A figure of superlative importance in the New York scene since the early 1990s, Alan Licht has been mapping the borderlines between minimalism, rock, free improvisation and sound art, in a constant process of informed and clear intertwining that involves not only music but also installation and writing – particularly for the British magazine The Wire. In a gestalt where all these crafts influence and reference each other, Licht has disseminated work that ranges from the ultra-conceptualization of pieces such as ‘A New York Minute’ – a collage of weather forecasts caught on the radio – or ‘A Digger Choir’ – a performance in which the audience takes an active part by reading texts and vocalizations for pieces by Yoko Ono and John Stevens – to the equally catchy and skewed 90s indie rock of Love Child and Run On, with all the material in between. In all this constellation, his mastery as a guitarist is particularly central, in a trajectory that has led him to collaborate with half the world – Loren Connors, Jandek, Aki Onda or Brian Chase -, to be part of Rudolph Grey’s Blue Humans or Text of Light, alongside Lee Ranaldo and a rotating ensemble of important people. And solo, of course.

In this last context, the one in which he arrives at ZDB, Licht has left his mark and projected advances in his language and instrument, through albums that range from the painful and nervous suspension of ‘YMCA’, through the corrosive and hypnotic noise of ‘Four Years Later’ or the tender instrumental quasi-songs of the acoustic ‘Currents’. For this European tour with a stop at the Aquarium, Licht brings the visions of the monumental ‘Havens’, a double album released by VDSQ in 2024. Originating in the impact that the sound system of the venues had on the themes of ‘Currents’ when they were played live, from which a whole series of resonances and harmonics emerged, ‘Havens’ carries that impression forward in six themes for acoustic and electric guitar that are based on repetitive melodic lines haunted by harmonic spectra that hide and reveal themselves at the same time. Spectral vibrations of the strings that the label has rightly dubbed ‘Celestial Punk’. Or the nerve of rock and the urgency of punk in levitation. BS