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=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: snailhook on June 06, 2007, 12:44:00 pm
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Clavius Productions presents Thee Ultimate VAG meets Thee Uncomfortable Pricks:
Friday, June 8
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
9pm, $8, 21+
Plastic Crimewave Sound (Eclipse, from Chicago, heavy brain-frying space-punk fuzz-rock a la Hawkwind, Chrome, Stooges, Comets on Fire, Spacemen 3, etc)
Howdy Duty Band (old-school boogie-rock a la Canned Heat, featuring the legendary Max Ochs!)
Thee Ultimate VAG (guitar/percussion improv duo, mem. of Kohoutek/To Live and Shave in L.A.)
The Uncomfortable pricks (psych/noise-rock from Cleveland, mem. of Thee Scarcity of Tanks/Terminal Lovers/Prisonshake)
Plastic Crimewave Sound
http://www.myspace.com/plsticcrimewavesound (http://www.myspace.com/plsticcrimewavesound)
http://www.nihilistrecords.net/pcs/ (http://www.nihilistrecords.net/pcs/)
"Plastic Crimewave Sound is something like the musical analogue to the Galactic Zoo Dossier fanzine, and their first single 'Grade Ceased,' is about what you??d hope for from that connection. It is loud, crude psychedelic sludge, with heavily amped and effected guitars slicing through the swamps of midnight, with vocals buried in tanks of Japanese laughing gas, and rhythms sliding along like moist candy dropped from the lips of Alan Vega." (The Wire, 2003)
"A wonderful ball of scuzz that will drag you down the psychedelic path to self-destruction, smashing your face into a CAN the whole ride. Dirty dirges of sound swirling around my head, start to make me worry who may be watching me through the windows and I start to see little glass spiders running up and down my arms in a paranoid haze. Mr. Crimewave has done an excellent job with the record, and if you have ever had re-occurring nightmares from too much cough syrup, then this will be the tasty dish you??ve waited for your whole life." (Horizontal Action, 2003)
4-5 piece spacepunk unit lauded in Mojo, Wire, Julian Cope's Head Heritage, etc. Plastic Crimewave also does the Galactic Zoo Dossier mag, soundscape duo Goldblood, Secret History of Chicago Music strip and radio show, Million Tongues Festivals, sits in with ensembles like Scarcity of Tanks and DRMWPN, yadda yadda. Mark Lux was in the formative Temple of Bon Matin and twiddles knobs with Folk and Violence. Nick Myers also heads up street toughs Vee Dee. Lawrence Peters does everything, including swell country bands like Hardscrabble and the Lawrence Peters Outfit. Andy Ortmann is Panicsville, runs the fine Nihilist label, and does a zillion other sick things. Releases: "Flashing Open" (Eclipse LP and Rocket CD), "No Wonderland" (Eclipse 2LP), split 12" with Oneida (Brah/Jagjaguwar), debut 45 'Grade Ceased" (Captain Spazz) and split w/ Michael Yonkers 45 (Capt. Spazz) upcoming LP on Eclipse 2007...has toured with: Acid Mothers Temple, Oneida, The Ponys, Comets on Fire, Josephine Foster and the Supposed, Pearls and Brass, Gris Gris, Miminokoto and upcoming with Simply Saucer!
Played shows with: Zolar X, Bardo Pond, Spectrum, Sky Saxon and the Seeds, The Creation, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Michael Yonkers, Wolf Eyes, Kinski, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Kevin Coyne, Fursaxa, Espers, Charalambides, Black Dice, Six Organs of Admittance, No Neck Blues Band, etc.
Howdy Duty Band
http://howdyduty.org/default.aspx (http://howdyduty.org/default.aspx)
Max Ochs' Canned Heat-style boogie-rock band, featuring members of Maryland's early '70s underground rock scene (these guys were around when George Brigman and Orange Wedge were hangin' around Charm City). Some info on Max for the uninitiated:
http://www.tompkinssquare.com/max.html (http://www.tompkinssquare.com/max.html)
Max Ochs was featured on the very first Takoma Records compilation, Contemporary Guitar, Spring '67, and has since been criminally unrecorded. He was born in Baltimore, is Phil Ochs' cousin, was responsible for turning Robbie Basho on to folk music, and played in the seminal, if obscure, ESP raga band Seventh Sons. Admittedly enamored with Pete Seeger, Ochs until recently operated Annapolis' 333 Coffeehouse, where he occasionally performed. More information on Max can be found in this interview:
http://www.bayweekly.com/year04/issuexii12/lifexii12.html (http://www.bayweekly.com/year04/issuexii12/lifexii12.html)
Thee Ultimate VAG
http://www.claviusproductions.org (http://www.claviusproductions.org)
http://www.myspace.com/accidentswithmagnets (http://www.myspace.com/accidentswithmagnets)
Dreamy moonlit melodies as imagined by axeslinger Chris Grier (To Live and Shave in L.A./Sean McArdle Band/ex-Mungo Jerry) and skinpounder Scott Verrastro (Kohoutek/Insect Factory/Sequence Chair/ex-Falco). Setting a course for the heartland of America, this duo contructs ribald ditties derived from ancient Romanian ballads translated to these modern, not-so-chaste times. Bring your lambskin.
The Uncomfortable Pricks
http://www.myspace.com/theescarcityoftanks (http://www.myspace.com/theescarcityoftanks)
http://www.davecintron.com/ (http://www.davecintron.com/)
Scarcity of Tanks is a fluid and changing group of fellow sound investigators formed in 2004 by Matthew Wascovich. For the End Times II fest, SOT included Steve Plastic Crimewave, Matt Hartman (Sic Alps/Coachwhips), Chris Davis (Cherry Blossoms), Sam Goldberg, Chris Smith (Keelhaul), and a surprise guest.
"Scarcity of Tanks. I don't know. I guess it seems not dark so much, but mysterious and imaginative. Yeah, it really seems mysterious, kind of like when you're dreaming and not having to wake up until you're ready. That's what the images do for me." -Jack Brewer/Saccharine Trust
Scarcity of Tanks have recordings released, or forthcoming, from Slow Toe Records, Textile Records, Folding Cassettes, and Phase! Records.
Upcoming Clavius events:
Sunday 6/10 @ Warehouse Next Door: Donkey (experimental synth composition from LA)/Bonnie Jones & Andy Hayleck/SKIF (of the N-Collective)/Myo 8:30pm, $8
Monday 6/11 @ Warehouse Next Door: These Are Powers (ex-Liars/No Things/Knife Skills)/Sons of Guns (ex-Snuff Project/Measles Mumps Rubella)/The Amoeba Men (spazzy no-wave from Richmond) 8:30pm, $7
Tuesday 6/12 @ 611 Florida: Madagascar (instrumental gypsy folk)/Lord Fyre (mem. of John Wilkes Booze)/Normanoak (mem. of Impossible Shapes, Secretly Canadian)/The Horns of Happiness (mem. of Impossible Shapes, Secretly Canadian)/Ryan Jewell (experimental percussion from Columbus OH) 8pm, $5 suggested donation
Thursday 6/14 @ Velvet Lounge: Blowfly (the legendary dirty rapper!)/La Otracina (Holy Mountain)/Plums/Pup Tent 9pm, $8
Friday 6/15 @ 101 Harvard St, Alexandria: Jack Wright/Agnes Palier/Olivier Toutlemonde (avant-improv sax/vocals/percussion trio from US/France)/Layne Garrett (of Cuterst Puppy in the World)/Isaac Linder (experimental percussion on one cymbal) 8pm, $5 suggested donation
Sunday 6/17 @ Warehouse Next Door: Kohoutek/Warmer Milks (Troubleman, psych from Lexington KY)/Ospreys (cello/electronics duo from Philly)/Barkitecture/Jason Simon (of Dead Meadow) 8:30pm, $8
Tuesday 6/19 @ Warehouse Theater: Alash Ensemble (Tuvan throat singers!) with Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra Arkestra!), Elliott Levin, and Other Extra-Terrestrial Guests 8pm, $15
Thursday 6/21 @ Warehouse Next Door: Forbes Graham (experimental trumpet, ex-Kayo Dot)/Insect Factory/FFFF's 8:30pm, $7
Sunday 6/24 @ Velvet Lounge: Dynamite Club/The Late Severa Wires (experimental noise rock from New Mexico)/Twilight Memories of the Three Suns (mem. of Piasa) 9pm, $8
Thursday 6/28 @ Warehouse Next Door: Francisco Lopez (sound artist from Spain)/Violet/LSD-March (Japanese psych) 8:30pm, $10
Friday 7/6 @ 611 Florida: Mike Tamburo (Music Fellowship)/Nick Schillace (Primitive American fingerpicker from Detroit)/Tunnels (solo experimental guitar, mem. of Jackie-O Motherfucker)/Acre/Yellow Crystal Star (psychedelic guitar noise symphonies from Tallahassee FL)/Black History Moth (percussion drone) 8pm, $5 suggested donation
Tuesday 7/10 @ Velvet Lounge: Ol' Scratch (VA sludge/doom)/Palace in Thunderland (stoner rock from MA)/Bundy (DC thrash-punk) 9pm, $7
Wednesday 7/11 @ Velvet Lounge: Kohoutek/Avarus (Finnish psych, Secret Eye)/Manbeard (mem. of Black Forest Black Sea/Kites/Urdog) 9pm, $8
Thursday 7/12 @ Velvet Lounge: Richard Pinhas Trio (of legendary French prog/psych band Heldon!)/Insect Factory 9pm, $12
Sunday 7/22 @ Velvet Lounge: Tides Within (NYC sludge/doom)/Stifling (bass/drums sludge duo, ex-Valkyrie)
Thursday 7/26 @ 611 Florida: Thee Ultimate VAG/Neg-Fi/This Is My Condition/FFFFs 8pm, $5 suggested donation
Friday 7/27 @ Velvet Lounge: Wooly Mammoth/Rwake (Relapse)/Darsombra (ex-Meatjack)/Hull
Saturday 7/28 @ Velvet Lounge: Donny Hue & the Colors (CD release)/Marshall Costan (ex-Mazarin) 9pm, $7
Thursday 8/16 @ Velvet Lounge: Capillary Action/Zdrastvootie (Holy Mountain, CA experimental/prog rock) 9pm, $8
Friday 8/17 @ 611 Florida: Fat Worm of Error (ex-Caroliner, Load Records) 9pm, $5 suggested donation
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Clavius Productions presents:
Thursday, June 14
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$7, 21+, doors at 9pm
La Otracina (Holy Mountain, NYC psych-rock, mem. of Owl Xounds/Blizzards/Lust Ionics)
Plums (DC instrumental psych/post-rock, mem. of Hat City Intuitive/Spaceships Panic Orbit)
Pup Tent (DC noisy post-punk in the vein of Dream Syndicate)
La Otracina
http://vorg.net/csr/artistslaotracina.htm (http://vorg.net/csr/artistslaotracina.htm)
LA OTRACINA is a trip...
................................. through watermelon atmospheres......
................and...............................
.........................a diagonal eclipse of magical lemon wedges
current creators of La Otracina music are:
Adam Kriney - drums
Ninni Morgia - electric guitar
Evan Sobel - electric bass
past members and collaborators include:
Joshua Anzano - electric guitar
Dan Bates - electric bass
Nick Chapman - synthesizer, fender rhodes
Kris D'agostino - synthesizer
Joshua Hilson - electric guitar
Matt Lavallee - electric guitar
Tyler Nolan - electric guitar
Marc Orleans - electric guitar
Sara Palmquist - electric bass
Greg Vegas - electric guitar
Rylan Scherer - synthesizer
Jordon Schranz - electric bass
"Brand new limited to 100 hand-numbered copies double disk set from this heavy psychedelic/free rock group out of NYC based around the duo of drummer Adam Kriney (Owl Sounds et al) and electric bassist Dan Bates. Both discs come wrapped in covers slipped inside colour plastic sleeves, with the whole deal sealed inside a large, spray-painted envelope. Love Love Love starts out in a kinda delay-channeled almost Cul de Sac circa Doldrums style before exploding out of the gate with some dazzling string rassle that works luminous smears of fuzz into phantom architectures with alla the string vision of Robert Fripp, Tsijiz Munoz or Sonny Sharrock circa Last Exit. Keyboards give some tracks an ornate, gothic edge while later jams sound as dense as The Blue Humans instant-composing candlelit hymns to the alter-destiny with nothing but a bunch of scrap iron Sun Ra sculptures, a buncha vague jam-co-ordinates intuited from repeat-spins of the Flower Travellin?? Band??s back catalogue and a bunch of Hendrix fuzz/octave pedals. Killer! Recommended." (David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue)
"Scalp-lifting cosmic crescendos and sprawling psychedelic rock dominate this latest handmade set from La Otracina, a New York duo of percussionist Adam Kriney and guitarist Joshua Anzano. The blatant hippy title, craft-infected artwork, and spraypainted CDs are an inappropriate package for music this powerful. Rather than a further helping of New Weird America mung bean boogie, we are instead treated to a rich psychotic blend of ruptured free-jazz, Improv excess and even a passage which nearly crashes into something that's not far away from Hawkwind's Space Ritual. Augmented by the bass rumble of Dan Bates, Nick Chapman's keyboard flourishes and Kris D'Agostino's synthesizer constructions, La Otracina's freeform inferno is well worth huddling around." (Edwin Pouncey, The Wire)
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Clavius Productions presents:
Sunday, June 17
Warehouse Next Door
1017 7th St NW WDC
http://www.warehousenextdoor.com (http://www.warehousenextdoor.com)
$7, all ages
doors at 8:30, show at 9
Kohoutek (with very special guest!)
Warmer Milks (psych from Lexington KY, Troubleman)
Ospreys (cello/electronics improv duo from Philly)
Barkitecture (DC youth crew psych/prog-rock)
Jason Simon (of Dead Meadow)
Kohoutek
http://www.claviusproductions.org/kohoutek/ (http://www.claviusproductions.org/kohoutek/)
Improvised psychedelia ranging from harsh noise to delicate melodies, inspired by the likes of Can/Amon Duul 2/Krautrock, Acid Mothers Temple/Ghost/Japanese psych, Bardo Pond, Dead C, Skullflower, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Sun Ra/Art Ensemble/free jazz, Sonic Youth, MBV/shoegaze, drone, doom/sludge metal, etc. Textures and mood over technical proficiency by an ever-evolving line-up. For this show, Kohoutek will be joined by a very special guest.
Some new praise from Aquarius Records regarding our soon-to-be-out-of-print New Milk collaboration CDR with Soil Sing Through Me:
"Second release we've been able to get our hands on from Soil Sing Through Me, a sort of underground freak-folk supergroup featuring members of Feathers and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, who for this disc have teamed up with DC outfit Kohoutek for an evening of communal music making. The results should be no surprise, a druggy blown-out meandering laid-back psychedelic folk free-for-all. Blasted, stoned, groovy and fucked up.
You can definitely hear more SHOTM than Feathers, or maybe it's Kohoutek who we had never heard anyway, but this is not so much folky as sort of spaced-out and trippy. Simple propulsive tribal rhythm jams and simple stripped-down rock beats are the framework for these inner-space excursions, wah guitar and slivers of silvery feedback drift to-and-fro, melodies are spread out over the proceedings like a tattered old blanket, there seem to be vocals too, but they are minimal and are usually buried under a ton of FX and psychedelic shimmer. Keyboards buzz and huge spacious expanses offer the players plenty of space to stir up subtle bits of percussive clatter, glistening flurries of blurry buzz, strange spidery little melodies all tangled up amidst the stumbling drums and rumbling bass. This definitely has a Dead C vibe, but then what improvised noise-rock psych jam doesn't? No good ones, that's for sure.
The usual suspects will eat this up. Sunburned Hand obsessives for sure need this, as do all you free-folk noise-rock cd-r freaks...LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, most likely already out-of-print. Packaged in the instantly recognizable skull and crossbones Wabana purple painted digipak."
Warmer Milks
http://www.warmermilks.com/ (http://www.warmermilks.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/warmermilks (http://www.myspace.com/warmermilks)
Nevermind Chinaboise, THIS is my pick of the issue. From Lexington, Kentucky, consider Warmer Milks a real "band to watch." I really thought this was going to be a jam-noise album, with its John Olson/American Tapes-style artwork, right down to the cubist lettering. With two of the Hair Police playing on here, I figured it would be the October Faction to Hair Police's Black Flag...But oh my GOD. This is not a jam-noise album. Not at all. This is an album of songs, and they are golden electric-guitar folk-rock dreams. I was definitely digging the first three songs right away, but it was during the fourth and fifth, both recorded live, that the jaw went ahead and dropped. The fourth track "Dogs All Slain," without really sounding like My Bloody Valentine, features some of the best glide guitar playing I've heard since that band gave us Loveless. After the first 2 or 3 minutes (the part with the words and vocals), it settles on a lovely circular guitar-chord cycle and just goes and goes, until it ends over ten minutes later to small-crowd whoops of applause and a "hell yeah!" But that's nothing compared to the goes-and-goes you get with "Penetration Initials," the last track on here, a 30-minute epic that winds its way through soft uninterrupted moods and golden-slow-chord folk forms, beautifully progged-out with occasional soft-yelp vocals. On first listen, about 10 minutes in, I realized something special was happening, so I stopped the work I was doing and just laid on the floor like I was on a blanket in the grass at an outdoor concert. Everybody who is alive or has ever lived was there. Neil Young finally stopped staring out at the ocean, looked back over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. Keiji Haino and Jandek strolled by, Jandek eating an ice cream cone, dressed up just like he was onstage in Scotland. They stopped and listened, closing their eyes and nodding their heads. After the song/set ended, they went over to the merch table and Jandek bought Keiji a Warmer Milks CDR. The 24-year-old Tim Buckley was there listening, deciding that he should stick it out with the whole Starsailor vibe after all, even though it wasn't selling too well. Even the controversial but ticket-selling headliners Simon & Garfunkel, who had been confidently having a pre-party in the backstage tent with an entourage that included Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, got a little quiet and pensive during the last half of this epic song, quietly realizing that the folk-world winds were changing direction. (Blastitude)
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Clavius Productions presents a very special evening with the award-winning Tuvan throat singers the Alash Ensemble, joined by the legendary Marshall Allen and other members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, as well as Elliott Levin. This is one event not to be missed!
Tuesday, June 19
Warehouse Theater
1017 7th St NW WDC
http://www.warehousetheater.com/ (http://www.warehousetheater.com/)
8pm, $15, all ages!
