FRIDAY, MAY 30, 2025
7PM
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BILL ORCUTT
THE FOUR LOUIES
ZEBULON
![]()
7PM
BILL ORCUTT
THE FOUR LOUIES
ZEBULON
Although known best as a guitarist, Bill Orcutt has a prolific sideline using digital software to create head-spinning process music where mathematics are no less important than sound itself. But he began cross-pollinating those interests with his 2024 album The Four Louies, an improbable, inventive collision of two landmark 20th century works built around the organ. The Farfisa defines the definitive version of the garage rock staple “Louie Louie” by Portland’s Kingsmen. The 1963 hit is driven by an indelible staccato organ riff that cycles all through the brilliantly primitive song. Seven years later Steve Reich composed his early minimalist classic Four Organs, in which an array of lengthening chords overlap in shifting combinations, driven for the entirety of its fifteen-plus minutes by a steady pulse played on a pair of maracas. On The Four Louies Orcutt crafted a remarkable marriage of the two pieces which, in theory, couldn’t seem further apart. He didn’t merely bring the two pieces together, but he essentially recomposed them into something new through accretion and subtraction, doubling certain lines in different channels or repeating others only to make them vanish sixteen bars later. What might suggest a novelty on paper brings a mix of raw power and intricate arrangement to loudspeakers, unceremoniously knocking down any borders between punk, experimental, and new music.
Orcutt has started to perform pieces from his digital oeuvre, and he’s decided to translate The Four Louies hybrid for live instrumentation in 2025, assembling a kind of meticulously synchronized double quartet to simultaneously address the two separate compositional sources, while forging something entirely new from the basic building blocks. Of course, it’s possible that the line-up might be even larger, depending on where the juggernaut lands. With Orcutt as the mad conductor (and guitarist), two different groupings of players will perform his chopped-up and remade version of the Kingsmen and Reich pieces, with grimy garage tradition duly represented by Orcutt himself and the new music part of the equation presided over by Bay Area legend William Winant (a true legend who’s not only worked closely with Jon Hassell, John Zorn, Annea Lockwood, Roscoe Mitchell, and Sonic Youth, but who previously toured in Reich’s ensemble), who will shake maracas with marathon stamina. Orcutt’s expects performances to be acts of reinvention and transformation, with the musicians latching onto the most repetitive passages and letting them rip, pulled in by the music’s ecstatic magnetism. This is particularly true during the drone section of Reich’s piece, as the ensemble promises to bust through the fixed harmonic forms to generate something wide open and psychedelic. The Four Louies may seek to balance two disparate traditions structurally, but the live shows will absolutely tilt toward the in-the-red fury of the Kingsmen, bringing a decidedly visceral, high octane attack to the work. Depending on the performance space, the musicians will likely form a large circle in the room, facing one another as they zoom off into infinity.
Poster by Bill Orcutt
Orcutt has started to perform pieces from his digital oeuvre, and he’s decided to translate The Four Louies hybrid for live instrumentation in 2025, assembling a kind of meticulously synchronized double quartet to simultaneously address the two separate compositional sources, while forging something entirely new from the basic building blocks. Of course, it’s possible that the line-up might be even larger, depending on where the juggernaut lands. With Orcutt as the mad conductor (and guitarist), two different groupings of players will perform his chopped-up and remade version of the Kingsmen and Reich pieces, with grimy garage tradition duly represented by Orcutt himself and the new music part of the equation presided over by Bay Area legend William Winant (a true legend who’s not only worked closely with Jon Hassell, John Zorn, Annea Lockwood, Roscoe Mitchell, and Sonic Youth, but who previously toured in Reich’s ensemble), who will shake maracas with marathon stamina. Orcutt’s expects performances to be acts of reinvention and transformation, with the musicians latching onto the most repetitive passages and letting them rip, pulled in by the music’s ecstatic magnetism. This is particularly true during the drone section of Reich’s piece, as the ensemble promises to bust through the fixed harmonic forms to generate something wide open and psychedelic. The Four Louies may seek to balance two disparate traditions structurally, but the live shows will absolutely tilt toward the in-the-red fury of the Kingsmen, bringing a decidedly visceral, high octane attack to the work. Depending on the performance space, the musicians will likely form a large circle in the room, facing one another as they zoom off into infinity.
Poster by Bill Orcutt
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