Thomas Abban

Thomas Abban is an artist in residence in existence. Born in Wales, he moved to Minnesota at the age of 10.

“I’ve never been from the places I’ve lived. In some ways, this is favorable because I will never be tied to any culture, its traditions, or practices.

Art, in particular music, is my homestead and undefinable culture. If the collective unconscious reveals itself, it is certainly through music; and if God dreams it is certainly to the sound of human creation.

As an artist, I seek the balance between the known and unknown. With music, we speak a language whose meaning is destroyed when its words are spelled out.

Artists bottle up vapor for a living, they erect invisible structures as dwelling places for the minds of others, they give wings to humanity and tell them to go take their own fire from the Gods.”

“There was something so mysterious about Abban which could be credited to anything from the mask, the bandanas, the lack of banter with the crowd, or the way he fled the stage at the end — but his set was nothing shy of magic.”

The Current, Maia Jacobson

“The music is both lucid and hazy, its search for a new language that remains sometimes out of reach…. bits of R&B falsetto rubbing up against power chords, delicate fingerpicking giving way to psychedelic excursions, pizzicato plucked strings clearing space for drum crashes.”

Rolling Stone