Alash Ensemble with Marshall Allen, Elliott Levin, and Other Extra-Terrestrial Special Guests
Alash Ensemble
http://www.alashensemble.com/ (http://www.alashensemble.com/)
Alash takes its name from the Alash River, which runs through the musicians' native region of Tuva. The ensemble members are graduates of the Kyzyl Arts College and students of Kongar-ool Ondar, the master throat singer and former member of the Tuvan parliament who is featured in the movie Genghis Blues. In 1999 they formed the ensemble that evolved into Alash, and Kongar-ool Ondar became the artistic director. The musicians have all been trained in traditional Tuvan music since childhood, but they also know and love western music. They add non-traditional instruments, old and new, including guitars and accordions, and they draw upon their knowledge of complex rhythms and western harmonies to expand their musical possibilities.
In 2004, Alash won first prize at the International Symposium "Khoomei," throat singing competition. The group won "Best Folk Music Group" in 2000 and 2003, and they came to the United States for a concert tour in 2006 under the Open World Leaders program of the Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Arts.
Marshall Allen
http://www.elrarecords.com/ma.html (http://www.elrarecords.com/ma.html)
Marshall Belford Allen, alto saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, bandleader, and arranger, was born May 25, 1924 in Louisville, Kentucky and started clarinet lessons at age 10. At 18, he enlisted in the Army's 92nd Infantry (renowned as the Buffalo Soldiers), playing clarinet and alto saxophone in the 17th Division Special Service Band. Stationed in Paris during World War II, he played with pianist Art Simmons and saxophonist Don Byas, and he toured and recorded with James Moody during the late '40's. Upon honorable discharge, Mr. Allen enrolled in the Paris Conservatory of Music, studying clarinet with Delacluse. Returning to the States in 1951, Marshall settled in Chicago, where he led his own bands, playing in clubs and dance halls, while writing his own music and arrangements, as he continues to do today.
During the mid-'50s, Marshall met Sun Ra and became a student of his precepts. After joining the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1958, Marshall Allen led Sun Ra's formidable reed section for over 40 years (a role akin to the position of Johnny Hodges in the Duke Ellington orchestra). Marshall Allen lived, rehearsed, toured and recorded with Sun Ra almost exclusively for much of his musical career, leading the reed section during the time that the Sun Ra Arkestra won the "Downbeat" polls as number-one big band in 1988 and 1989. As a featured soloist with the Arkestra, Marshall pioneered the avante-garde jazz movement of the early '60s, expanding a style rooted in Johnny Hodges and Don Byas, and influencing all leading avant-garde saxophonists thereafter. During this time, Marshall also invented a woodwind instrument he called the "morrow," utilizing a saxophone mouthpiece attached to an open-hole wooden body. (This instrument is currently being marketed under another name, as Marshall never secured a patent on his invention).
Marshall Allen was one of the first jazz musicians to play traditional African music and what is now called "world music," working frequently with Olatunji and his Drums of Passion. In fact, Marshall is most likely the sole jazz musician who builds and plays the kora (a popular West African multi-stringed instrument), and he has been a major factor in its introduction to American audiences, as well as the world at large.
Marshall Allen is featured on over 200 Sun Ra releases, as well as appearing as special guest soloist in concert and on recordings with such diverse groups as NRBQ, Phish, Sonic Youth, Diggable Planets, Terry Adams, and Medeski, Martin & Wood.
Perhaps most significantly, Marshall Allen assumed the helm of the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1995 after the ascension of Sun Ra in 1993 and John Gilmore in 1995. Mr. Allen continues to reside at the Sun Ra Residence in Philadelphia, composing, writing and arranging for the Arkestra much like his mentor, totally committed to a life of discipline centered totally on the study, research, and further development of Sun Ra's musical precepts.
Marshall maintains the Sun Ra residence as a living museum dedicated to the compilation, restoration and preservation of Sun Ra's music, memorabilia, and artifacts. Marshall has launched the Sun Ra Arkestra into a dimension beyond that of mere "ghost" band by writing fresh arrangements of Sun Ra's music, as well as composing new music for the Arkestra. He works unceasingly to keep the big-band tradition alive, reworking arrangements of the music of Fletcher Henderson and Jimmie Lunceford for the Arkestra to play, along with many other American standards.
Marshall Allen is recognized all over the world as the premier avant-garde saxophonist, appearing in solo concert in London in 1995, duet with Terry Adams in 1997 in Canada, and featured in articles in JazzTimes (12/02), Signal to Noise Magazine, and innumerable other music magazines and radio and TV interviews. He is frequently called upon to give master classes, lectures, and demonstrations of Sun Ra's musical precepts, and he Keeps himself accessible to all who have an interest in Sun Ra's legacy.
Marshall Allen plays the alto saxophone, flute, clarinet, oboe, kora, and E.V.I. (Electronic Valve Instrument).
Elliot Levin
http://www.radical3over2.com/elliott/levin.html (http://www.radical3over2.com/elliott/levin.html)
http://www.myspace.com/elliottlevin (http://www.myspace.com/elliottlevin)
Have you seen this man walking the streets of Philly? His signature single dread emits musical spores over sidewalks, music halls, and coffeehouses. Elliott Levin is the ubiquitous Philadelphia musician. He has played with everyone...reading his poetry into his flute, literally, improvising with Charles Cohen, Rick Iannacone, and New Ghost, the list is long. A discography appears below.
Elliott studied music and creative writing at the University of Oregon. He also studied extensively with Michael Guera (former saxophonist with the Philadelphia Orchestra), Cecil Taylor (pianist/composer/improvisor),
and Claire Polin (flutist/composer).
Elliott has performed with groups including Cecil Taylor's Ensemble, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Odeon Pope's Sax Choir, Scram!, New Ghost, Atzilut (Fourth World), and Talking Free Bebop. He has collaborated in performance with poets Miguel Algarin, Gloria Tropp, Mbali Umoja, Marty Watt, and Frank Messina & Spoken Motion, among many others. Venues played have included Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The United Nations, The U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Yale University, The Greek Theater, Watts Towers, Lollapalooza, and scores of galleries, clubs, and theaters. In 1999, he performed at the Crossing Borders Festival in the Hague, the Sexial Jazz Festival in Lisbon and Portugal, The Alternative Festival in Prague, and the Sonic Logos Festival in Philadelphia.
Elliott has received awards from New American Radio (New York), The City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts and the California Endowment for the Humanities.
A prolific poet, Eliott's work has appeared in the L.A. Weekly, Blue Beat Jacket (Japan), The Painted Word, Po' Fly, Vital Pulse, Poets & Prophets, and Intervals: The Poems of Musicians (Beehive & Sisyphus Press). A Book of Poetry by Elliott Levin was published in 1996 (Heat Press, Los Angeles).
Born in 1953, Elliott Levin is a Philadelphia born and based jazz musician and poet. For 10 years he toured the world with Harold Melvin & The Blue otes, as saxophonist in The Sound of Philadelphia band. He is currently a member also of drummer (Ornette Coleman, James Blood Ulmer, Lounge Lizards) G. Calvin Weston's BIG TREE (www.calvinweston.com), Animus (world/fusion music), and The Philadelphia Phenomenon (with Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Rick Iannacone, and Calvin Weston).
CURRENT RECORDINGS:
When We Were Young - Calvin Weston's Big Tree (www.alwaysapleasure.com)
Opportunities & Advantages - Marshall Allen & Tyrone Hill (CIMP)
Live in Berlin - Cecil Taylor's Ensemble (FMP)
Alan Silva's Vision Orchestra (Eremite)
[The Motion of Emotion - Elliott Levin Quartet (CIMP Ltd, 1998)
A Fine Intensity - Elliott Levin-Tyrone Hill Quartet (CIMP Ltd, 1999)
Souletide - Elliott Levin-Tyrone Hill Quartet (CIMP Ltd, 2000)
Live at the Tin Angel - Animus (Animus, 1999)
Live Upstairs at Nick's - New Ghost (ESP)
Olduvai Music (Tiwa Records)
Iltar (Tiwa Records)
Poetry in Philadelphia (Welcome Worlds Cassettes)
A Gift of Ghosts (New American Radio)
Postcards from the Edge...On the Road (New American Radio)
The Fourth World (Jack Kessler Productions)
If It Dropped In Your Neighborhood You'd Look Up Too! (West Philadelphia Compilation, Starfish Productions)
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from the Washington City Paper:
Tuvan throat singing had its moment in 1999, when master performer Kongar-ool Ondar and American blues musician Paul Pena were the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Genghis Blues, and Ondar released the unfortunately named album Back Tuva Future. Since then, the complex vocal style??which features froggy undertones and whistling overtones??has become a cultural export for the southern Siberian republic. The five 20-something members of Alash Ensemble seem to have the most advantageous setup: Ondar is the artistic director, and American-born Tuva expert Sean Quirk is the manager. Alash wisely avoids playing the novelty card, though, and to underscore its sometimes otherworldly singing, the group concocts a comfortable hybrid of Asian-steppe twang and bucolic Western folk. If anything, the sound is a reminder that throat singing will always belong to Tuva, no matter what it??s packaged with. Alash Ensemble performs with Marshall Allen and Elliott Levin at 8 p.m. at the Warehouse Next Door, 1021 7th St. NW. $15. (202) 783-3933. (Joe Warminsky)
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Clavius Productions presents:
Thursday, June 21
Warehouse Next Door
1017 7th St NW WDC
http://www.warehousenextdoor.com (http://www.warehousenextdoor.com)
$7, all ages
doors at 8:30, show at 9
Forbes Graham (solo experimental trumpet, ex-Kayo Dot)
Insect Factory (mellow polka-psych)
Tim Byrnes (of Friendly Bears, solo synths)
FFFFs (solo guitar/electronics, Sockets)
Garbaj Kaetz (ex-Crack W.A.R., from San Francisco)
Forbes Graham
http://www.polyrhythmatics.net/ (http://www.polyrhythmatics.net/)
Forbes Graham's newest composition, "Kleinman", was written specifically for the new music ensemble Normal Love. Maddeningly complex and rife with numerological symbolism, it represents the pinnacle of his uncompromising principles.
At present, he is working on a new composition for trumpet, two drum machines and live electronics which will be premiered at this year's Festival of New Trumpet in New York City. The piece is currently entitled "Variations on the Fibonacci Sequence".
Forbes is currently playing music with The Interdimensional Science Research Orchestra and the Full Metal Revolutionary Jazz Ensemble. He also works with a number of other musicians in the Boston area, and has his own quartet featuring Ryan McGuire, Raqib Hassan, and Luther Gray.
Forbes has toured America numerous times playing in various groups. He has also lent his trumpet to many studio recordings for the likes of such artists as Daughters, One AM Radio, The Red Chord, Love Life, Irepress, and more.
His label Ricecontrol helped introduce the music of Jeromes Dream, The Day of Man as Man, Dysrhythmia, and XThoughtstreamsX to unsuspecting audiences. Ricecontrol has returned and will be releasing Forbes' newest album I Won't Stop this summer. Self-recorded and produced and mastered by James Plotkin (O.L.D., Khanate, Phantomsmasher), I Won't Stop is a provocative electro-acoustic document. Never one to stick to one style I Won't Stop traverses the genres of free improvisation, drum n' bass, abstract glitch electronics, noise, and more.
Besides music Forbes enjoys vegan cuisine, comedy, studying Taoism, and hanging out with his beautiful girlfriend Lillian.
nsect Factory
http://www.insectfields.org (http://www.insectfields.org)
http://www.myspace.com/insectfactory (http://www.myspace.com/insectfactory)
Insect Factory is the project of minimalist sounds from guitarist Jeff Barsky. His playing explores subtle and detailed textures with acute
attention to overall composition, creating hypnotic fields of dense sound. Barsky frequently adds additional minimal instrumentation to Insect Factory performances. In the mid 90's, Barsky studied classical guitar and composition for several years at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut. Barsky also currently plays with the DC improv band Kohoutek, which combines elements of abtract noise, heavy rhythms, free jazz, and psychedelic rock. In addition to having collaborated onstage with avant-trumpeter Forbes Graham and bass player Joe Lally (FUGAZI), his various projects have performed on bills with acts as diverse as Kayo Dot, Mazen Kerbaj, Peter Wright, Bardo Pond, Double Leopards, Charalambides, and Carla Bozulich, and he has performed with Kohoutek at Suoni Il Per Popolo festival in Montreal. Barsky also co-runs Insect Fields cd-r, which serves as an outlet for musical projects he is involved with, as well as his contemporaries.
FFFFs
http://www.myspace.com/scdr (http://www.myspace.com/scdr)
FFFFs is Sean Peoples' solo project. Non-ornamental, melodic loopworks, pure and clean. It explores the various impact of vocal loops and otherwise unconventional noise loops in a controlled and song-based environment. Songs contain atmosphere usually tending toward ambient but also including beat and minimal synth-oriented material. I also use found sound recordings. My music taste is all over the map -- beat-oriented, tape loop noise, accessible, experimental. The music tends to reflect that wide-reaching map.
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Sunday 6/24 @ Velvet Lounge: Dynamite Club (featuring master percussionist Mike Pride)/Twilight memories of the Three Suns (DC experimental improv)/The Late Severa Wires (experimental noise from New Mexico) $8, doors at 9pm
Wednesday 6/27 @ Velvet Lounge: Alzo Bozsormenyi & the Acid Achievers (Northern VA's finest!)/TITS (all-girl psych-rock from SF, mem. of Death Sentence Panda)/Facemat/Church Clothes $7, doors at 9pm
Thursday 6/28 @ Warehouse Next Door: Francisco Lopez (sound artist from Spain)/Violet/LSD-March (Japanese psych) $10, doors at 8:30 *sadly, this will be Clavius' LAST Warehouse show*
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Clavius Productions presents a night of avant-garde music, Kung Fu fighting, and wrestling:
Sunday, June 24
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$8, 21+, doors at 9pm
Dynamite Club (featuring master percussionist Mike Pride of MDC and Fushitsusha!)
Twilight Memories of the Three Suns (DC experimental improv, mem. of Piasa/Kohoutek)
The Late Severa Wires (experimental rock from New Mexico)
Dynamite Club
http://www.dynamiteclub.com/ (http://www.dynamiteclub.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/dynamiteclub (http://www.myspace.com/dynamiteclub)
Dynamite Club was formed 2001 in New York City by musicians Kentaro Saito and Mike Pride. Conceived as a "Rock Band", their avant-grade influenced sound and extraordinary energetic and unique stage performances -- involving actual Kung Fu fighting and wrestling! -- gathered attention from all around the New York City area.
After giving unforgettable performances at nearly every club in the New York City & Brooklyn areas, including CBGB's and Knitting Factory, Dynamite Club released their first full length CD The Legend Of Tiger Mask. Released on New Jersey-based label, Big Sleep Records, in late 2002, the album left an unforgettable impression in the U.S, Canada, and even Australia, Japan & Taiwan, gathering heavy college radio play throughout North America. Before long, the 1000 CDs were sold out, and with minimal distribution and ads.
Their first international tour, in 2003, included Taiwan, Japan, and Australia, and had a great reception. While in Taiwan, Dynamite Club gave its wild performance, not realizing the magnitude of accepting the headlining position at Spring Scream Goat, one of the biggest music festivals in the country. They don't know why exactly, but DYNAMITE CLUB gets wild love from the Taiwanese now, and was asked to headline Spring Scream Monkey in 2004 that was followed by sold-out concerts in Taipei. This was followed by the band's second successful tour of Japan.
Since then, Dynamite Club has released its 2nd full length CD It's Deeper than Most People Actually Think -- an assault on pop music rather than the avant-garde it feverishly attacked on their 1st CD -- on Funhole Records. This CD has already sold over 1000 copies since being released in February 2005 (again with little distribution or ads), and reached #107 on CMJ charts and was the 2nd-most added record in CMJ charts on its initial release date. The band has since gathered much radio play and a rabidly devoted cult following. Seen once, their live performance is not forgotten. They have also been included on two compilations, one Taiwanese & American, one French. Dynamite Club have also released a limited, and now sold-out, and EP entitled S.
Dynamite Club has kept a hectic tour schedule in the past 2 years and have embarked on 7 US tours (with bands like Peelander-Z, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Magik Markers & Dynasty), a European tour with punk legends MDC, Canadian tours with Daiquiri and Mindy Wind, and toured Asia (Japan & Taiwan) a total of 4 times now.
A new CD is completed and will be released shortly.
Meanwhile, the members of Dynamite Club work in an endless string of bands with the "who's who" of new rock music including: MDC (millions of dead cops), Haino Keiji's Fushitsusha, John Zorn, Trevor Dunn (of Mr. Bungle & Fantomas), Gary Lucas' Captain Beefheart repertoire band Fast N' Bulbous, Japan's RUINS and RonRuins, Anthony Braxton, Sonny Simmons, PAK, Otomo Yoshihide, Time Of Orchids, Dr. Nerve, and Eugene Chadbourne.
Dynamite Club is:
Kentaro Saito - Guitar/Vocals
Mike Pride - Drums/Vocals
Evan Lipson - Bass
The Late Severa Wires
http://www.highmayhem.com/artists/thelateseverawires/ (http://www.highmayhem.com/artists/thelateseverawires/)
http://www.myspace.com/thelateseverawires (http://www.myspace.com/thelateseverawires)
Ultraviolet - turntables
Mike Rowland -drums
Yozo Suzuki - guitar
Carlos Santistevan - bass
The Late Severa Wires are a great, unusual electro-acoustic improvising group from Santa Fe and part of that areas burgeoning High Mayhem scene. Their music is non-idiomatic and has tons of character and strangeness, and an intense spirit shines through.
Founded in 2001, The Late Severa Wires has been an institution in High Mayhem??s philosophical and artistic development. The group consists of Ultraviolet on turntables, Yozo Suzuki on guitar, Mike Rowland on drums, and Carlos Santistevan on bass. The group creates sonic collages where the lines between instruments are blurred and new sounds emerge out of the collision and interaction of air molecules. Of ??late? the ensemble has been incorporating drum machines, samplers and electronics to add to their already immense sound palette. They just released their second full-length release, an LP three minutes a second in November 2006, and have been touring the West Coast to enthusiastic crowds for 4 years.
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Clavius Productions presents:
Wednesday, June 27
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$7, 21+, doors at 9
Alzo Boszormenyi & the Acid Achievers (DC improv psyh-rock)
T.I.T.S. (all-girl psych-rock from SF, mem. of Death Sentence: Panda!, ex-Crack W.A.R.)
