MANAS & Totally Automatic

MANAS:

Tashi Dorji: guitar

Thom Nguyen: drums

Che Chen: guitar, percussion, homemade instruments

MANAS was formed in 2012 in Asheville, NC by guitarist Tashi Dorji and drummer Thom Nguyen. The intensity of their live shows, characterized by Dorji’s angular guitar preparations and Nguyen’s multi-limbed maelstroms exploding outwards in parallel, immediately caught the ear of the underground. Originally from Bhutan, where he absorbed American and UK hard rock and heavy metal via bootleg cassettes while surrounded by a family full of folk musicians, Dorji arrived stateside for college and immersed himself in Asheville’s DIY punk scene and formative listening sessions with records by Albert Ayler, John Coltrane and Derek Bailey. It was there that he met Nguyen, a Vietnamese-Mississippian transplant who had been playing in local free rock outfits Nest Egg and Mendocino. The two hit the ground running, funneling their love of grindcore, black metal, free jazz, noise and other extreme sonics, and burgeoning anarchist/mutual-aid politics into their newfound freedom in improvisation. Relentless woodshedding and touring on both sides of the Atlantic has long since solidified their reputation as an undeniable live act, and their post-hardcore take on improvised music has found them space on bills and collabs with Nepali grindcore band Chepang, heavy music headliners SUMAC and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and free improv musicians like Joe McPhee, Susie Ibarra, Zoh Amba, Audrey Chen and countless others. Multi-instrumentalist Che Chen (of 75 Dollar Bill) has been a longtime friend of the band and frequent collaborator over the years, and now joins MANAS as second guitarist/aux percussionist. His guitar can be foil or twin to Dorji’s own, while his battery of small percussion and homemade instruments is able to refract Nguyen's multi-directional rhythms, or create wholly other textures. 

(MANAS photo by Barry Weisblat)

Totally Automatic:

Totally Automatic was formed by Anne Ishii, Eugene Lew and Matthew Smith Lee in the summer of 2021. They play unarranged music with each other, on drums, saxophone and electronics, and can be found around Philadelphia.

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