It is with sincere regrets that we inform you that our dear friend and extraordinarily talented sound and visual artist Damian Bisciglia just passed on Tuesday at age 52. He apparently took his own life in a public park in Chatsworth.
He was a founding member of the surreal soundscape group Points of Friction (1981-present), recorded and released solo sound work as Agog, and took part in many many collaborations over the past 30 years.
He leaves behind a great legacy of friendships and large amounts of recorded sound art and truly unique visual art, speaking of the 6000+ photos he took recently of various naturally eroded materials while hiking, strange arrangements of objects and other various abstractions, as he always had the exquisite skill of channelling the fascinating and odd through any number of mediums. Whether it was with mud, paint and found objects, scissors, magazines, trash and glue, hallucinogenic photo manipulations on a computer, or an amplified birdcage tickled with a gigantic comb, Damian was endlessly enthralled by creating. He was a collector of junk materials and built his own instruments and sculptures.
The music of Agog was homemade musique concrete - amazing tape collages. It was really outstanding work that stood above a lot of what was coming out of the cassette culture at that time. Damian's work was superbly recorded and edited, and lovingly packaged. His own cassettes reached fewer and fewer people over the years as his packaging grew more and more elaborate.
Damian's music and art remains little heard and known for the most part.
(Edited texts by Eric Lanzillotta, Mitchell Brown, and Tim Alexander).
We will be playing an undigitalized tape untitled Is No Man, on the Broken Flag Label, from 1986, Agog's only Lp release, Dust is Their Food and Clay Their Meat, on the Agaric Label, as well as his phenomenal "Magnetic Phenomena of all Kinds" cassette from 1987.
A Different Nature thanks Points of Friction members Mitchell Brown, and Tim Alexander for this humble but sincere homage to Damian Bisciglia's creativity.