Facemat (DC improv noise, mem. of Kohoutek)
Church Clothes (DC solo laptop drone)
Alzo Boszormenyi & the Acid Achievers
http://www.nutmusic.com (http://www.nutmusic.com)
DC improvising rock band once called a "Northern VA version of The Fall", also heavily influenced by Sun Ra, Funkadelic, Gong, Can, etc. 7-piece group includes two guitars, bass, drums, keyboard and theremin.
T.I.T.S.
http://www.titsacrossamerica.com/ (http://www.titsacrossamerica.com/)
T.I.T.S. are a four-piece comprising Kim West, Abbey Kerins, Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough and Wendy Farina between squalling feedback and caterwauling medieval chants. An emphasis on rhythmic power and drive forms the foundation for their distinctive olde metal sound, freaked-out and doom-laden, by turns fun and frightening.
The four ladies of San Francisco -- Kim West (Crack: WAR, Death Sentence: Panda!), Abbey Kerins (Verbalala, Death & Dying), Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough (MeowMeow and the MeowMeows), and Wendy Farina (Towel, Condor, Amber Asylum) -- ply their trade in a kind of witchy/experimental/spaced-out/doom-laden pop, which could easily evoke reminiscences as diverse as Sabbath or Erase Errata or The Troggs or Boris maybe?
The T.I.T.S. sound is underpinned by Mary Elizabeth's black-metal bass lines and Wendy's totally animal drum pound. Abbey's guitar lays down a simple rock riff, while Kim's emits a subtly oscillating sheet of feedback. Over the top, all four harmonise with a kind of semi-operatic, fantasy whisper. The effect is this inexplicable feel of time-travelling castle metal of four ladies of the lake casting forth a single Excalibur, sinking it into stone so deep, no Arthur shall ever wield it. Ever.
Facemat
http://www.myspace.com/flittedbands (http://www.myspace.com/flittedbands)
DC/MD free noise ensemble brings it strong with keyboards, guitar, percussion, machines and more. They've done noise covers of Hendrix's "Machine Gun," world-beat punk synth noise, crazy experiments with reel-to-reel tape players (as Tape Rape), and free noise blowouts (as Power Bottom Orchestra). When the Facemat posse is in the house, you know it will be wild & fresh. Avid disciples of Little Howlin' Wolf.
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Clavius Productions presents its last ever show at the Warehouse Next Door, and it's a special one, with Spanish sound artist Francisco Lopez returning and Japanese psych voyager Shinsuke Michishita making his DC debut. Come celebrate three years of the Warehouse hosting excellent avant-garde and fringe music, and mourn its passing into the ever-growing graveyard of righteous venues:
Thursday, June 28
Warehouse Next Door
1017 7th St NW WDC
http://www.warehousenextdoor.com (http://www.warehousenextdoor.com)
$10, all ages!
doors at 8:30, show at 9:30
Francisco Lopez (drone/conceptual sound artist from Spain)
Violet (DC improv noise/drone)
LSD-March (Japanese psych, Last Visible Dog/Archive/Siwa)
from the Washington City Paper:
For Francisco López, less is more. His numerous records are cryptically underpackaged affairs that feature one or two extended minimal drones, often derived from field recordings. Live, the Spanish sound artist prefers his audience to remain blindfolded for the duration of his set in order to concentrate more fully on the nuanced dynamics and textures of his music. In all honesty, that sounds pretty damn pretentious: It takes a sympathetic listener to tie a rag around his head and sit in the dark for an hour listening to processed insect noises. Yet records such as 1998??s La Selva, with its otherworldly squalor and abstracted rain forest sounds, make a case for indulging López??s wish and digging down into the world inside your head -?? a world that is in all likelihood more fascinating than the grease stains on the Warehouse Next Door??s walls. Lopez performs with Violet and LSD-March at 8:30 p.m. at the Warehouse Next Door, 1021 7th St. NW. $10. (202) 783-3933. (Aaron Leitko)
Francisco Lopez
http://www.franciscolopez.net/ (http://www.franciscolopez.net/)
Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the
underground experimental music scene. Over the last twenty-five years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion. He has realized hundreds of concerts, projects with field recordings, and sound installations in 50 countries of the five continents. His extended catalog of sound pieces (with live and studio collaborations with over 100 international artists) has been released by more than 140 record labels worldwide, and he has been awarded twice with honorary mentions at the competition of Ars Electronica Festival. The audience will be blinded during the performance.
Violet
http://www.zeromoon.com/violet/index.html (http://www.zeromoon.com/violet/index.html)
Jeff Surak (aka Violet) is a veteran experimenter from Washington, DC. Since the early 1980s, he has explored the netherworld between improvisation and composition to create something between the two auditory realms of experimental music. Found objects, microcassettes, damaged CDs, prepared acoustic instruments, and old record players outfitted with foil are the tools of choice.
Since his early recordings under the name -1348-, Surak established himself in the international hometaper underground network of the 1980s, releasing tapes on the his own Watergate Tapes imprint, along with such artists as Controlled Bleeding, F/i, and Kapotte Muziek; and collaborating with such icons as Zan Hoffman, Crawling with Tarts, and John Hudak. At the same time Surak performed with the notorious DC-area industrial band New Carrollton.
The 1990s found Surak living and performing in Russia. There he formed the group Sovmestnoye Predpriyatiye which created site-specific works using found materials and sounds.
At the turn of the millenium Surak created a new duo, V., which quickly blew out of its initial framework of free improv into a unit that pushed the limits of composition, constantly reinventing itself with each recording and performance. After 11 albums in two years, the duo disbanded, leaving Surak to further continue explorations under his solo project called Violet. Violet has collaborated with Alexei Borisov, Frans De Waard, Betrand Denzler, Michael Gendreau, Andrey Kiritchenko, Kotra, Francisco Lopez, Andreas Tilliander and many others. Since 2002 Violet has released numerous recordings in a variety of formats and has performed across the USA and Europe.
LSD-March
http://www.myspace.com/lsdmarch (http://www.myspace.com/lsdmarch)
"More PSF-worthy psychedelia. Strong comparisons can be made to Les Rallizes Denudes, the first PSF Fushitsusha, White Heaven, Shizuka, etc." "LSD-March, named for a track on the first, heaviest album by krautrockers Guru Guru, slowly whisper and wander through a veil of feedback and plodding rhythms. There's both gentle and searing stuff to be found here. These guys are more serious, mysterious and melancholy than Acid Mothers Temple, with a definite Velvets vibe at times. And when the guitars get cranked, this sounds like the Neil Youngiest of Nagisa Ni Te freakouts." (Aquarius)
LSD-March, led by Shinsuke Michishita, is well established in Japan as an example of what might be called the post-apocalyptic power trio. The granddaddies of this decidedly underground style are Fushitsusha (completely alien-sounding, with almost no reference points to earthly music) and High Rise (recording levels in the red, like the MC5 taken to its extreme). LSD-March falls between these two poles, alternating avant-garde instrumental explorations with almost bluesy garage-rock. (Bob Bannister, Time Out New York)
RIP Warehouse Next Door!!!
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Clavius Productions presents a night of solo guitar exploration, from looped drones to fingerpicked acoustic to abstract electric noise:
Friday, July 6
611 Florida Ave NW
Washington DC 20001
http://www.claviusproductions.org (http://www.claviusproductions.org)
8pm, $5 suggested donation
call 202-360-9739 for info
BYOW!
Mike Tamburo (Music Fellowship, experimental guitar/dulcimer, from Pittsburgh)
Nick Schillace (Primitive American guitar, from Detroit)
Tunnels (Nick Bindeman of Jackie-O Motherfucker/Eternal Tapestry, solo ambient/drone guitar)
Acre (solo electronic minimal drone)
Yellow Crystal Star (psychedelic guitar noise symphonies from Tallahassee FL)
The Ear Is the Brain (solo guitar/found objects, from Tallahassee)
Black History Moth (experimental percussion/drone duo, mem. of Spiral Joy Band/Black Twigs, from Blacksburg VA)
Yeah, that's right, SEVEN acts. Four in one room, three in the other. Maybe someone in the kitchen or on the front stoop. Non-stop action!
Mike Tamburo
http://www.miketamburo.com/ (http://www.miketamburo.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/miketamburo (http://www.myspace.com/miketamburo)
Hello, I was born on March 30, 1977 in New Kensington, PA. When I was around 15 months old I was diagnosed with Otitis Media. My ears had filled with fluid and I was unable to hear correctly for several months. I had surgery and was sent to ear specialists that introduced me to the world of test tones and perceptual challenges.
Music has always been a part of my life. My father played guitar and sang me Beatles songs and sometimes his own self penned songs when I was young. My Grandmother and Aunt also played piano and sang Italian influenced songs. They all seemed happiest or at least at peace when they were playing music. I guess perhaps through imitation I decided I wanted to play music as well. For as long as I can remember I was playing something, hitting something, making some kind of noise. I first started out playing chord organ and toy xylophone. I can still remember holding out long tones on the chord organ. I remember that I loved to just hold down the chord buttons for as long as I could. Oddly enough one of my first musical performances was for Ralph Nader. I was probably around 5. My mother was doing a video interview with him. I was on the floor underneath them banging on my toy xylophone. I doubt he was impressed. In school I took up clarinet and played with the school band. At the time I hated it, but now looking back I realize that I learned the fundamentals of music on a B Flat clarinet.
Aside from various art projects I took up, I don't remember ever wanting to do much other than just being in a band. I started my first one when I was 13 or 14. I met some local kids that were playing together. I ended up singing for them. We were called Lurch. A very strange, I guess emo-type, band that included a bass player with a hunchback. This went on for a few years, until guitarist Chris Pecoraro and I decided we wanted to be a little freer and more experimental. I was still singing and I took up drums. Chris still played the guitar. This became Eskimo 88. We did this for the rest of our high school careers. We recorded and released to cassettes Open Your Ears and Hear a Sound and Inside Outside.
In 1995 I went away to Edinboro University. Instead of going to class I spent all of my time reading and writing music. I decided to try to learn the guitar. I made over 200 recordings of myself trying to learn the guitar. I was reading as many books on 20th century composition that I could find and then after trying to figure out what it all meant, I tried to apply it to guitar.
I dropped out of school at the end of the semester. I came back to Pittsburgh and started playing with Ken Camden and Brian Camphire. This was the start of Meisha. Shortly after Brian left, Pete Spynda joined. We recorded several times and released Meisha, Meisha Returns, Meisha Forever, The First Lessons in New Era Time: The Universal Orchestra of Pituitary Knowledge Sing Om to the Disturbed Onlookers, Who were Meisha and Robin Anyway?, The Fourth Lesson In New Era Time: The Republic of Meisha, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, Meisha Machine Music, and A Celebration of Life.
I returned to Edinboro University to study and make films. While there Pete Spynda and I formed Arco Flute Foundation with Matt Mcdowell, Rob Dingman and Jeff Komara. We recorded and released The Second Lesson in New Era Time Exploring the Possibilities of New Wave Villains; And What of Boy?, The Third Lesson in New Era Time: Running Slow-Motion Marathons With Purple Rejoice; Who Killed the Party House?, Everything After The Bomb Is Sci-Fi, Everything After Everything Is The Bomb Is Sci-Fi, I Ate Tony Conrad's Pierogies, The Fifth Lesson in New Era Time: The Unconsciousness of Yukon Steve. We also created a new system of time that was 3 hours and 14 minutes behind Eastern Standard Time.
Both bands did several tours and imploded leaving the shattered ashes for all to see. I now play alone and am always recording, painting, making films and video, listening to music, studying Enthobotany, thinking or watching T.V.
Nick Schillace
http://www.nickschillace.com (http://www.nickschillace.com)
http://www.myspace.com/nickschillace (http://www.myspace.com/nickschillace)
Nick Schillace is a Detroit area artist, teacher, and musicologist exploring what it means to be an American musician. In 2002 he completed a graduate thesis on the late guitarist John Fahey, and utilizes Fahey's self-described style of syncopated "American Primitive" fingerstyle guitar as the foundation for his own technique. This style, based on early forms of blues, folk, and old-time music provides the perfect foundation for larger and more expansive musical compositions incorporating a wide range of his own idiosyncratic influences.
"Box Canyon is a collection of nine pensive and frequently beautifully played songs for acoustic guitar...initially quietly searching before segueing into something more fast-paced and aggressive -- a fitting summation of Schillace's skills and versatility." (Steve Byrne, Detroit Free Press)
Tunnels
http://www.yarnlazer.com/ (http://www.yarnlazer.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/sonictunnels (http://www.myspace.com/sonictunnels)
Tunnels is Nicholas Samuel Bindeman (of Eternal Tapestry, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Hustler White, Malibu Flacon, Alarmist, etc.) in full-on beautiful pastoral dreamy psychedelic drifted drone mode. Colour Seance is four ambient clouds of gentle, blurred color-blasts of sampled/looped/delay-drenched guitars, chimes, synths, voice, etc., that evolve in dream-time and slowly fold in on themselves. A key example of the power, breadth and sophistication of the Portland Psychedelic-Drone underground.
Acre
http://www.myspace.com/acreage (http://www.myspace.com/acreage)
http://www.eyeofthe.com/acre/ (http://www.eyeofthe.com/acre/)
Acre is extremely reduced, refined synesthesia-enducing and generally psychedelically affective minimal drone using a minimal amount of equipment (including mixer feedback, sampler/loop, various filters, phase-shifters, tremelos and the like).
Candyflipping is three tracks of sweet drone-gazed, tunnel-visioned, double-dipped DMT cloud-lift. The first track, "Moth," instantly breaks out into the upper chakra registers with thick drones that hit you like LaMonte's Dream-House. Second track "Together We Are Poison" is all glossy-eyed and drooling lower-level chill-out pillow room in the rave of LIFE. Once asleep there, the third track "Drifting" will slowly, slowly slowly bring you back up like some dred head trance DJ opening up the 303 filter ever so slightly until we are again filled with ecstatic psychedelic feel-good sunshine laser light and your head and the whole moving mass of people explode upward together into another level of collective consciousness.
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Clavius Productions presents:
Tuesday, July 10
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$7, 21+, doors at 9pm
Ol' Scratch (VA doom metal)
Whitehorse (doom/drone/art-metal from Australia, 20 Buck Spin/Conspiracy, mem. of Grey Daturas)
Palace in Thunderland (MA stoner rock)
Bundy (DC harcore/thrash)
Ol' Scratch
http://www.olscratch.com/ (http://www.olscratch.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/olscratch (http://www.myspace.com/olscratch)
Beginning life in 2004, Ol' Scratch began as a five-piece monster in a garage in Northern Virginia. Playing metal with a sludgy southern tinge, they began playing shows locally in 2005. Switching bassists halfway through the year, the new lineup went on the road for a few tours and a ton of DC-area shows supporting such acts as Alabama Thunderpussy, Trouble, and Dixie Witch.
Early 2006 saw the release of Blood Puddin', a five-song EP recorded at Harmonia Studios with engineer Greg Clark (Clutch, King Valley) and mastered by Uncle Punchy. More shows followed, playing with doom icons Unorthodox, Earthride and War Injun. On the road again, they made a strong showing at 2006's ??Maine Stonerfest? and played shows everywhere from Maine to Florida.
Late in 2006 the band recorded and released a split CD with Fredericksburg, VA metal band LORD, recorded by engineer Tim Otis (Admiral Browning, Black Canary) and mastered by Vince Burke (Sourvein, Beaten Back to Pure).
2007 brought big changes with the loss of another bassist, Steve changing from rhythm guitar to handle the low-end duties, and their vocalist, Joel, mysteriously quitting the band.
The new lineup, a solidified three-piece, finds Matt Williams still on drums, Steve Payne on bass, and James Haun handling guitar and vocals. The new lineup shows the band evolving into a darker, heavier doom-metal style in the vein of Goatsnake, Weedeater and Electric Wizard. A busy summer is ahead with many shows on the horizon, including a tour with MD sludge-prog outfit Admiral Browning, and a tentative slot on the legendary ??Stoner Hands of Doom? festival in November.
Whitehorse
http://getonthehorse.com/whitehorse.htm (http://getonthehorse.com/whitehorse.htm)
http://www.myspace.com/getonthehorse (http://www.myspace.com/getonthehorse)
The Whitehorse Story:
Whitehorse was formed in mid-2004 when vocalist Pete gathered together guitarists Dase and Brent, drummer Emile, and tweaker Grover. Drawing from a range of influences, Whitehorse began to form epic, noise-ridden sludge songs.
Playing shows around Melbourne with bands such as Grey Daturas, Agents Of Abhorrence and the like, Whitehorse passed around a recording of their 4th and 5th shows, attracted the attention of Melbourne artist Seldon Hunt, word passed around and Whitehorse was invited to open for Isis in Sydney on their first Australian tour in February 2005.
The CD-r that was being passed around was released on CD as West of the Sun/Ocean Turns to Black in a pressing of 500 on Sweat Lung with artwork by Brent Stegeman and "doom text" by Seldon Hunt. This somewhat rough document of the beginnings of Whitehorse gathered favorable reviews from the likes of Aquarius Records and Decibel Magazine.
Whitehorse began planning a tour of Japan, changes were made to the lineup with guitarist Dase leaving the band, his place was filled by Bob, and Simon was added playing bass.
In May, the new lineup recorded the track "Caverns" live in the studio for a Japanese tour EP released by Sweat Lung.
The 11-show Japan tour took place in June/July of 2005 where the band played with Ryokuchi, Palm, Birushanah and Corrupted amongst others.
Shortly after the band's return from Japan, Bob and Brent left the band and Yeap (Pisschrist, ABC Weapons) took up guitar duties.
In October 2005, the new lineup of Whitehorse returned, unleashing a heavier, more developed body of material in support of touring acts Electric Wizard, Dismember and Pod People in Melbourne.
Since their return show, Whitehorse recorded two Live to Air sessions at PBS 107.5 FM in Melbourne and played shows with Artimus Pyle, Birushanah, Ryokuchi, Birchville Cat Motel & 1/3 Octave Band.
In October 2006, Conspiracy Records in Belgium released Fire to Light the Way/Everything Ablaze as a part of their 10 Year Anniversary LP series. The one-sided LP with screen-printed B-side features material recorded at the second of the PBS Live to Air Sessions.
Since the release of the LP, Whitehorse drummer Emile made the decision to re-locate to Los Angeles and played his final shows with the band in Melbourne, Sydney, and at the 15th and final Metal for the Brain Festival in Canberra, Australia.
