FourOneOne is proud to present a two-night program with MANAS (Thom Nguyen and Tashi Dorji), celebrating more than a decade of genre-defying collaboration and the many musical communities with whom they continue to be in conversation. 

Night one of this program, June 8th, will feature MANAS as a trio with firebrand saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist Zoh Amba.

MANAS broke into the sub-underground in 2012 seemingly fully formed, with a volcanic, extemporaneous sound forged between the grinding tectonic plates of Thom Nguyen’s kinetic, force-of-nature drumming and Tashi Dorji’s percussive, angular guitar attack. At the duo’s core is an anarcho-punk sensibility and almost telepathically shared sense of rhythm. As Marc Masters has put it, “At points, the pair lock together so tightly it feels like Nguyen’s sticks are striking Dorji’s strings.”

Originally from Bhutan, Dorji absorbed American and UK hard rock and heavy metal via bootleg cassettes from India while surrounded by a family of folk musicians. His father, mother and cousins sang and played instruments, and his maternal grandfather was well known for developing an influential style on dramnyen, the Bhutanese lute. The guttural chants, blasting horns, and crashing metal of Buddhist monastic ritual were also a strong part of the environment. Dorji remembers his mother walking in on him listening to Metallica’s …And Justice for All and quipping, "Why are you listening to this? You should just go to the monastery. They play the same thing." 

Landing stateside for college, Dorji immersed himself in Asheville’s DIY punk scene and formative listening sessions with records by Derek Bailey, Albert Ayler and John Coltrane. 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 ever-expanding 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 undeniably potent live act, and their post-hardcore take on improvised music has found them space, individually and collectively, on bills and collabs with “immigrindcore” band Chepang, heavy music headliners SUMAC and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and a multigenerational cast of improvisers that includes Joe McPhee, Susie Ibarra, Zoh Amba, Steve Noble, Audrey Chen, Michael Zerang, Mette Rasmussen, Luke Stewart, C. Spencer Yeh, Bill Orcutt and Aki Onda. 

A native of Kingsport, TN, Amba grew up practicing saxophone in the forest, before exploding onto the free jazz scene—dropping out of conservatory, studying with David Murray, becoming a devotee of Advaita Vedanta, and moving to New York along the way. Amba began sharing bills and collaborating occasionally with MANAS while she still lived in Tennessee, but this will be their first trio performance in New York City. Neo-Afro post-punk band Blasé (named after Archie Shepp’s 1969 album) featuring vocalist Shara Lunon, drummer Kirk Podell, guitarist Aaron Smith, and bassist Martin Argueta, and a solo version of Luke Stewart’s Blacks’ Myths, a “communication in vibration” with Black historical memory, will open.