Stephen Holliger at Razz-Tox -- January 16.
Friday, January 16, 8 p.m.
Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
A gifted sound artist and composer from Illinois acclaimed for his band Swim Ignorant Fire, Stephen Holliger headlines a January 16 OUTLETProgramme concert event at Rock Island's Rozz-Tox, the artist's work exploring memory, faith, and the quiet rupture of the everyday by turning inward via heavy drones, slow decay, and tone poems that move between grief and transcendence.
Swim Ignorant Fire is the ongoing exploration of composer, audio engineer, and sound artist Holliger, who has been shaping the Midwest experimental ambient landscape since 2005. More than two decades of recording, touring, and collaboration have honed a practice that blurs the line between modern composition and sound sculpture. Holliger works like a collage artist of the invisible, gathering fragments of reality and memory through found sounds, field recordings, guitar looping, FM and modular synthesis, and intricate sample manipulation. His pieces move slowly, like shifting weather systems: melodies surface briefly, dissolve into texture, and return as echoes in the periphery.
Through decades of experimentation with modular synthesis, field recordings, multi-instrumentation, and guitar looping, Holliger builds long-form pieces that feel both intimate and immense – a document of emotional endurance and the search for beauty in disintegration. The result is music that inhabits both vast and intimate spaces – cinematic in scope yet personal in tone – inviting listeners into environments where time feels suspended.
Outside of Swim Ignorant Fire, Holliger collaborates with Yea Big and Nate Hahn (pedal steel, Ohtis), with Eddie Breitweiser (pt.fwd) as Slow Dog, and as co-founder of No Below Editions, a small Midwest label devoted to experimental music and limited, carefully curated physical releases.
Stephen Holliger performs his Rock Island headlining engagement on January with additional sets by Alex Nowacki's Dubuque-based project Brutal Shift and Chicago's Mute Duo of Skyler Rowe (drums/percussion) and Sam Wagster (pedal steel). Admission to the 8 p.m. all-ages concert is $15-20, and more information is available by calling (309)200-0978 and visiting RozzTox.com.