Currently with Rob Mayson (Grey Daturas/Bone Sheriff/EOH, etc) taking up duties behind the kit, Whitehorse are planning a June-July 2007 US tour in support of a double CD collection of material to be released on 20 Buck Spin.
Palace in Thunderland
http://www.palaceinthunderland.com/ (http://www.palaceinthunderland.com/)
Andy Beresky - Guitar, Vocals
Monte Newman - Guitar, Vocals
Adam Abrams - Bass, Keyboards
Matt Netto- Drums, Percussion, we'll see what else
Palace in Thunderland create music for the 21st century, plain and simple. Embracing a sound simultaneously 30 years ahead of their time AND 30 years behind their time, the band embraces influences such as Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, The 13th Floor Elevators, Hawkwind, Rush, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Captain Beyond, Pentagram, and Monster Magnet.
The four-piece specializes in fuzzed-out riffs, esoteric arrangements, dual guitar harmonies, and an overall versatiltiy that few bands can match. To top it all off, the songwriting is top-notch; this is a group of guys that know how to write a good hook and skullfuck it straight into the listener's cerebellum where it can fester into a permanent psychedelic infection.
Live, the band lays down a blanket of fuzz, feedback, and aggression as they spin their tales of the occult, existentialism, altered consciousness, and general alienation. Not for the meek, that's for damned sure.
The new album The Apostles of Silence is written. Soon it shall be done. The world only knows what awaits then...
"A four-song thirty-minute disc that I'd put straight into the mix for my personal top ten of 2007 new releases if it weren't for a couple of significant reasons. Firstly and most notably is the fact that the tracks on here are re-recordings of a 2001 release by PALACE IN THUNDERLAND that even bore the same title. Secondly, and actually something that draws me to the disc more is the fact that it sounds about 35 years old! This could quite easily be a discovery of a slab of early '70s underground rock music but then if it were then the rest of this review wouldn't work.
You see, the first thing that bursts out of the speakers on 'Heir to the King of Everything' is a riff straight out of the book of music according to THIN LIZZY and they didn't hit on this sound till about '74/'75. That splash of Gorham/Robertson trademark twin-guitar sound returns a few times throughout this release and clearly LIZZY have had some influence on a band that otherwise for the best part sound like MONSTER MAGNET infused with the psychedelic and space-rock leanings of the mighty HAWKWIND.
Those elements are perhaps best displayed on the title track 'Into the Maelstrom' where five minutes of doom-laden backing are cracked apart with some lovely clean lead guitar and a clear and legibly delivered vocal. In fact the only disappointing moment on this disc is the final couple of minutes on the otherwise memorable 'Sonic Throne.' As a fully paid-up member of the campaign to rid the world of the drum solo I can't let a recorded and released example go by without some admonishment.
Aside from this moment of madness though all four tracks quickly make themselves familiar and they each possess a depth and quality that provides new highlights and finds with each repeated listen. Quite why they've gone back and chosen to rehash an old project is something to do with a failed reissue plan last year, but I'd like to think it's also a belief that these recordings deserve attention and could be improved by revisiting them rather than a lack of new material that drives this release. Of course only time will tell whether they have the substance to follow this up. And to think that with a track called 'Bastard Of Puppets' closing the set I initially thought I'd got an album of METALLICA spoof recordings to deal with!" (Peacedogman)
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Clavius Productions proudly presents an evening with one of its biggest inspirations, the legendarily hilarious and subversive Negativland:
Sunday, August 5
Warehouse Theater
1017 7th St NW WDC
http://www.warehousetheater.com (http://www.warehousetheater.com)
$15, all ages!
doors at 8pm, show at 9pm
Legendary trickster band Negativland brings a new version of their weekly radio broadcast (Over the Edge, on the air since 1981) to the live stage for the very first time, mixing music, found sounds, found dialog, scripts, personalities, and sound effects within a ??radio? theater-of-the-mind. "It's All In Your Head FM? is a two-hour-long, action-packed look at monotheism, the supernatural God concept, and the all-important role played by the human brain in our beliefs. Dr. Oslo Norway is your ??radio? host, and Christianity and Islam are the featured religions, as Negativland asks you to contemplate some complex, serious, silly, and challenging ideas about human belief in this audio cut-up mix best described as a ??documentary collage?. ??IAIYH FM? is a compelling and uniquely fun presentation of sticky theological concepts, which has actually been known to provoke arguments for days after the show is over.
Negativland
http://www.negativland.com (http://www.negativland.com)
Since 1980, the 4 or 5 or 6 Floptops known as Negativland have been creating records, CDs, video, fine art, books, radio and live performance using appropriated sound, image and text. Mixing original materials and original music with things taken from corporately owned mass culture and the world around them, Negativland re-arranges these found bits and pieces to make them say and suggest things that they never intended to. In doing this kind of cultural archaeology and "culture jamming" (a term they coined way back in 1984), Negativland have been sued twice for copyright infringement.
Over the years Negativland's "illegal" collage and appropriation based audio and visual works have touched on many things -- pranks, media hoaxes, advertising, media literacy, the evolving art of collage, the bizarre banality of suburban existence, creative anti-corporate activism in a media saturated multi-national world, file sharing, intellectual property issues, wacky surrealism, evolving notions of art and ownership and law in a digital age, and artistic and humorous observations of mass media and mass culture.
While it is true that, after being sued, Negativland became more publicly involved in advocating significant reforms of our nation's copyright laws, Negativland are artists first and activists second. All of their art and media interventions have intended to pose both serious and silly questions about the nature of sound, media, control, ownership, propaganda and perception. Their work is now referenced and taught in many college courses in the US, has been written about in over 30 books (including NO LOGO by Naomi Klein, MEDIA VIRUS by Douglas Rushkoff, and various biographies of the band U2), cited in legal journals, and they often lecture about their work here and in Europe.
Since 1981, Negativland and an evolving cast of characters have operated ??Over The Edge,? a weekly radio show on KPFA FM in Berkeley, California. ??Over The Edge? continues to broadcast three hours of live, found sound mixing every Thursday at midnight, West Coast time, with online access. In 1995 they released a 270-page book with 72 minute CD entitled "FAIR USE: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2." This book documented their infamous four-year long legal battle over their 1991 release of an audio piece entitled "U2". They were the subjects of Craig Baldwin's 1995 feature documentary SONIC OUTLAWS and created the soundtrack and sound design for Harold Boihem's 1997 documentary film THE AD AND THE EGO, an excellent in-depth look into the hidden agendas of the corporate ad world and the ways that we are affected by advertising. In 2004 Negativland worked with Creative Commons to write the Creative Commons Sampling License, an alternative to existing copyrights that is now in widespread use by many artists, writers, musicians, film makers, and websites. In 2005, they released the elaborately packaged NO BUSINESS (with CD, 15,000 word essay, and custom made whoopie cushion), and debuted "Negativlandland" - a large visual art show of over 80 pieces of their "fine art" works, video, and home-made electronic devices, at New York City's Gigantic Art Space. That exhibit continues to travel and appear around the country. More recently Negativland have been touring a new performance piece called ??It's All In Your Head FM?, a two-hour-long audio cut-up mix about monotheism, the supernatural God concept, and the all-important role played by the human brain in our beliefs. Christianity and Islam are the featured religions, as Negativland asks it??s audience to contemplate some complex, serious, ridiculous, and challenging ideas about human belief in a show best described as ??documentary collage.?
Negativland is interested in unusual noises and images (especially ones that are found close at hand), unusual ways to restructure such things and combine them with their own music and art, and mass media transmissions which have become sources and subjects for much of their work. Negativland covets insightful humor and wackiness from anywhere, low-tech approaches whenever possible, and vital social targets of any kind. Foregoing ideological preaching, but interested in side effects, Negativland is like a subliminal cultural sampling service concerned with making art about everything we aren't supposed to notice.
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Clavius Productions presents:
Wednesday, July 11
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$8, 21+, doors at 9pm
Kohoutek (DC improv psych, Music Fellowship)
Avarus (Finnish improv psych, Secret Eye)
Manbeard (Providence freak prog-rock, mem. of Black Forest Black Sea/Urdog/Kites/Xerxes)
The Cutest Puppy in the World (DC improv duo)
Kohoutek
http://www.claviusproductions.org/kohoutek/ (http://www.claviusproductions.org/kohoutek/)
Improvised psychedelia ranging from harsh noise to delicate melodies, inspired by the likes of Can/Amon Duul 2/Agitation Free/Krautrock, Acid Mothers Temple/Ghost/Japanese psych, Bardo Pond, Dead C, Skullflower, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Sun Ra/Art Ensemble/free jazz, Sonic Youth, MBV/shoegaze, drone, doom/sludge metal, etc. Textures and mood over technical proficiency by an ever-evolving line-up.
Some new praise from Aquarius Records regarding our soon-to-be-out-of-print New Milk collaboration CDR with Soil Sing Through Me:
"Second release we've been able to get our hands on from Soil Sing Through Me, a sort of underground freak-folk supergroup featuring members of Feathers and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, who for this disc have teamed up with DC outfit Kohoutek for an evening of communal music making. The results should be no surprise, a druggy blown-out meandering laid-back psychedelic folk free-for-all. Blasted, stoned, groovy and fucked up.
You can definitely hear more SHOTM than Feathers, or maybe it's Kohoutek who we had never heard anyway, but this is not so much folky as sort of spaced-out and trippy. Simple propulsive tribal rhythm jams and simple stripped-down rock beats are the framework for these inner-space excursions, wah guitar and slivers of silvery feedback drift to-and-fro, melodies are spread out over the proceedings like a tattered old blanket, there seem to be vocals too, but they are minimal and are usually buried under a ton of FX and psychedelic shimmer. Keyboards buzz and huge spacious expanses offer the players plenty of space to stir up subtle bits of percussive clatter, glistening flurries of blurry buzz, strange spidery little melodies all tangled up amidst the stumbling drums and rumbling bass. This definitely has a Dead C vibe, but then what improvised noise-rock psych jam doesn't? No good ones, that's for sure.
The usual suspects will eat this up. Sunburned Hand obsessives for sure need this, as do all you free-folk noise-rock cd-r freaks...LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, most likely already out-of-print. Packaged in the instantly recognizable skull and crossbones Wabana purple painted digipak."
and from Volcanic Tongue:
"New instalment of Wabana's limited to 200 CD-R series is a big band collaborative shot from these two North American psych/drug units, with Kohoutek go up against a Soil Sing Through Me line-up that features Ron Schneiderman of Sunburned Hand Of The Man. Some of the backwoods garage style of the attack has a nice Crazy Horse/Savage Sons Of Ya Ho Wha meets ballroom Kosmiche feel, with plenty of serpentine string action and upper atmosphere analogue tweaking. There's even some shots of Miles '70s electro/brass confusion, albeit transmuted in a similar style to Sunburned Hand's acid funk. All laid down with a great recorded-through-a-cheap-stereo feel."
Avarus
http://www.secreteye.org/se/avarus.html (http://www.secreteye.org/se/avarus.html)
http://www.haamu.com/lallallal/ (http://www.haamu.com/lallallal/)
Avarus was formed in Tampere, Finland in 2001 by members of bands The Anaksimandros and Pylon. The group has gotten larger and looser (including folks from Kiila, Munuaissymposium 1960 and Kemialliset Ystävät), but the spirit is still the same. There are about 10 core members in Avarus in three different cities, and the number of occasional members is 10-20. But it's not at all important to know who's playing and when. It's about a collective sound, a play or a game. Avarus' sound is primitive, child-like, joyous and free.
"Using a muse found deep in the woods this collective base their sound on fumbling lurches of folk-rock drug groove, interspersed with weevilly keyboard stuff and quite extraordinary, persistent yowling." (The Wire)
Avarus combine psychedelic folk rock, motorik Krautrock, free jazz and modern noise into a totally mesmerising, totally unique modern avant noise/folk, unfurling lengthy, meandering, almost funereal jams, desolate and mournful, but dreamy and pastoral, machinelike and hypnotic at the same time. Strummed acoustic guitars frame distant throbbing caveman percussion, dreamy soundscapes are punctuated by occasional clang and clatter, all swaddled in the warm drone of amp buzz and ambient hum. Lo-fi, rambling, ramshackle blues jams mutate into wildly propulsive psych-folk with intensely strummed guitars and far-away flute melodies.
Dipping their toes into whatever variant of their unique 'sound' that strikes their fancy, Avarus sway woozily from atonal Jandek-ian campfire hippy hoedowns, to wild jams with spastic drumming and sing-songy melodies plucked out on beat-up, strangely tuned guitars, to wild clattery bursts of percussion splattered haphazardly over a Skullflower-ish skree, to stripped-down, jangly hyperactive psychedelic rock to loose ambient soundscapes of whir and buzz and twang, with slithery, sitar-like guitars. Occasionally Avarus kick up quite a racket, a thick slab of sound, with LOTS of guitars, feedback and some seriously dense drumming, recorded hot and overblown, adding just the right amount of distortion and haze to the recording. It almost sounds like some New Zealand noise rock band like Gate or UK psych/drone ensemble Sunroof!
Epic and endless, rumbling and stumbling, spacy psychedlic folk jams. Imagine Total or Dead C playing Finnish forest music. Or Tower Recordings covering International Harvester next door to Reynols' practice space? Droning, damaged clatter, like the wild drunken cavorting of drugged out hippy carpenters. Spacy and druggy and totally mesmerizingly beautiful.
Avarus will melt your mind and free your soul. Wander into their dark forest and join the tribe.
The Cutest Puppy in the World
http://www.questionthetruth.com/noise/cutestpuppy/ (http://www.questionthetruth.com/noise/cutestpuppy/)
http://www.myspace.com/thecutestpuppyintheworld (http://www.myspace.com/thecutestpuppyintheworld)
The Cutest Puppy in the World is Bryan Rhodes (of Baltimore) and Layne Garrett (of Washington, DC). We explore emergent forms, extremes of saturated and empty space, scorched remnants of the familiar. We play electric piano, analog synthesizer, combo organ, guitars, found-object percussion, thumb piano, bass clarinet, styrofoam, whatever is within reach. Our music is all improvised.
Since the summer of 2005, we have performed extensively in DC and the mid-Atlantic region. Highlights include: creating improvised soundtracks for experimental films by DC artists Heather Levy, Christopher Lynn, and Jay Rees; several appearances at the Electric Possible experimental music showcase at George Washington University; the 2005 Sonic Circuits Festival in DC; and a 2-hour pyrotechnic-enhanced set in the middle of the night at Soundquilt Music Festival last summer. We've had the pleasure to play alongside a number of spectacular musicians, including: Jack Wright, Reuben Radding, Andrew Drury, Nate Wooley, Mazen Kerbaj, Mike Bullock, Vic Rawlings, Joseph Hammer, Sayo Mitsuishi, Michael Thomas Jackson, Hans Buetow, Ben Hall, John Dierker, Matt Weston, Charalambides, Volcano the Bear, Kohoutek, Na, Green Milk from the Planet Orange, Whelp, Insect Factory, Big Cats, Zach Mason, Tone Ghosting, WZT Hearts, Echolalia, Piasa, Mass Movement of the Moth, Slim Castle, Cash Slave Clique, FFFFs, etc!
In 2005, we self-released a CD-R entitled ::shut in the basement::. It made free103point9's Top 150 of 2005. Sockets put out Finfolk in early 2006, with cover art by Joseph Mills. The record received critical praise from Terrascope, Fakejazz, and Noiseweek, among others. Apotrope is due out in April on New American Folk Hero.
"What fundamentally seems to set The Cutest Puppy so far apart from the larger portion of the experimental scene is that for all their variations and stylistic diversity, they still seem very much concerned with the making of music, with all its robustly humanistic implications....The Cutest Puppy allows their pieces to flow together organically, taking in melody and discord in whatever quantities that might instinctually seem to be right....through their unpretentious, wildly humanistic ministrations on this release [FINFOLK], The Cutest Puppy in the World does succeed in underscoring some of the impressive potential that experimental music regularly fails to live up to. This record demonstrates in brilliantly unassuming terms that experimental music can not only exist without all its intellectual poses, but can also beat and shake with all the delicate passion and warmth of a heart and a soul." (Germ Ross, ArtNoise)
"The DC-Baltimore duo sound like the soundtrack to a soap opera by David Lynch." (Bob Massey, Washington Post Express)
"[The Cutest Puppy in the Worlds's] Shut in the Basement is a walk through a macabre circus sideshow, each booth revealing another bizarre character, another dark vision that laughs with joyful madness." (The Ptolemaic Terrascope online)
"Cutest Puppy in the World's songs are like Calder mobiles, made of wire, string, and dense, sweet-smelling wood." (Molars)
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Clavius Productions presents the only East Coast show for legendary French drone guitarist Richard Pinhas of Heldon:
Thursday, July 12
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$12, 21+, doors at 9pm
Richard Pinhas Duo (Cuneiform, from legendary French psych/prog band Heldon!)
Insect Factory (DC improv drone)
Richard Pinhas Duo
http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/pinhas.html (http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/pinhas.html)
http://www.richardpinhas.com/ (http://www.richardpinhas.com/)
Composer, guitarist and electronics innovator Richard Pinhas is recognized as one of France??s major experimental musicians. A pivotal figure in the international development of electronic rock music, Pinhas' stature in France is analogous to Tangerine Dream's in Germany: the father figure of an entire musical movement. The pioneering, aggressive music produced by his band Heldon during the 1970s, fusing electronics, guitar and rock, heralded the industrial and techno to come and remains today vital and unsurpassed. The ??Father?? of electronic music in France is also recognized as a world-class guitarist whose ??diabolical guitar work? (Progression) earns comparisons with Robert Fripp.
Pinhas received a degree in guitar at 17, and a PhD in philosophy from the Sorbonne, studying under philosopher Gilles Deleuze and writing on time and science fiction. He taught philosophy before abandoning an academic career for Heldon, his 3rd band, whose name derived from Normal Spinrad??s writing. Over the course of his subsequent musical career, Pinhas?? ongoing philosophical studies and interest in science fiction have fired, infused, and continually renewed his music.
Heldon released 7 groundbreaking, critically acclaimed albums between 1974-78. Simultaneous with his Heldon work, Pinhas released 5 solo albums between 1976 and 1982. All of the Heldon and Pinhas recordings from this period have been reissued by Cuneiform, in a major Heldon/Pinhas CD reissue project that the US label began in 1991. Critics have lauded these 20-year-old recordings, remarking that Heldon??s ??trailblazing electronic pathways have rarely been eclipsed even today? (i/e).
