ Gershon.
LaMaster was formerly a member of Damo Suzuki's Network, and the vocalist of the legendary German rock band Can. Gershon is a member of Boston's Either/Orchestra, which has collaborated with renowned Ethiopian musicians such as Mulatu Astatke and Mahmoud Ahmed.
The trio will improvise a soundtrack using their signature “repurposed junk” percussion, bass clarinet, baritone saxophone, electric violin, guitars, and recorded audio samples from the 1960s to create a kaleidoscopic effect complimentary to the visual style of Brown's films.
“Ken Brown's films represent that time so specifically,” says Winokur. “I was old enough to have been around in the '60s, but too young to have participated.”
“So the '60s have always been a Wizard of Oz experience for me - this amazing period of time where the flowering of the arts and politics was so vivid and exciting,” he adds.
Winokur is a previous member and director of the Alloy Orchestra, which toured throughout North America and Europe performing live accompaniments to classic silent films, including a 2019 show at Epsilon Spires, whose Sanctuary he describes as a “beautiful room with crazy great acoustics.”
Tickets for the event are $18 and can be purchased at epsilonspires.org.