Lisa MacKinney

I learnt classical piano for ten years before switching to guitar in the late 1980s. My first lesson, with avant-rock guitarist Michael Sheridan, consisted of playing Them's Gloria non-stop for 3 hours. Though confounding at the time, this turned out to be excellent preparation for playing, some years later, with Rhys Chatham in two performances of An Angel Moves Too Fast to See. This 70-minute work, scored for bass, drums, and 100 electric guitars, was performed at the 1993 Brisbane Biennial Arts Festival. Thankfully, I have never recovered from this thrilling, formative experience. It gave me a deep appreciation of the harmonic subtleties of drones, layering, non-standard tunings and overtones, and especially their application to electric guitars and rock.These days, I play guitar and Ace Tone organ - solo as Mystic Eyes, and in Second Viennese School, a duo formed with long-time collaborator Michael Munson (with whom I played in Heartbreak City Council). Not entirely surprisingly, we do semi-improvised psychedelic drone epics which usually wind up at around 40 minutes. In February 2006, filmmaker Adam Spellicy decided to document one of these. The result, "SVS", is a beautifully shot performance film which can be seen and heard at the View My Videos link on this page. The new Second Viennese School recording, By Means of Lights, features Adam Simmons guesting on wild saxophone; mixing by our man Casey Rice. I'm also a historian - my background (BA Hons, MA) is in late medieval history, and focussed on the relationship between devotional art and religious practice in England and Western Europe from 1300-1500. However, I'm currently doing research for a PhD/book on another of my long-time obsessions, The Shangri-Las.