Pinhas returned to music with a vengeance in the 1990s after spending much of the 1980s away. Beginning with DWW (1992) on Cuneiform, his numerous 90s releases included projects with Peter Frohmader (Fossil Culture Cuneiform 1999), John Livengood, Scanner, Pascal Comelade, and others, as well as solo works. He also resumed performing.
During the ??90s, Pinhas began developing a system of electronic processing to use in performing live solo guitar concerts. Experimenting with tape loops and infinite delays, he expanded, transformed and even transcended the ??Frippertronics? technique Fripp used in his work with Eno, and ??developed a set of personal parameters that stand on their own legs, his looping strata giving birth to interlocking patterns, chordal waves and even harmonic movements...? [Touching Extremes].
Pinhas also began experimenting in the late '90s with projects using spoken word, first used in his work with Heldon. Spoken by prominent 20th C. visionaries and futurists, including the philosopher Deleuze, science fiction writers Spinrad and Philip K. Dick, and French novelists Maurice Dantec and Chloe Delaume, the words -- either taped or live/real time, in English or French ??- add another layer of sound, texture and conceptual meaning to Pinhas?? rich soundfields.
In 1998, Pinhas formed an on-going project, Schizotrope, with noted cyber-punk author Maurice Dantec that fused guitar, electronics and spoken word from texts by Dantec and Deleuze. Spinrad also played a role. Schizotrope toured and released three CDs, including a live recording on Cuneiform, The Life and Death of Marie Zorn (2000), which Carbon 14 called: "A totally unique and personal approach to "electronica"; "...a veritable deluge of sounds...triumphant music."
In 1999, Pinhas released his first solo CD based solely on guitar and processing systems, De L??Un Et Du Multiple (Spalax). In 2002, Cuneiform released his 2nd, Event and Repetition to widespread acclaim. Critics praised it as one of Pinhas?? very best works, a sophisticated and mature manifestation of his experiments with electronically processed guitar and unique interpretation of Frippertronics. In the words of Touching Extremes, ??Absolutely deep and rich, this record is a diamond.? The BBC described it as ??Music that is in flux and stasis at the same time, with an almost sculptural presence, stuffed with overtones and rich textures.? The All Music Guide, however, summarized Event and Repetition the best: ??...a sporadic but constant thread in Pinhas?? music has been his experimentation with guitar feedback, loops and effects boxes, even in the early days of Heldon...Event and Repetition may well signal the full realization of Pinhas?? long-time vision. The drifting, hypnotic patterns of the five pieces on this CD...have a shimmering beauty and depth that seems to suggest a destination at the end of a long journey ??- and perhaps the beginning of a new journey.? ?? Bill Tilland, All Music Guide
In Tranzition, Pinhas augments his guitar-and-electronics palette to weave a more elaborate and textured tapestry of sound. Additional instruments such as laptop (Jerome Schmidt), violin (Philippe Simon) and drums (Antoine Paganotti, of Magma) provide additional color, while spoken-word tapes provide another layer of sound and conceptual depth, rich in detail and texture. The late Philip K. Dick can be heard on ??Moumoune girl?, in a 1977 tape that he gave Pinhas. The Simsi/The Sims/Sims Voice on ??Aboulafia Blues? is that of Chloe Delaume, whose writings explore the notions of virtual reality + reality simulation. Arresting and provocative, Tranzition is a multifaceted and richly jeweled work in which cause and effect, acoustics and electronics, taped sound and live playing change roles and even realities.
Insect Factory
http://www.insectfields.org (http://www.insectfields.org)
http://www.myspace.com/insectfactory (http://www.myspace.com/insectfactory)
Insect Factory is the project of minimalist sounds from guitarist Jeff Barsky. His playing explores subtle and detailed textures with acute
attention to overall composition, creating hypnotic fields of dense sound. Barsky frequently adds additional minimal instrumentation to Insect Factory performances. In the mid '90s, Barsky studied classical guitar and composition for several years at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut. Barsky also currently plays with the DC improv band Kohoutek, which combines elements of abtract noise, heavy rhythms, free jazz, and psychedelic rock. In addition to having collaborated onstage with avant-trumpeter Forbes Graham and bass player Joe Lally (FUGAZI), his various projects have performed on bills with acts as diverse as Kayo Dot, Mazen Kerbaj, Peter Wright, Bardo Pond, Double Leopards, Charalambides, and Carla Bozulich, and he has performed with Kohoutek at Suoni Il Per Popolo festival in Montreal. Barsky also co-runs Insect Fields cd-r, which serves as an outlet for musical projects he is involved with, as well as his contemporaries.
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from the Washington City Paper:
Silver Spring??s Cuneiform Records has been the North American beachhead for French guitarist/composer Richard Pinhas (pictured left) since the 1990s, not only releasing his more recent output but also reissuing albums by Heldon, his seminal electronic rock band from the ??70s. That work put him in the same general class as Robert Fripp, Brian Eno, Throbbing Gristle, Tangerine Dream, Can, and other influential noisemakers. But lately he??s been a drones-and-loops guy, using a processing system that he calls ??Metatronics,? which allows patterns to fade and/or evolve. It??s a firmly human sound: The songs go places, often with drummer Antoine Paganotti pointing the way. And to solidify the drama, Pinhas??a sci-fi head with a degree from the Sorbonne??deftly mixes in spoken word bits from such writers as Maurice Dantec and Philip K. Dick. The Richard Pinhas Duo performs with Insect Factory at 9:30 p.m. at the Velvet Lounge, 915 U St. NW. $12. (202) 462-3213. (Joe Warminsky)
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Didn't realize this guy was still around. I saw him sometime in the late 90's over at Phantas with Felt.
Originally posted by snailhook:
French guitarist/composer Richard Pinhas
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wow. he played with felt? how was that show?
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OK, NOT Felt. Just looked them up. It was two guys that played obscure instruments. One word.
I got it! It was Pelt. Either way. Good gig. Pinhas was using heaps of visuals.
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Clavius Productions presents:
Sunday, July 15
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$8, 21+, doors at 9pm
Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone (experimental guitar/viola duo, mem. of Anthony Braxton's Septet)
Judith Berkson (solo Wurlitzer organ)
Motreb (improv guitar/drums duo from VA)
Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone
http://www.myspace.com/maryandjess (http://www.myspace.com/maryandjess)
http://maryhalvorson.com/ (http://maryhalvorson.com/)
http://www.jessicapavone.com (http://www.jessicapavone.com)
"Their experimental instincts, sharpened by an affiliation with Anthony Braxton, commingle with a folksy lyricism; sometimes they even sing, without a trace of protective irony." (Nate Chinen, The New York Times)
"They listen as though they're hotwired into each other's brain, their taut structural discipline prompting a domino effect of great ideas." (Philip Clark, The Wire)
Mary Halvorson is a guitarist, composer and improviser living in Brooklyn. She grew up in Boston and studied jazz at Wesleyan University and the New School. Since 2000 she has been performing regularly in New York with various groups and has toured Europe and the U.S. with the Anthony Braxton Quintet (Live at the Royal Festival Hall, Leo Records) and Trevor Dunn??s Trio-Convulsant (Sister Phantom Owl Fish, Ipecac Recordings). She has also performed alongside Joe Morris, Nels Cline, John Tchicai, Elliott Sharp, Lee Ranaldo, Andrea Parkins, Marc Ribot, Tony Malaby, Oscar Noriega and John Hollenbeck. Current projects which Mary composes for and performs with include a chamber-music duo with violist Jessica Pavone (Prairies, Lucky Kitchen, 2005); The Mary Halvorson Trio with John Hebert and Ches Smith; and the avant-rock band People (People, I & Ear Records, 2005). She also performs regularly in ensembles led by Taylor Ho Bynum, Ted Reichman, Peter Evans, Tatsuya Nakatani, Jason Cady, Matthew Welch, Brian Chase and Curtis Hasselbring.
New York native Jessica Pavone is a string instrumentalist and composer based in Brooklyn who holds degrees in viola performance, music education and composition. She's studied viola with tons of classical teachers, improvisation with Leroy Jenkins and is continuously learning by working within a community of creative musicians in New York, most notably through her work with composer Anthony Braxton.
Most recently, she tours Europe and the United States with The Anthony Braxton Sextet and Twelve+1tet and in a collaborative duo with Mary Halvorson (guitar, viola, and voice). She currently leads two ensembles; The Pavones and Quotidian and improvises in groups led by William Parker,Taylor Ho Bynum, and Matana Roberts. She plays bass guitar with; Minnows, Christy and Emily, and Jason Cady and the Artificials.
She has performed at a number of international music festivals including, the Molde Jazz Festival in Norway, The Banlieues Blues Festival in Paris, The Victoriaville Festival of New Music in Canada, the Santa Annarresi Jazz Festival in Italy, All Tomorrows Parties in England, Jazz em Augusto in Portugal, The Wels Unlimited Festival in Austria, and at the Ciclo Jazz Foundation in Spain.
As a composer, she has received commissions to write chamber music for The Eastern Winds and Till by Turning, and her pieces have been heard throughout the northeast in venues such as the Kitchen and Issue Project Room in New York and Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut.
As an instrumentalist, she has interpreted new music by musicians such as Glenn Branca, Butch Morris, Matthew Welch, James Fei, Matt Bauder, David Grubbs, Loren Dempster, Aaron Siegel, and Andrew Raffo Dewar.
Since 2000, she has documented her music via her self-run label Peacock Recordings, which was recently awarded a grant from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording Program, and her growing discography and list of works can be witnessed via her web site, www.jessicapavone.com. (http://www.jessicapavone.com.)
Judith Berkson
http://judithberkson.com/ (http://judithberkson.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/judithberkson (http://www.myspace.com/judithberkson)
Judith started singing when her father taught her the blessing over wine in 1981. She joined the family group which toured Chicagoland and the Midwest playing shows at community centers and synagogues. After music conservatory she moved to Brooklyn where's she's been writing music and playing in bands. Judith likes the challenging music, teaching Schoenberg harmony, speaking in 3rd person, finding good clothes and hanging out with her sick creative friends.
Judith has played with folk legend Theodore Bikel, saxophonist Steve Coleman and has performed new music by Milton Babbitt, Joe Maneri and Osvaldo Golijov. Her voice was the basis of "Twilight" a multimedia project by Hans Breder and Carlos Cuellar at DOSA museum in Germany. She has worked with composer Gerard Pape who runs the Center for Music Iannis Xenakis in Paris (CCMIX) and sang the American premier of his "Two Electro-Acoustic songs" in 2004. Judith is also a Cantor and works at Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation on Long Island.
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Two Safranin bands plus the amazing Echolalia...
Monday, July 16
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$6, 21+, doors at 9pm
The Antiques (Washington DC black jangle post-funk)
The Offering (VA shoegaze)
Echolalia (solo theremin)
The Antiques
"For fans of semi-obscure '80s British acts such as Comsat Angels and the Chameleons UK ... well, here is your new favorite band. The songs are dramatic without being overwrought, as the band doesn't get bogged down with unnecessary instrumentation. A thick organ sound envelops tracks such as "Painted Post Road" and "Don't Stand in My Room," which plod along gingerly while Greg Svitil gives a perfect deadpan delivery of lines like, "Don't light up my life / Yours is the light I don't need / When did you become such a creep? / When did you become so psychotic?" Things are more sprightly on "One Day You'll Be Sorry Too" and "Auburn Aumbry," recalling some different obscure '80s U.K. acts -- let's say Felt and Orange Juice this time. People who are serious about their 7" record collection will seriously love this album." ??Washington Post
The Offering
The Offering of Fredericksburg, Virginia are no stranger to noise violations. Started in 2005 by Charles Pinto and former guitarist and vocalist Andrew Cooke, the band's mission to modernize, but experiment with, what the two considered to be "the classics" was clear. As many bands had done in the past, the two forged their music on the foundation of guitar, bass, and drum machine, forgoing a drummer for no better reason than to create a unique sound. The result was nothing short of that. Pinto's dark, primal rhythms encompass what becomes epic turns song after song, and his driving sometimes distorted bass lines compliment the percussion amply.
Upon Cooke's parting, guitarist Billy Noom took the role of lead quite naturally. His jangly but somehow still melancholy guitar work, leads the band efficiently guiding second guitarist Shane Huffman's harmonious and piercing riffs throughout the journey. Coupled with Huffman, keyboardist Chris Critzer provides at times eerie background soundscapes, but also fills the role as a strict keys player nicely. Critzer also fills in as second percussionist on many songs, yielding only a single tom-drum as his tool. The band's live show is a finely tuned psychedelic freak-out and their tendency to sound check and tune instruments at higher volumes than most band's entire sets has earned them a spot as one of the noisier independent bands in America.
"Dark vocals, sheets of blistering paint-peeling guitars, and a propulsive drum rhythm combine to make some fantastic music akin to New Order, Skywave, Ceremony, Jesus and Mary Chain, The Chameleons, etc."- Tonevendor
Echolalia
Influenced by Found recordings, random thoughts while daydreaming, things around the apartment, walking down the street, and "ideas or phrases I hear on tv, the radio, or in everyday conversation.," Echolalia is "sometimes quiet, sometimes noisy, sometimes spooky, sometimes funny, sometimes sad or other times a mix of everything." A member of DC's legendary freak champions Alzo Boszormenyi and the Acid Achievers.
www.safraninsound.com (http://www.safraninsound.com)
www.theantiques.org (http://www.theantiques.org)
www.myspace.com/echolalianova (http://www.myspace.com/echolalianova)
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Tuesday, July 17
Velvet Lounge
915 U St St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$7, 21+, doors at 9pm
Thintap Woodsap (experimental psych-pop)
Afuche (Latin free jazz from Brooklyn)
Thintap Woodsap
www.myspace.com/thintapwoodsap (http://www.myspace.com/thintapwoodsap)
www.myspace.com/thintapwoodsapone (http://www.myspace.com/thintapwoodsapone)
The press calls Thintap Woodsap "frighteningly talented" (Boston's Weekly Dig), but he isn't so frightening anymore. See, he will have eaten only bananas and water for a week by the time you see him and he will have lots of paper and crayons and other fun activities for you to do. He'd bring a durian for fun and sniffing but the last time he did that, the authorities ripped out the floor of the studio where he was recording thinking there was a gas leak.
So, now for the credentials and name dropping in one long, confusing sentence: Thintap's compositions and improvisations range from very complex, mammoth pieces for orchestra to neo-vaudeville musicals, noise rock operas, long term collaborations with the thaumaturgical Stormy Laughter, and with the utterly original dancer, Zack Fuller, percussionists Tatsuya Nakatani, Will Redman, and Jeff Arnal, and violinist Katt Hernandez, and reed players John Dierker and John Dikeman to intimate songs that he sings and plays on the piano and accordion all by himself, which you will hear this evening. He has also enjoyed many lentil dinners with Joe Maneri and if you want to do some snooping, he also has the name, "Jonathan Vincent". He is a completely original and nutritious protein without any gimmicks or fashionably processed sarcasm. Missing him in your lifetime will really dissapoint your children.
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Clavius Productions presents an evening of dadaist performance art, interpretive dance, experimental electronic music, and accompnaying visuals:
Thursday, July 19
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$7, 21+, doors at 9pm
Chic Nerve (Rebecca Mills of Caution Curves with interpretive dancer Ginger Wagg)
Eagle-Ager (dadaist performance art with costumes/sculptures/dance/music, from NYC)
Slim Castle (solo experimental electric guitar with visual projections, ex-Kohoutek, on Sockets)
Boyzone (electronic improv theatre from NC)
Chic Nerve
http://www.thecautioncurves.com/ (http://www.thecautioncurves.com/)
Rebecca Mills is a sound artist based in Washington, DC who uses found sounds and samples of live instrumentation to create laptop compositions under the name Chic Nerve. She comprises one-third of the avant-rock band The Caution Curves, described by The Sound Projector as "a single-minded trip into mild dementia that is totally engaging". The band??s unique approach to sound has garnered critical recognition by sources such as The Wire and The Washington Post. Rebecca also plays clarinet in the avant-jazz horn-and-percussion ensemble Gestures, and documents aural experiments and oddities through the label Initiated Eye Recordings. Recently she collaborated with dancers Jane Jerardi and Ginger Wagg on the performance installation piece Façade, and composed a live mix from an original score by Audrey Chen for performances of Daniel Burkholder??s piece Together/Apart.
Ginger Wagg is a dance artist focused primarily on improvisation. She performs with two DC-based companies: Sharon Mansur/mansurdance and Daniel Burkholder/The Playground. She has performed with Shua Group (NYC), Amber Kendrick (DC), Marcy Schlissel (NYC), and Havana Select (DC) among others. She received her BFA in Dance from George Mason University, VA and has studied extensively at various improvisation workshops and festivals.
Eagle-Ager
http://www.eagleager.com (http://www.eagleager.com)
Eagle-Ager is a multimedia art team and sculpture band:
Charlotte Gibbons - dancer/performance artist
Geoffrey Nosach - sculptor/performance artist
Stephen Cooper - composer/musician/performance artist
We all graduated from Suny Purchase in 2004 and we like to read heady books. If you see us you will likely see cardboard costumes, electronic music, ritualistic actions, absurd set peices, scrap wood, blood, fancy pants, eagles, toy firetrucks, florescent Jesus figurines, thumbs, paintings of mountains, and maybe styrofoam starfish suits.
Eagle-Ager is a performance art team that is based in NYC, who have been playing around the NYC area for the past three years. The work is a mix of puppetry, performance art, and electronic music. Influences include cartoons, art history, ancient rituals, eerie disappointments, paganism, horror, fun, simulations, questions, and nature/culture conflicts. Eagle-Ager's art team and sculpture band will be touring for the first time in July 2006. The works will likely consist of sets made of scrap wood, junky trashy puppets, cardboard man suits, ritualistic actions, birds and snakes, paintings of mountains, styrofoam starfishes, and thumbs way up, all working to construct a socially relevant absurdist profundity. Eagle-Ager strives to be a totally portable art band. The art world goes the way of the capitalist elitist. The working class shaman's reaction to this is a shared passion for cheap, powerful artwork.
Slim Castle
http://www.myspace.com/slimcastle (http://www.myspace.com/slimcastle)
Slim Castle is built around a goosebump factory. The engineers examined the goosebump architecture of bad bands and transposed it to a setting with a lot more taste, stretching the most cathartic sections.
The results sometimes sound like Charles Bronson's early, furtive watercolors -- blunt, broad washes on burlap that aren't scared of beauty, but have some grit and backbone. Other more frilly tracks are laced with sketchy aural pentimenti and outlined mistake.
