“Licht composes like the writer that he is. Ideas – simply stated and highly effective – emerge from a collage of everything from loops of raw guitar to radio weather reports” – ARTFORUM

“Be it in indie rock groups, improv ensembles, or his solo compositions, guitarist and writer Alan Licht has spent his career smuggling ideas across the obscured bridge between harmony and noise” – THE WIRE

Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable who’s who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends (Rashied Ali, Derek Bailey) and electronic wizards (Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke) to turntable masters (DJ Spooky, Christian Marclay) and veteran Downtown New York composers (John Zorn, Rhys Chatham). Licht is also renown in the indie rock scene as a bandleader (Run On, Love Child) and supporting player to cult legends like Tom Verlaine, Arthur Lee, Arto Lindsay, and Jandek. With Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, he founded Text of Light, an ongoing ensemble which performs freely improvised concerts alongside screenings of classic avant garde cinema.

Licht was curator at the famed New York experimental music venue Tonic from 2000 until its closing in 2007, and has written extensively about the arts for the WIRE, Modern Painters, Premiere, Village Voice, New York Sun, and other publications. His book, Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Media, the first extensive survey of the genre in English, was published by Rizzoli in 2007.

In 2010 he started a project called Title TK with media artist Cory Archangel and curator Howie Chen.

More recent activities include recording and touring with Lee Ranaldo & the Dust, an improv trio with Aki Onda and artist/filmmaker Michael Snow, a duo with Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase, and a book-length interview with Will Oldham, Will Oldham on Bonnie “Prince” Billy (Faber & Faber (UK), W.W. Norton (US), Contra (Spain), 2012).

In 2021 Lawrence English’s label Room40 released a cassette containing “A Symphony Strikes the Moment You Arrive”, a live performance of shortwave radio recorded by Keith Fullerton Whitman at PA’s Lounge in Cambridge, on a bill with Major Stars and a short-lived trio of Chris Brokaw, Doug McCombs, and Elliott Dicks; and “Room for Storms” a live accompaniment to a video by artist Birgit Rathsmann based on satellite footage of hurricanes, performed at the East River Park Bandshell.