Bar Laika presents Satellite 24: Torn Hawk and Nick James Scavo

Join us at Bar Laika on Wednesday, June 21 at 8pm for the 24th edition of Satellite, featuring live music performances by Torn Hawk and Nick James Scavo. 

Recently, Luke Wyatt, aka Torn Hawk, attended an acting workshop where he and others had to dance with eyes closed in front of people who had their eyes open. There wasn’t any music playing, just the sound of the air conditioner and the huffs and puffs of others dancing. One of the teachers said, “Yeah okay, movement is embarrassing,” and boy was she right! On June 21, with eyes open, Wyatt will be playing a live set of electronic music, leaning toward dance music rather than the noisy sets that he sometimes is known for. 

Nick James Scavo will present a hybrid update of his piece Friday Night is Music Night that was first performed on the rooftop at Lubov Gallery in 2020. The piece originally presented a musical narrative exploring Italian American songs, music history, identity, and media tropes from workers’ songs to Sinatra to EDM. This version of the piece will primarily focus on voice, and on the expressive and musical possibilities of Super Mario’s voice in particular. While Scavo is often seen facilitating events for other musicians, we will be blessed with the rare opportunity to see him perform. 

The two musicians have a longstanding friendship and have worked together on music in different capacities but have never performed together. Some of the commonalities in their music are their use of comedy and Italian American references.  

Torn Hawk is the primary alias for Luke Wyatt, a sound and image artist who has released over twenty records on labels including L.I.E.S., Mexican Summer, Not Not Fun, Unknown To The Unknown, and his own label Valcrond Video. Wyatt first gained notice creating video works for other musical artists. His visual mission continues to manifest in the many videos online and elsewhere that adhere to a form he calls “video mulch.” Making almost exclusively instrumental music before 2019, from the textural blown-out guitar works of his early releases on L.I.E.S., to the glistening fake orchestral music of his second Mexican Summer record, Wyatt’s own spoken voice made its first significant appearance on Here Comes Language in 2020 and emerged with more aggressive focus on Toxic Sincerity, his most recent album. His ongoing NTS Radio show serves as a development space for his deceptively radical vocalized works. Most recently, key contributions to Nina Protocol have allowed Wyatt to deliver his most evolved spoken word pieces to date.

Nick James Scavo is a musician and writer. His recent works include the releases 100% Perfect Deep Listening, Friday Night Is Music Night, For Clark Filio, and Necromantic Glissando. He has presented music and writing projects with Tiny Mix Tapes, Magenta Plains Gallery, Lubov Gallery, Control Synthesizers and Electronic Devices, Montez Press Radio, Cashmere Radio, Retreat Radio, and in residence at NTS Radio. He co-hosts the music commentary podcast Flavortone, and is currently Senior Project Manager of Music, Performance, and Events at MoMA PS1. He was previously Associate Curator and Communications Director at ISSUE Project Room, and has also held positions at Artists Space, Blank Forms, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, and Empty Editions, Hong Kong. 

Satellite is a monthly experimental music series curated by Sanna Almajedi. 

For more information, contact laika@e-flux.com.