In live performance the recordings are stripped down and scrawled over with gestural guitar, lit with syncopated video, made rough and immediate.
Boyzone
http://www.myspace.com/boyszone (http://www.myspace.com/boyszone)
"These revelations preceded Boyzone, a painful filibuster of industrial noise and artless stagger. It was the first dance piece in many years that I walked out on. After a promising beginning, Charlie St. Clair and Lauren Ford's work quickly devolved into movement that mainly suggested what Martin Sheen's initial scene in Apocalypse Now -- drunk and disorderly in a Saigon hotel room -- might have looked like before the final edit. Pointless, eternal, and enhanced only by the monochrome, headsplitting electronica of Neill Prewitt, Ryan Martin, Jeff Rehnlumb and Kelly Reidy, this work single-handedly drove
much of Aumiller's audience into the night, before sanity -- and dance -- resumed in a blindfolded finale, Burnt. By then, the majority who did not return apparently felt that way themselves." (Raleigh dance critic Byron Woods)
Boyzone has performed with played with Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, USAISAMONSTER, Prurient, Tom Grimley, Jason Crumer, Dan Deacon, Art Lord, They Shoot Horses Don't They?, White Mice, Dance Disaster Movement, An Albatross, Kill Me Tomorrow, Little Howlin Wolf, Kohoutek, Alissa Cardone, Breaker Breaker, Jessica Rylan/Can't
from No Future Fest III: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qt-sWFI8S8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qt-sWFI8S8)
some recent pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisreallyhappenedok/sets/72157600214775419/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisreallyhappenedok/sets/72157600214775419/)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisreallyhappenedok/sets/72157600155578944/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisreallyhappenedok/sets/72157600155578944/)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisreallyhappenedok/sets/72157600116501880/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisreallyhappenedok/sets/72157600116501880/)
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Clavius Productions presents:
Sunday, July 22
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$7, 21+, doors at 9pm
Unorthodox (legendary MD doom metal, ex-Spirit Caravan)
Tides Within (NYC sludgy art-metal a la Neurosis/Isis, ex-Agnosis)
Stifling (NoVA bass/drums sludge duo, ex-Valkyrie)
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Clavius Productions presents an all-out punk-rock guitar assault from Radio Birdman's legendary Denis Tek:
Wednesday, July 25
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$8, 21+, doors at 9pm
The Last of the Bad Men (mem. of Radio Birdman/Exploding Fuck Dolls)
Albert Strange ('90s DC rawk)
The Spoils of NW (DC '60s-inspired pop-psych/garage, ex-High Back Chairs/Pussy Galore/Tuscadero)
The Last of the Bad Men
http://www.thelastofthebadmen.com/ (http://www.thelastofthebadmen.com/)
The Last of the Bad Men are an international group whose members are considered outlaws by some and heroes by others. This is an alliance brought together by a common sense of urgency: there is NO SECOND CHANCE! It's not TV fashion time! Get out of line, this is warfare, no time for love or hate, let the leaders pray for gas, it's your time, it's our time! Scrape yourself off of the city streets, quit sniveling, get back into the deep end, and try again! The end is near and we're not goin' out without a fight! The sun is going down and the final hour is upon us. Who's gonna lead the way? Be ready to kill or be killed. These are the ones to join, grab your weapons, sticks, rocks, skateboards, guitars, drums and basses. Scream your guts out and be a part of...The Last of the Bad Men.
Radio Birdman proto-punker Deniz Tek, a couple Exploding Fuck Dolls, and some skateboard guy comprise the ranks of the awesomely named Last of the Bad Men. All of 'em are spread out in various hotspots all over the world -- Australia, Cleveland, Nowheresville -- but they convened in Vancouver, where they recorded these tracks, presumably under a cloud of cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes. So it's a "project," really, and thusly lacks the road-worn cohesion of Birdman or the Fuck Dolls, but kicks are kicks, and "Nowhere Is Safe" provides plenty of 'em, in a US Bombs-y gruff-punk sorta way. Tek tosses out some classic glam-punk riffs on this 'un, especially on anthemic "Get in Line" and the Pistols packin' "Free Wheeler," and the slashing closer "City Pigs" is an authentically disgusted slice of pogo-ready punk rock snarl. Not quite as villainous as their name would imply, these Bad Men, but still plenty mean. I'm sure this'll sound great blasting out of the boombox while you wait for the paramedics to show up and put your shattered kneecap back together after grinding the Charlie, or whatever you skater creeps call it." (Sleazegrinder)
This is straight-up old-school punk played by a serious rag-tag lineup. Deniz Tek (Radio Birdman), Art & Steve Godoy (Exploding Fuck Dolls), Danny (Factory 13) and the bassist from the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets create a serious melting pot of styles. Fom Sham 69 and the Stitches to the Boys. Fans of Hostage records will shit all over themselves when they hear rippers like "Tail Block" and "Free Wheeler." The guitars on this album blaze as Tek and Godoy share lead duties with neither party overdoing it. Curbslappys frontman Danny sounds like a surf nazi who ate a fucking truckload of angel dust and is ready to rape an entire pet store, he says "fuck" 13 times in a row in one of these selections. About as close to the real deal as you will get. (Absolute Underground)
The Spoils of NW
http://www.spoilsofnw.com (http://www.spoilsofnw.com)
The Spoils of NW is made up of former members of the High Back Chairs (Peter Hayes, guitar, vocals, keyboards, harmonica); Tuscadero (Phil Satlof, bass); Cleveland's the Revelers (Joel Kaufman, guitar); and Philadelphia's Pteradactyl (Bill Brown, drums). Bill and his two sons, Charlie and JJ, are in another amazing band called Eyeball Skeleton. The Spoils play heavy, melodic rock with echoes of '70s psych, blues and soul.
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Clavius Productions presents:
Thursday, July 26
611 Florida Ave NW WDC
http://www.claviusproductions.org (http://www.claviusproductions.org)
8pm, $5 suggested donation
202-360-9739 for info
BYOW!
Thee Ultimate VAG (DC guitar/percussion improv duo, mem. of Kohoutek/To Live and Shave in L.A.)
Neg-Fi (NYC experimental/noise duo, mem. of Branca-Bloor Quartet)
This Is My Condition (one-man band from Lawrence, Kansas)
FFFFs (DC solo guitar/electronics, Sockets)
Thee Ultimate VAG
http://www.claviusproductions.org (http://www.claviusproductions.org)
http://www.myspace.com/accidentswithmagnets (http://www.myspace.com/accidentswithmagnets)
Dreamy moonlit melodies as imagined by axeslinger Chris Grier (To Live and Shave in L.A./Sean McArdle Band/ex-Mungo Jerry) and skinpounder Scott Verrastro (Kohoutek/Insect Factory/Sequence Chair/ex-Ozark Mountain Daredevils). Setting a course for the heartland of America, this duo contructs ribald ditties derived from ancient Lithuanian ballads translated to these modern, not-so-chaste times. Bring your lambskin.
Neg-Fi
http://www.myspace.com/negfi (http://www.myspace.com/negfi)
sounds like: a burlap sack of tin and aluminum scraps falling down a cast iron spiral staircase, highly amplified.
"In the '50s, a time of postwar optimism and faith in science, there was Hi-Fi. In the '90s, an era of slackers and diminished expectations, there was Lo-Fi. In the '00s, a time of neanderthal government and outright contempt for the arts, there is Neg-Fi. A watershed moment in the history of art and music -- some might say sub-nadir... " (Tom Moody, art guy)
"One very memorable one for me was a presentation by a group named Neg-Fi, and it was great because I forget who was on either side of them but it was some fairly high-tech sophisticated stuff, and what they brought in were these little cardboard boxes they had assembled that sort of crackled if you plugged something into them. And their band is named Neg-Fi, which is a pretty great name. So they just put these little boxes on the table and sat behind it and it was very stark and they were very kind of serious and they made these little crackles and they were being serious on purpose because it was funny." (Douglas Repetto, founder of Dorkbot and Artbot, in an interview in WIRED NEWS)
This Is My Condition
http://www.thisismycondition.com/ (http://www.thisismycondition.com/)
This Is My Condition is a one-man band in which Craig Comstock plays guitar, drums and sings all at the same time. In the tradition of noise rock this music is heavy, tough and intense, while at other times very free and unstructured. This Is My Condition deals in power, spontaneity and passionate lyrics. Coming from a background of experimentation, repetition and angst in Many Series and Black Calvin, Craig takes things in a new direction by going solo and performing on-the-spot improvisations of the same ilk.
Craig was working on a new project after his trio with Brandon Brown (guitar/vocals in Teriyakis) and Ryan Johnson (drums in Floyd the Barber and others) fizzled out. His search for a drummer who had the desire and skill to play improvised hardcore and art rock failed to succeed. He started applying himself to learning how to be the drummer he was searching for. In the midst of this, somehow, he placed his guitar over his drums and found he could actually play both at the same time. This resulted in his first show at the Replay Lounge with Pixel Panda and My Name Is Rar Rar (who failed to show due to a broken down van in Utah). A day or so before the show he went up to KJHK and played a song acoustically on Plow the Fields and billed himself as Comstock, in the tradition of Dokken, Dio, Bon Jovi and Van Halen. And while the phrase "Less Talk, More Comstock" was screamed by the crows at several of the first shows, it was not to stick. Feeling a bit overly egotistical Craig decided to change the name to This Is My Condition, knowing that the name would always apply regardless of his current condition.
When TIMC opened up for Lightning Bolt in Kansas City, this was a defining moment. Craig challenged Lightning Bolt to a duel. Of course, it was not a duel of volume, Lightning Bolt clearly had the advantage there. Unfortunately the duel didn't happen, but TIMC got to play to a large crowd of enthusiastic kids from KC and learned that the bass player from Lightning Bolt secretly wished he could do something similar.
TIMC took a hiatus from shows during Winter 2003 and found time to record several songs at Chubby Smith's studio in a barn in the countryside outside of Lawrence.
After a couple more shows and delving into more of the experimental improvisational side of TIMC, Craig was invited to play a Seminar at the UMKC school of Music. He played to a group of 30 or so Music Composition students and played just as loud and as intense as at a normal show. Most everyone covered their ears and nodded in approval. The discussion centered around "context" in the music, something that doesn't get discussed much at a regular venue.
Currently Craig has his sights set on playing in far away cities with old friends and honing his skills of improvisation, song-smithing and rocking.
FFFFs
http://www.myspace.com/scdr (http://www.myspace.com/scdr)
FFFFs is Sean Peoples' solo project. Non-ornamental, melodic loopworks, pure and clean. It explores the various impact of vocal loops and otherwise unconventional noise loops in a controlled and song-based environment. Songs contain atmosphere usually tending toward ambient but also including beat and minimal synth-oriented material. I also use found sound recordings. My music taste is all over the map -- beat-oriented, tape loop noise, accessible, experimental. The music tends to reflect that wide-reaching map.
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Set times for this thursday?
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i never have exact set times at 611, but it'll roughly be this:
ffffs: 9-9:30
this is my condition: 9:45-10:15
neg-fi: 10:30-11:00
ultimate vag: 11:15-11:45
all bands will play half an hour or less, the vag might play for 35. it'll be over by midnight for sure, and the metro's right by the house.
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Clavius Productions presents:
Sunday, August 12
611 Florida Ave NW WDC
http://www.claviusproductions.org (http://www.claviusproductions.org)
6pm, $5 suggested donation
202-360-9739 for info
BYOW!
The Wayward (Magic Bullet Rec., ex-Carrion)
The Conformists (St. Louis heavy math-rock, mem. of Yowie, 54 40 or Fight Rec.)
Durga Temple (NoVA sludge rock)
Motreb (NoVA improv experimental psych guitar/drums duo, mem. of Contact Contact)
The Wayward
http://www.geocities.com/wearethewayward (http://www.geocities.com/wearethewayward)
http://www.myspace.com/theewayward (http://www.myspace.com/theewayward)
The Wayward was formed in Summer 2004 by two ex-members of Carrion, just four months after the breakup of that band. After three months of songwriting and local shows, The Wayward began touring the eastern half of the US, playing w/ the likes of Battles, Mastodon, Breather Resist, Ed Gein, Anodyne, Baroness, and many more.
After quickly selling out of a pressing of self-recorded, hand-numbered cd's, a second, more hi-fi home recording, the Not Showing the Past EP, was released, sold out, and repressed. In September 2005, a self-titled 7" was released on vinyl on Black Box Recordings.
Meanwhile, The Wayward continued to tour relentlessly, including a 9-week run in late '05 that saw them play with Kayo Dot, Dysrythmia, Stinking Lizaveta, Forensics, The Dream Is Dead, and many more.
The Wayward's debut full-length, The Wayward, is set for release on June 6, 2006, on Black Box Recordings.
Hailing from Fairfax, Virginia (and currently in Baltimore), it's kind of amazing to consider that THE WAYWARD collectively have but a mere six arms. Simply put, there's a LOT going on with the band's music. Slabs and slabs of riffs uncoil at a frenetic pace courtesy of Nicholas and Jesse Skrobisz, a hypnotic concoction brewed from years of brotherhood and shared experience. One-swinging-guy Nathaniel Simms powers his way through the hot choppery, finding rhythms eschewing both harmonious conviction and technicality.
Having looped the U.S. numerous times already, the band will set out this October and November yet again. Overexposure, their second full length and Magic Bullet Records debut, will be in tow on both CD and LP formats.
The Conformists
http://www.theconformists.com (http://www.theconformists.com)
http://www.myspace.com/theconformists (http://www.myspace.com/theconformists)
For once it seems as though all the ??sounds like? listed in the biography are right on the nose: Don Caballero, Unsane, US Maple, Slint, and the Jesus Lizard. Yup, they??re all here. The Conformists are hardly what their name suggests, which is surely another shot of irony to the rock and roll world. There are lots of solid ideas here, many of which never seem to go anywhere. For example, once you can get past the stupid opening of the track "Black People," the latter part of the song totally kicks ass. It??s got an intense forward march approach with the guitars, sounding like they came out of the Steve Albini school of rockin?? (hey, whaddya know! Albini recorded the album!) with vocals that bellow anger and chaos and the inability to break free. On "Meredith Knezvitch," the opening line "You??re the big man now" had me waiting for one more word (dog) in the hopes that it was a tribute to one of Sean Connery??s finest works, "Finding Forester." But alas, it never came. Instead, the band continued to pound out haphazard beats, wild vocals, subtle basslines and off the wall guitar chords. There??s something going on here; something I really like but there??s also something else keeping me from totally getting into this. I like me some math rock, but this is like drunk math rock on cocaine. Strangely enough, I think I mean that as a compliment. (Kurt Morris, 54 40 or Fight!)
The Conformists have been twisting guitar music into new shapes for over ten years. Like Oxes and Shellac they take something pretty inaccessible and make it somewhat less inaccessible.
Three Hundred is an angular, abstract mess that will put off three times as many people that will love it. It is an album that will frustrate as many people as it pleases. In fact it would be a frustrating album even for those it pleases. The Conformists no doubt themselves take great pleasure in this. They are thoroughly non-conformist in their approach to laying out their post-rock grooves.
Despite the band??s bizarre attempts to sabotage their own record Three Hundred is just about successful. They just about avoid novelty rocking. There are moments of playful self-indulgence and moments of pointless self-indulgence. How much is pretension and how much is pissing around is hard to discern at times. This is something else that probably brings a smile to the faces of these weirdoes.
Guitar, bass, drums and the odd vocals are all used as weapons to confuse the listener. They take you down dark, dank paths and up febrile, enchanting trails. The abrasive, staccato "Are These Flowers" dares to teach Shellac a lesson in musical misanthropy. It is both harsh and yet strangely alluring. The epic "You??re Welcome" wanders about intensely looking for trouble. Guitars bristle with an almost tangible tension. "Tax Deduction" is a prickly affair reminiscent of Slint at their most eerily wiry and passive-aggressive.
"Black People" has a great title but starts off with an endless series of climaxes before launching into a muscular piece of rocking post-hardcore. The smart arse likes of "Stairway To Heaven" and "Laundry Hepburn" are fun for a few listens but are too slight and end up as essentially inane filler.
Not many people will love them but The Conformists are an endearing band if you happen to like your music difficult and filled with sarcasm. (Nadeem Ali, New-Noise.net)
Find out more about the Conformists here: http://www.riverfronttimes.com/Issues/2000-07-12/music/music.html (http://www.riverfronttimes.com/Issues/2000-07-12/music/music.html)
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Clavius Productions presents the first New American Folk Hero DC showcase:
Wednesday, August 15
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9pm, 21+
Kohoutek Dashin Gassoudan (Music Fellowship/Sockets, all percussion set!)
Mike Tamburo (Music Fellowship, solo experimental guitar/hammered dulcimer from Pittsburgh)
Tusk Lord (New American Folk Hero, solo experimental folk/psych from Pittsburgh)
The Cutest Puppy in the World (New American Folk Hero/Sockets, DC improv psych duo)
Kohoutek Dashin Gassoudan
http://www.claviusproductions.org/kohoutek/index.html (http://www.claviusproductions.org/kohoutek/index.html)
Improvised psychedelia ranging from atonal noise to delicate melodies, with a keen focus on spontaneous composition, inspired by the likes of Can/Amon Duul 2/Krautrock, Acid Mothers Temple/Ghost/Japanese psych, Bardo Pond, Dead C, Skullflower, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Sun Ra/Art Ensemble/free jazz, Sonic Youth, MBV/shoegaze, drone, doom/sludge metal, etc. Textures and mood over technical proficiency.
For this set, Kohoutek will be strictly percussion-based, with all sounds electronically manipulated via contact mics, filters, and pedals, somewhat akin to the solo percussion experiments of Tony Oxley, Paul Lytton, and Henry Cow's Chris Cutler.
Mike Tamburo
http://www.miketamburo.com/ (http://www.miketamburo.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/miketamburo (http://www.myspace.com/miketamburo)
Hello, I was born on March 30, 1977 in New Kensington, PA. When I was around 15 months old I was diagnosed with Otitis Media. My ears had filled with fluid and I was unable to hear correctly for several months. I had surgery and was sent to ear specialists that introduced me to the world of test tones and perceptual challenges.
