Glacial and The Dwarfs of East Agouza Perform Sonic Resistance at Monk Rome

At Monk in Rome, two trios from different continents presented a shared vision of improvisation as resistance. Glacial, a New York ensemble featuring former Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo, percussionist Tony Buck, and New Zealand musician David Watson on bagpipes, created a post-industrial cathedral of sound. Their performance built anarchic sonic accumulations, with Ranaldo coaxing feedback and distortion from his Fender Jazzmaster, Buck disrupting rock rhythms into continuous explosions, and Watson transforming his bagpipe into an organic synthesizer of abrasions and drones. The group deconstructed song form into a ritual of saturated yet coherent psychedelic improvisation. Following them, The Dwarfs of East Agouza, who met in a Cairo apartment building, brought a shamanic intensity. Led by Alan Bishop, founder of Sun City Girls, the trio included guitarist Sam Shalabi and loop manipulator Maurice Louca. Bishop alternated between bass, soprano sax, and voice, cutting through Shalabi's virtuosic guitar and Louca's machine-like distortions. Both groups performed single, dense pieces—Glacial's slow composition critiqued fast, disposable music, while the Dwarfs' playful outbursts dissolved genre and algorithmic categorization. The event took place at Monk in Rome on an unspecified date.