Zaïmph

Artist and musician Marcia Bassett began releasing solo works as Zaïmph in 2003, appropriating the name from Gustav Flaubert's hallucinatory novel Salammbô.

Zaïmph’s music conveys an atmosphere of glittering bedlam concealing nocturnal vistas of transcendence, bliss, and eternity. Under the Zaïmph veil, Bassett utilizes guitar and vocals to transform both song and noise, creating shimmering metallic drones that unexpectedly shift to cracked ragas or brutal, white-hot noise. Her sound is both seductive and laden with crackling premonitions of ultimate apocalypse.
 
Apart from numerous releases on her own Heavy Blossom imprint, Zaïmph CDs and LPs have appeared on  independent labels such as Hospital Productions, W.M.O.r, Utech, Gypsy Sphinx and Volcanic Tongue.  Her latest LP appears on No Fun records, a label curated by Carlos Giffoni and related to the New York based No Fun festival, where Bassett has appeared in various guises (including Zaïmph) over the years.
 
As a co-founder of Philadelphia’s shambolic psychonauts un and tectonic drone pioneers Double Leopards, Bassett’s roots deeply entwine with the American noise underground, and mapped sonic regions still only dimly understood by subsequent travelers. As gaps in Double Leopards activity gradually expanded, Bassett joined up with Matthew Bower in Hototogisu, where her mastery of cacophonous eardrum shred achieved monolithic proportions.
 
Bassett is a member of Zaika (with Tom Carter of Charalambides) and Purple Haze (with Taylor Richardson of Infinity Window).

Ghidrah + Tom Carter + Zaimph
Saturday March 13th
@ Casa Del Popolo | 8:30 pm — $10