Music has always been a part of my life. My father played guitar and sang me Beatles songs and sometimes his own self penned songs when I was young. My Grandmother and Aunt also played piano and sang Italian influenced songs. They all seemed happiest or at least at peace when they were playing music. I guess perhaps through imitation I decided I wanted to play music as well. For as long as I can remember I was playing something, hitting something, making some kind of noise. I first started out playing chord organ and toy xylophone. I can still remember holding out long tones on the chord organ. I remember that I loved to just hold down the chord buttons for as long as I could. Oddly enough one of my first musical performances was for Ralph Nader. I was probably around 5. My mother was doing a video interview with him. I was on the floor underneath them banging on my toy xylophone. I doubt he was impressed. In school I took up clarinet and played with the school band. At the time I hated it, but now looking back I realize that I learned the fundamentals of music on a B Flat clarinet.
Aside from various art projects I took up, I don't remember ever wanting to do much other than just being in a band. I started my first one when I was 13 or 14. I met some local kids that were playing together. I ended up singing for them. We were called Lurch. A very strange, I guess emo-type, band that included a bass player with a hunchback. This went on for a few years, until guitarist Chris Pecoraro and I decided we wanted to be a little freer and more experimental. I was still singing and I took up drums. Chris still played the guitar. This became Eskimo 88. We did this for the rest of our high school careers. We recorded and released to cassettes Open Your Ears and Hear a Sound and Inside Outside.
In 1995 I went away to Edinboro University. Instead of going to class I spent all of my time reading and writing music. I decided to try to learn the guitar. I made over 200 recordings of myself trying to learn the guitar. I was reading as many books on 20th century composition that I could find and then after trying to figure out what it all meant, I tried to apply it to guitar.
I dropped out of school at the end of the semester. I came back to Pittsburgh and started playing with Ken Camden and Brian Camphire. This was the start of Meisha. Shortly after Brian left, Pete Spynda joined. We recorded several times and released Meisha, Meisha Returns, Meisha Forever, The First Lessons in New Era Time: The Universal Orchestra of Pituitary Knowledge Sing Om to the Disturbed Onlookers, Who were Meisha and Robin Anyway?, The Fourth Lesson In New Era Time: The Republic of Meisha, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, Meisha Machine Music, and A Celebration of Life.
I returned to Edinboro University to study and make films. While there Pete Spynda and I formed Arco Flute Foundation with Matt McDowell, Rob Dingman and Jeff Komara. We recorded and released The Second Lesson in New Era Time Exploring the Possibilities of New Wave Villains; And What of Boy?, The Third Lesson in New Era Time: Running Slow-Motion Marathons With Purple Rejoice; Who Killed the Party House?, Everything After The Bomb Is Sci-Fi, Everything After Everything Is The Bomb Is Sci-Fi, I Ate Tony Conrad's Pierogies, The Fifth Lesson in New Era Time: The Unconsciousness of Yukon Steve. We also created a new system of time that was 3 hours and 14 minutes behind Eastern Standard Time.
Both bands did several tours and imploded leaving the shattered ashes for all to see. I now play alone and am always recording, painting, making films and video, listening to music, studying Enthobotany, thinking or watching T.V.
Tusk Lord
http://www.myspace.com/tusklord (http://www.myspace.com/tusklord)
Tusk Lord is the recording vehicle of New Kensington, PA native Mike Kasunic, and the perfectly titled Familiar Trails is the first widely available release I??ve heard under the name to date. Coming to us courtesy of Mike Tamburo??s New American Folk Hero, Kasunic fits in well among the eclectic roster of experimental noise and primitive sound artists that NAFH has come to exemplify. Like label owner Tamburo, Kasunic combines distortion and drone with rustling acoustic ragas that prove highly worthy of your time if enraptured by the current (free) folk renaissance and the new noise scene at the same time.
Opener ??Sword? slices through the ether on ferocious electric currents that gracefully give way to the delicate raga of ??Grassy Summit? and the mind-cleansing medieval vibe of ??Wayfarer.? ??Cold Air? spreads out a bit longer on the glistening lo-fi currents of a post-industrial waterfall, while longer tracks like ??No More Sunrise? and ??Sky Burial? conjure moods of foreboding and solemnity respectively.
While it could be argued that Tusk Lord isn??t doing anything particularly innovative in the free-primitive-whatever-the-heck landscape, the one man ensemble has a voice and a perspective that demands attention from anyone with even a modicum of interest in such things. [iFamiliar Trails? is a solid journey through primitive folk noise abstraction, plus an excellent opening salvo in what looks to be a promising, unfolding musical journey. Very nice. 8/10. (Lee Jackson, Foxy Digitalis)
"Though Tusk Lord began as a continuation with Mike Kasunic's grimy, ghastly work as part of the duo Slices, he's more recently exited the grimy underground tunnels that birthed the dark and foreboding work of his self-titled debut, and wandered into new realms. Slices, a band of both ear-searing electronic squall and massive guitar/drums plodding thunder, dissolved just as they entered a new phase of existence. And while the Tusk Lord moniker and Kasunic's solo work were birthed during Slices' short lifespan, it was after the duo were no more that Tusk Lord became Kasunic's main vehicle, and the receptacle for the bevy of ideas that Kasunic so eagerly soaked up from various corners of the musical spectrum. Tusk Lord's self-titled debut CD-r is an album heavy on inner ear torture and ugly sounds, though not without signs of the about face that Kasunic was soon to make. Familiar Trails finds Tusk Lord in a decidedly different mode, making largely acoustic music in a more meditative, mildly psychedelic manner. The sun-speckled tracks that make up the disc may not boast the forceful impact of Kasunic's earlier work, but Familiar Trails finds Tusk Lord in perhaps his most confident delivery yet. This is the music of unexplored forests, clouds gathering on the horizon, and rocky foothill paths, all viewed through a filter that lends an unnatural veneer to the terrain. It's music of the earth, imperfect and unpolished, and all the more beautiful for it." (Adam Strohm)
The Cutest Puppy in the World
http://www.questionthetruth.com/noise/cutestpuppy/ (http://www.questionthetruth.com/noise/cutestpuppy/)
http://www.myspace.com/thecutestpuppyintheworld (http://www.myspace.com/thecutestpuppyintheworld)
The Cutest Puppy in the World is Bryan Rhodes (of Baltimore) and Layne Garrett (of Washington, DC). We explore emergent forms, extremes of saturated and empty space, scorched remnants of the familiar. We play electric piano, analog synthesizer, combo organ, guitars, found-object percussion, thumb piano, bass clarinet, styrofoam, whatever is within reach. Our music is all improvised.
Since the summer of 2005, we have performed extensively in DC and the mid-Atlantic region. Highlights include: creating improvised soundtracks for experimental films by DC artists Heather Levy, Christopher Lynn, and Jay Rees; several appearances at the Electric Possible experimental music showcase at George Washington University; the 2005 Sonic Circuits Festival in DC; and a 2-hour pyrotechnic-enhanced set in the middle of the night at Soundquilt Music Festival last summer. We've had the pleasure to play alongside a number of spectacular musicians, including: Jack Wright, Reuben Radding, Andrew Drury, Nate Wooley, Mazen Kerbaj, Mike Bullock, Vic Rawlings, Joseph Hammer, Sayo Mitsuishi, Michael Thomas Jackson, Hans Buetow, Ben Hall, John Dierker, Matt Weston, Charalambides, Volcano the Bear, Kohoutek, Na, Green Milk from the Planet Orange, Whelp, Insect Factory, Big Cats, Zach Mason, Tone Ghosting, WZT Hearts, Echolalia, Piasa, Mass Movement of the Moth, Slim Castle, Cash Slave Clique, FFFFs, etc!
In 2005, we self-released a CD-R entitled ::shut in the basement::. It made free103point9's Top 150 of 2005. Sockets put out Finfolk in early 2006, with cover art by Joseph Mills. The record received critical praise from Terrascope, Fakejazz, and Noiseweek, among others. Apotrope is due out in April on New American Folk Hero.
"What fundamentally seems to set The Cutest Puppy so far apart from the larger portion of the experimental scene is that for all their variations and stylistic diversity, they still seem very much concerned with the making of music, with all its robustly humanistic implications....The Cutest Puppy allows their pieces to flow together organically, taking in melody and discord in whatever quantities that might instinctually seem to be right....through their unpretentious, wildly humanistic ministrations on this release [FINFOLK], The Cutest Puppy in the World does succeed in underscoring some of the impressive potential that experimental music regularly fails to live up to. This record demonstrates in brilliantly unassuming terms that experimental music can not only exist without all its intellectual poses, but can also beat and shake with all the delicate passion and warmth of a heart and a soul." (Germ Ross, ArtNoise)
"The DC-Baltimore duo sound like the soundtrack to a soap opera by David Lynch." (Bob Massey, Washington Post Express)
"[The Cutest Puppy in the World's] Shut in the Basement is a walk through a macabre circus sideshow, each booth revealing another bizarre character, another dark vision that laughs with joyful madness." (The Ptolemaic Terrascope online)
"Cutest Puppy in the World's songs are like Calder mobiles, made of wire, string, and dense, sweet-smelling wood." (Molars)
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Roughly how late will the Religious Knives/Ultimate Vag show go? 1-ish?
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that's about right. i doubt any of the four sets will be longer than 35 minutes, except for maybe the religious knives.
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Four shows in a row this weekend...
Thursday, August 16
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, doors at 9pm, 21+
Caution Curves (DC electro-acoustic improv ensemble)
Capillary Action (Philly instrumental experimental genre-hopping prog-psych)
Zdrastvootie (Holy Mountain, prog weirdness from CA)
Caution Curves
http://www.thecautioncurves.org (http://www.thecautioncurves.org)
A cosy electro acoustic combo comprising Amanda Huron, drums and percussion, Tristana Fiscella, vocals and guitar, and Rebecca Mills on her laptop, hailing from Washington DC, who's music is refreshingly nice (as opposed to nasty).
"Lemons" begins with a yawning sleepy start from vocalist Tristana Fiscella...something about liking lemons?
A slightly neurotic potpourri of naive noises...the music flittering about dangerously like moths round a candle, but hanging together on thin threads. A change comes half way through as Ms Fiscella tries desperately to stay awake as she sings some "proper verses" over simple, understated drums.
On "Leslie", a naïve ambling clattering of drums, percussion and twangy guitar floats along nicely. The sun is out, it's spring, and squirrels hop from branch to twig, until after a deep breath, a moaning and a wailing hails drums building and falling, against a feathery warm duvet of laptop gurgling. The track sinks into colder regions, the sun is obscured by dark clouds and guttural words can be made out as bassy low bit drones fill out the space?as the voice soars, we quiet down to almost nothing as Tristana pleads, please please please please, please Leslie come home!
Maybe it's the sound of Tristana Fiscella's voice or the lemony nature of the first track, but this awakens something in my severely damaged memory and, on hands and knees I finger my way along my vinyl shelf until I dust off Danielle Dax, and more specifically her early work in the Lemon Kittens (hence the lemons). This was a pleasant reminder of the lovely Ms Dax, and the observation that experimentation when in feminine hands is simply and wonderfully NON-po-faced and refreshingly UN-nerdy!
And there is something feminine and charming about The Caution Curves, that is pastoral and free. The warmness of the laptop sounds that fill the air are delightful, the voice is improvised and happily carefree and unselfconscious. The drums although nicely recorded, are verging on the amateur, and it takes a while for me to decide whether I like them like this or whether someone needs a few lessons?but finally I decide that I not only like them like this, I love them like this...don't change?please?
As my favourite German improvisers, Can once said? I want more? (furthernoise.org)
Capillary Action
http://www.capillaryaction.net/ (http://www.capillaryaction.net/)
For all intents and purposes, Capillary Action is Philadelphia native and Oberlin College junior Jonathan Pfeffer accompanied live by keyboardist Sam Krulewitch, drummer Ricardo Lagomasino, and bassist Spencer Russell.
The music is hard to describe in simple terms: on Capillary Action's 2004 debut, Fragments (Pangaea Recordings), Pfeffer demonstrated an uncanny ability to dip into everything from melodic death metal rave-ups, fractured no wave-inspired crescendos, Latin rhythms, video game music, lazy alt-country pop, lounge jazz, new wave synths, and mathy melodies -- sometimes all within the same song.
But on Capillary Action's sophomore effort, Cannibal Impulses (Pangaea Recordings), Pfeffer discards the eclectic math rock stylings of Fragments for something completely fresh. Incorporating influences ranging from the meticulous nature of early 20th century classical and the satisfying crunch of chip tunes music to the insistent melodies of Javanese Gamelan and the heavily orchestrated soundscapes of Japanese noise artists, Cannibal Impulses is a harsh and challenging expedition into Jonathan Pfeffer's warped psyche.
"Fragments is a nifty guitar record that plays well with different moods and feels, making for a cohesive whole that flows from track to track in an almost suite-like fashion. It's an assured debut, and Pfeffer is a clearly talented musician who bears watching to see where he'll take his craft." (Joe Tangari, Pitchfork Media, #46 on Joe Tangari's Best of 2005 List)
"It's impressive that Pfeffer managed to make an instrumental guitar rock record with a lot of genre-changing and without a single style to call its own (there is no Capillary Action sound in the same way that there was a Don Caballero sound), all without ever entering jam band territory. Pfeffer's songs are compact, and they're full of unexpected changes rather than endless repetition." (Charlie Wilmoth, Dusted)
Zdrastvootie
http://www.myspace.com/zdrastvootie (http://www.myspace.com/zdrastvootie)
"Holy Mountain, the label that has so far essentially been home to only two artists, Six Organs Of Admittance, and Steven Wray Lobdell (and of course his Davis Redford Triad) has finally drawn new blood, seeking psychedelic sustanence from outside their very elite holy land. Coming soon, massive, lugubrious psych drone from OM (ex-Sleep!) but first stop, Santa Cruz, and the curiously named Zdrastvootie. The minute we threw this on, we immediately thought: Polvo plays Torch of the Mystics (the Sun City Girls classic). And we haven't really been able to come up with a more apt description. Angular guitars woven into dreamy post-rock soundscapes, occasional Greg Ginn-like psychedelic squalls, all with a very Eastern raga-like hue. Rollicking and shambolic one moment, shimmering and pastoral the next. Riffs explode into full-on rock mode but immediately decay into splattery, spare ambience. Chaotic skronk and skree implode into propulsive Krautrock mesmer. Really fucking great." (Aquarius)
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Friday, August 17
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, doors at 9pm, 21+
Religious Knives (Troubleman, mem. of Double Leopards/Mouthus/White Rock)
Thee Ultimate VAG (DC improv guitar/percussion duo, mem. of Kohoutek/To Live and Shave in L.A.)
Woods (mem. of Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice/Meneguar, Fuck It Tapes/Release the Bats)
Twilight Memories of the Three Suns (DC experimental acoustic sounds, mem. of Kohoutek/Piasa/Alzo Bozsormenyi)
Religious Knives
http://www.doubleleopards.org (http://www.doubleleopards.org)
http://www.heavytapes.com (http://www.heavytapes.com)
Religious Knives is Maya Miller, Michael Bernstein and Nate Nelson. They spend a lot of their time playing in bands like Double Leopards, White Rock, and Mouthus, and running labels like Heavy Tapes and Our Mouth. This recent incarnation of Religious Knives has been compared to Goblin and Popul Vuh, which is chill, because who wouldn't love that? Electric piano, guitar, drums, percussion, tapes, effects, and plenty of singing, moaning, and screaming all find themselves together at last in Brooklyn, New York. Come and love with them today.
The circle-jerk noise-rock scene has ensured that you've probably never heard of Religious Knives. The New York trio??consisting of members of more "popular" groups Mouthus and Double Leopards??originally issued the recordings collected on Remains on limited-edition CD-R and vinyl, and the group is more likely to mount an art-gallery installation than a conventional tour. The five instrumental tracks on Remains make an argument for Religious Knives' promotion from the avant-garde minor leagues, and if one of Paul Bowles' surrealist desert novels ever gets adapted for film, the score is already finished. From the krautrock/industrial groove of the 16-minute "Bind Them" and the muezzin-call drone of "Electricity And Air" to the Scott Walker-in-Morocco murk of "Wax & Flesh," the sonic equation is easy to figure out: East Germany meets the Middle East meets the East Coast. (Matthew Fritch)
Thee Ultimate VAG
http://www.claviusproductions.org (http://www.claviusproductions.org)
http://www.myspace.com/accidentswithmagnets (http://www.myspace.com/accidentswithmagnets)
Dreamy moonlit melodies as imagined by axeslinger Chris Grier (To Live and Shave in L.A./Sean McArdle Band/ex-Mungo Jerry) and skinpounder Scott Verrastro (Kohoutek/Insect Factory/Sequence Chair/ex-Ozark Mountain Daredevils). Setting a course for the heartland of America, this duo contructs ribald ditties derived from ancient Guatemalan ballads translated to these modern, not-so-chaste times. Bring your lambskin, earplugs, and a box of chocolates.
Woods
http://www.fuckittapes.com/woods.htm (http://www.fuckittapes.com/woods.htm)
Woods began in the woods, at the foot of Bear Mountain. In the earliest days it was a collaborative improvisational group with two core members and several guests, known as "woodsists." Shortly thereafter, Jeremy Earl and Christian DeRoeck emerged from the woods, dusted themselves off, and began to walk upright. The two woodsists immersed themselves in human culture, learned to craft a melody, to wield a tambourine, to construct a crude phonograph from spare bicycle parts. They learned the value of a cassette. Jeremy and Christian returned to the woods and shared their newfound knowledge with the other woodsists. The result was Woods, songs and improvisations by outsiders, inspired by the human experience.
"Spawn of the holy Meneguar are The Woods and their completely rad debut. Originally put out on The Woods' own Jeremy Earl's Fuck It Tapes label as a double c20 near the end of '05, Release the Bats has now done it up as a proper CD. Sometimes, the four short sides seem like an advantage, giving the short album a distinct pacing and more proper feel but others I just feel like I'm flipping stuff over too much too often. The sound quality here sucks but the scratchy cassettes fit this band perfectly. I can only hope that the Release the Bats CD doesn't clean it up a terrible amount. The album founded mostly in acoustic guitar-led folkiness with the duo laying down massive vocal hook after massive vocal hook in reedy falsetto but the influence of Fuck It is evident: the pop songs are visited frequently by noise, tape trickery, massive psych guitar, retarded classic rock soloing, glockenspiel and, on one occasion, larynx-ruining hardcore vocals. The lyrics here deal with the oft-trodden grounds of love and loss but the boys' singing voices give them an abstract feel; as if you have no idea what they're singing about even though you know exactly what's going down. All the songs here have any extremely unified feel, making discussing them individually useless. An album doesn't have to be varied to be great. Didn't Loveless teach you that?" (Fakejazz)
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Clavius Productions presents the debut of Not Bullshit, a DJ night -- first Mondays at the Velvet Lounge -- for people who hate DJ nights. And to show you we're not full of shit, we are celebrating with live sets by a couple of kickass noise-rock bands and a couple of brain-raping noise acts. No spinning during music sets allowed!
Saturday, August 18
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9pm, 21+
Catacombs of Rome (garagy synth-punk from Milwaukee, in the vein of Drive Like Jehu/Devo/Silver Apples/Chrome/Brainiac)
Tenement (Wisconsin punk rock!)
Byron House (noisy scum-rock duo from Tampa FL)
Oubliette (solo analog noise/tape loops from GA)
Haves and Thirds (five-minute walkman-and-guitar set, from Tampa FL)
plus DJ sets by members of Kohoutek and The Points!
Catacombs of Rome
http://www.myspace.com/catacombsofrome (http://www.myspace.com/catacombsofrome)
Sounds like: If Devo smoked a J laced with katnip, then performed a Herniorraphy on an Arena Rock band (such as .38 Special). Maybe throw a conjoined twin or two in there and you have our sound.
About: We don't take ourselves too seriously, which has helped us play music together for 5 years. We sweat a lot. We released a split EP with Jackalope in March of 2006 called "Chapter 1: Talking On the Telephone." We write songs about people. Bill Hicks saved our lives, so did Hot Snakes. The Jerk is the best movie ever made. We tend to watch the show Cops a little too much. We'll play in your living room if you want us to.
Byron House
http://www.cephiastreat.com/ (http://www.cephiastreat.com/)
A two-piece guitar/vocals/drums noisy scum-rock band. Have been playing for the past five years. Performances include self-induced hysteria, irrational momentum and "crazy eyes". Based out of Tampa, Florida.
Oubliette
http://www.myspace.com/0ubliette (http://www.myspace.com/0ubliette)
http://www.obelisksounds.hostrocket.com (http://www.obelisksounds.hostrocket.com)
Dude from the back woods of Clyo, Georgia. He plays broken analog equipment and hand-sliced tape loops. He usually enjoys playing with his upper torso covered in barbed wire.
Haves and Thirds
One man band who performs with an old '80s hood and aviator sunglasses over his face to build the mystery. Plays the most blissed-out, body-moving balm music you've heard in just five minutes. Just a walkman and a guitar. Tampa, Florida.
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Sunday, August 19
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9pm, 21+
Jack Wright (improv solo sax from PA)
Safe (DC analog electronics/tapes/shortwave radio duo)
Scott Allison (of Kohoutek, solo electronics/guitar textures/field recordings)
Jack Wright
http://www.springgardenmusic.com/jackbio.html (http://www.springgardenmusic.com/jackbio.html)
Over the past twenty-five years Jack Wright has been a bold saxophonist, as well as an influential musical personality. Either on tour or organizing the next one, he has played in virtually every venue available to experimental improvised music in the US, and many in Europe as well. In 1982 he created Spring Garden Music as a vehicle for organizing an improvisational music community, with a home base at his house in Philadelphia, now a residence for improvisers. He has been called the Johnny Appleseed of free improvisation for his encouragement to young players. As a musical explorer as well, his music passes through radical shifts of style and approach from one year to the next, yet always somehow identifiable as his own. These days he is playing mostly alto and soprano saxophones, in every possible direction, sometimes even recognizable as such. He lives in Easton, which enables him to commute easily to NYC and Phila. He is also increasingly active in Europe, touring both sides of the Atlantic with European musicians.
The Washington Post once allowed this to be printed: "In the rarefied, underground world of experimental free improvisation, saxophonist Jack Wright is king." And a German publication, Bad Alchemy, had this to say of his solo: "Wright does not make music, he embodies it, he transforms it with a naiveté of another order. It grows into a sound river, he is part of the diaphragm through which the heterogeneous whispers."
Jack has over sixty partners around the US and in Europe with whom he plays on his travels and records. His most recent tours have been with Fabrizio Spera and Alberto Braida in Italy; with Agnes Palier and Olivier Toutlemond in France, Switzerland and Germany, with Michael Johnsen and Sebastien Cirotteau in Europe; with French soprano sax player Michel Doneda and percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani in Japan, France and the US; Carol Genetti, sound vocalist of Chicago, and Jon Mueller, percussionist of Milwaukee; cellist Bob Marsh of the Bay area; Nate Wooley, trumpet, of NYC in Europe; Michael Griener percussion and Sabine Vogel flute of Berlin; Reuben Radding, NYC bassist; and Phil Durrant, English laptop musician.
Safe
The new improvisational collaboration of Tyler Higgins and Dave Vosh. Employing assorted electro-acoustic devices and modular synthesizer, they focus on the sound emitted by machines, sounds derived from radio and slowly evolving noise. Dave has been experimenting with electro-noise music since the early `70s and this project with Tyler is among the first things he`s done since escaping the basement last year. Tyler has been creatively misusing technology alongside other musical pursuits since high school, recently focusing on very direct ways of producing and manipulating sound.
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JUST ANNOUNCED! Sunday 9/2 @ Velvet Lounge:
Eugene Chadbourne & Jimmy Carl Black (original Mothers of Invention member, the Indian of the group!)
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Clavius Productions presents:
Thursday, August 23
611 Florida Ave NW
http://www.claviusproductions.org (http://www.claviusproductions.org)
8pm, $5 suggested donation
202-360-9739 for info
BYOW!
Blues Control (Holy Mountain, guitar/synths psych duo from NYC, mem. of the SB/Watersports)
Pink Reason (new Siltbreeze!, lo-fi trashy garage/psych from Columbus via Green Bay)
Little Claw (Ecstatic Peace, two guitars/drums psych trio from Detroit)
Damian Languell (solo experiments by mem. of Kohoutek/Piasa/Twilight Memories of the Three Sons/Siberia)
Blues Control
http://www.holymountain.com/bluescontrol.html (http://www.holymountain.com/bluescontrol.html)
http://www.myspace.com/bluescontrol (http://www.myspace.com/bluescontrol)
"The duo of Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse have somehow found a hazy but powerful common musical thread between Conrad Schnitzler's jabbering electronic workouts, the gauze of Locust Abortion Technician-era Butthole Surfers, and the more unicorn-saddling moments of Jan Hammer. Or perhaps in fact they are driving off in the car piloted by mid-period ZZ Top." (Brian Turner, WFMU)
"Duo guitar/tapes and harmonica/piano jams from Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse that generate celestial, watery progressive/psych stuns and beautiful puffs of minimal melody while drums churn like flinty boulders wrestling in a deep bucket. Some of the piano sounds a little like Michael Rother's Neu work, and there's a nice lost/teutonic feel to much of this muzzy beauty." (Volcanic Tongue)
Pink Reason
http://www.myspace.com/secondculture (http://www.myspace.com/secondculture)
Pink Reason is always Kevin DeBroux and practically never anyone else. The self-released Pink Reason debut seven-inch from 2006 was an itch of such beguiling psychic ache that all the inhabitants of Siltbreeze Island scratched it until they bled. On this first full length, the (former) resident of Green Bay, Wisconsin, continues to ooze muzzy melancholia by the bucket, ably and formidably clearing house in Sanguine Manor, whose previous tenants include Royal Trux, The Jacobites, Phantom Payne, Black Vial, and other marginal inhabitants whose sticky fingers glimmer in stoned adulation.
Dominated by creeping synths, stark strums and rickety percussive splats that complement De Broux's heartscraping vocal catharsis, Cleaning The Mirror journeys far beyond any known perspective, practically insinuating an alternate otherworld where Tim Buckley's Lorca and Jandek's Ready For The House have been hybridized into a ripe-for-plucking masterpiece. Or, shunning hyperbole in favor of acronym, Pink Reason's modern day DIY is very FYI that you should check out PDQ.
Look for Pink Reason live via land, sea and air throughout 2007.
Check out this interview:
http://www.smashintransistors.homestead.com/murkshuffler.html (http://www.smashintransistors.homestead.com/murkshuffler.html)
Little Claw
http://www.myspace.com/littleclaw (http://www.myspace.com/littleclaw)
This eight-song Little Claw debut is the kind of thing every town needs; noise and scree for ADD-addled kids and people too oblivious to pay attention to three-minute pop. It's the kind of shit that's resurfaced in indie music of late, where you spray-paint your own record sleeves and play shows whenever and wherever for those in need.
With a debt to Sonic Youth's feminine side, Kylin plays guitar like it's her first time, and she sings as if she's in full amazement of her voice. She's full of the kind of childish abandon where every little squeak pulsing out of the amp or the vocal mic is only there to make her face beam. Spindly guitar lines tip-toe in the air while underneath primitive drumming sounds like long lost hunting calls sent out by ancient warriors. With the sax wailing on "Shoplifting Cart," it's easy to imagine the songs by this trio being recorded in New York circa 1980, not Detroit circa 2005. Coupled with bands like the Genders, Little Claw is scratching that certain No Wave itch that's been lingering in Detroit. Thank God. (Detroit MetroTimes)
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Yeah, so there's a bunch of good shows going on in town tonight. I advise going to see Spectrum (Spacemen 3's Sonic Boom!), with The Antiques opening (and myself on drums). Sonic Boom rarely plays DC, so this is your chance to get your Spacemen 3 freakout on. If $10 is too much, there's a good show at the Velvet Lounge with excellent Bay Area bands Replicator and Rahdunes. Here's the info:
TONIGHT!
Black Cat
1811 14th St NW WDC
http://www.blackcatdc.com (http://www.blackcatdc.com)
$10, doors at 9pm, all ages
Spectrum (ex-Spacemen 3)
The Antiques (DC black jangle post-funk, Safranin Sound)
Spectrum
http://www.sonic-boom.info (http://www.sonic-boom.info)
When Sonic Boom aka Pete Kember formed Spacemen 3 (with J. Spaceman of Spiritualized fame) back in the mid-80s, he was ahead of his time. When he went on to form his prolific band Spectrum in the 90s, he was so far out there that it became apparent that time had no meaning for this dude. Kember's exploration of astral-dust ballads, minimalist rock, and songs that toggle between celestial bliss and swarming menace continues with the recent completion of a new Spectrum album. Come out to this show to hear the new stuff plus old favorites from Spacemen 3 and E.A.R. Sonic Boom may be out there, but hey, what genius isn't?
There are few people, except maybe the late Ol?? Dirty Bastard, who??d be able to embrace a stage name like ??Sonic Boom? with a straight face. Then again, since Pete Kember is usually hiding behind a pair of black shades, we??ll never know how seriously he actually takes himself. What isn??t up for debate is his musical pedigree, particularly his membership in the pioneering ??80s drone band Spacemen 3. After Spacemen 3 split in 1991, Kember was left to his own psychedelic devices, collaborating with shoegazer Kevin Shields on the ambitious ambient offshoot Experimental Audio Research, otherwise known as E.A.R. But Kember is clearly more invested in Spectrum, which continues Spacemen 3??s tradition of churning out space jams to accompany acid-fueled journeys into inner space while still flirting with pop. Over the last decade and a half, Spectrum??s released a slew of singles and EPs as well as three studio albums and two extensive live chronicles. This year, Kember is expected to continue making music to take drugs to by releasing a new studio album. Its working title: On the Wings of Mercury. Spectrum performs with the Antiques at 9 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 26, at the Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. $10. (202) 667-7960. (Maggie Serota, Washington City Paper)
The Antiques
http://www.theantiques.org (http://www.theantiques.org)
http://www.safraninsound.com (http://www.safraninsound.com)
If you've been searching for the right sound to accompany your all-black attire and the cloud of gloom that follows you around, look only to DC's The Antiques. Lock yourself in your room and listen to "Closed Curtains". The dark baritone of the male vocals, followed by the scathing and piercing female part, gets magnified by the accompanying organ, making for a sadistic breakup song to cry alone under the sheets to with the lights off and the stereo cranked to 11. Where the organ reaches into the internal depths of despair, the reverb of the guitar in "Tied To Nowhere" provides a reprieve. Still despondent, but less "the sky is falling" and more "let's tear it down."
Not one to be victimized throughout, singer Greg Svitil stands up on "You're Everything I Don't Need" and walks away from someone who is "everything I don't need and nothing I can use." The bright and jangly guitar of "You're An Act That Can't Be Followed" brightly underscores the story of a would-be suitor who throws himself at the object of his desire, only to be ignored. This is followed by the murky "Brown Balloons", charged by drums and bass and phased guitars. Echo and reverb effect dilute the vocals of this almost-love song.
Stepping wildly outside the confines of gloom-pop on "Bedsit Bones", the guitars funk up a hook reminiscent of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall Pt. II", opening up the blinds just a bit and letting the sunshine in.
Sewn With Stitches is deeply cynical, rife with self-loathing, forlorn, and absolutely quaking with unrequited love. Fortunately for the Antiques, if found that love would be their demise. They'll have to go on suffering to bring more of their shoegazing, hopeless-yet-glimmering pop." (Any Given Tuesday)
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TONIGHT!
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$7, doors at 9pm, 21+
Sean McArdle (DC stark folk/psych-rock)
Replicator (Oakland angular noise-rock a la Jesus Lizard/Devo/Six Finger Satellite/Shellac/Drive Like Jehu, new record produced by Unwound's Vern Rumsey)
Rahdunes (San Francisco psych guitar/drums duo)
Lakes (Australia psych)
Sean McArdle
http://www.seanmcardle.com/ (http://www.seanmcardle.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/seanmcardle (http://www.myspace.com/seanmcardle)
Sean Terrence McArdle was born a Gemini in Oakland CA Kaiser hospital on June 3, 1976. He has done many things in his life, including but not limited to accidentally putting thirty earwigs in his mouth at once. He now resides in Washington, DC where he is an up and coming DC songwriter. With insightful lyrics backed by meticulous and dynamic arrangments, he sings sparse insomniac ballads, and has been described by the Washington Post Express as "gentle, queer and quirky". DCist called him "sweet". Some would say the content of his lyrics suggest a darker sensibility.
Replicator
http://www.replicator5000.com (http://www.replicator5000.com)
http://www.myspace.com/replicator (http://www.myspace.com/replicator)
live review from Phoenix New Times:
It??s always a shaky proposition when nerds form rock bands: sometimes you get ??Columbian Necktie,? and sometimes you get ??Particle Man.? It??s just the luck of the draw. Fortunately for you, me, and Dupree, Replicator (from Oakland CA) seems to be of the former variety. Yes, they write songs about computers, time travel and nanotechnology, with over-the-top titles like ??Delicious Fornicake,? ??Assloads of Unrespect,? and ??Login with my Fist,? but they also throw their goddamn weight into the aggro-chunk destructo-thing. Aggressive, self-aware vocals, lots of noise and feedback, with a hard and heavy rhythm section. The drummer??s an animal, and their bass sound had a nice rounded heft. ??Devo via Fugazi!? I thought sensationally. They had a good sense of theatrics, knowing just when to thrash around and just when to drop everything and stare straight ahead in machine-like M. Mothersbaugh fashion, and guitar player Conan Neutron jumps on tables and tips over chairs and generally makes trouble. (I talked to him later and he enthused about Chrome, the Melvins, Black Sabbath, the Jesus Lizard, Bon-Scott era AC/DC and I nodded to the cosmic rhythm.)
Rahdunes
http://www.myspace.com/mindzoo666 (http://www.myspace.com/mindzoo666)
Prophets of the impending music apocolypse are multiplying like bunny rabbits; among them my pick of the week is San Francisco duo RAHDUNES. If the violently abrasive are the ones howling fire and brimstone from the mass-release pulpit, then RAHDUNES are meditating in a monastery with a few cd-r gospels. Within them are slow, reflective builds, eerie drones, hypnotic throbs, vague tribal rhythms and enough ragged electricity to remind us again that this is indeed a vision of the post-music world. It's also a blissful gray you can get behind. (Michael Byrne)
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Monday, August 27
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$7, doors at 9pm, 21+
Facemat (DC improv noise)
Double Muslims (Knoxville experimental guitar/cello/sax/drums quartet)
Stymphalian Birds & White Stags (DC solo bass drones and distortion a la Thrones)
Double Muslims
http://www.doublemuslims.com (http://www.doublemuslims.com)
"Great instrumental outfit from Knoxville, Tennessee. On their debut 7" they do something like a hybridization of Sun City Girls and
Minutemen (at their most Beefhearty). Which is not to say that all the music occurs at quite that level, but the intent is certainly there and the delivery is not far behind." (Byron Coley, The Wire)
listen to them here:
www.doublemuslims.com/twicebutonce.mp3 (http://www.doublemuslims.com/twicebutonce.mp3)
www.doublemuslims.com/errors.mp3 (http://www.doublemuslims.com/errors.mp3)
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Wednesday, August 29
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
$7, doors at 9pm, 21+
Plums (DC instrumental post-rock/psych, mem. of Hat City Intuitive)
Mass Shivers (Chicago post-punk/psych trio)
True Womanhood (DC improv psych)
Mass Shivers
http://www.massshivers.com/ (http://www.massshivers.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/massshivers (http://www.myspace.com/massshivers)
Guitarist Brett Sova and bassist Andy Johnson probably don??t tell a whole lot of drummer jokes in the Mass Shivers tour van. If they did, they might piss off drummer Sean Wilke, and then the band would be completely screwed. Wilke??s propulsive, tom-heavy beats form the basis for most of the songs on Ecstatic Eyes Glow Glossy, the Chicago trio??s second full-length. On tracks such as ??Quinine Peninsula Pt. 2,? the band is content to let Wilke ride out the same beat for almost three minutes, with only some squelching feedback and droning vocals to accompany it. Sova and Johnson provide plenty of Captain Beefheartesque riffs throughout the record, but Mass Shivers is all about percussion -?? they even use a second drummer for live shows in their hometown. Mass Shivers performs with the Plums and True Womanhood at 9 p.m. at the Velvet Lounge, 915 U St. NW. $7. (202) 462-3213. (Matt Borlik, Washington City Paper)
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Sunday 9/2 @ Velvet Lounge: Eugene Chadbourne & Jimmy Carl Black (of the original Mothers of Invention!)/PRV Trio (mem. of Kohoutek/The Bang/Janel & Anthony/Contact Contact)/Max Ochs (legendary fingerpicker on the first Takoma Records comp in 1967)
$10, doors at 9pm
Monday 9/3 @ Velvet Lounge: Not Bullshit DJ night -- come to the Velvet to hear members of The Points and Kohoutek play psych, garage, noise, and whatever they feel like
Tuesday 9/4 @ Velvet Lounge: Cakes of Light (mem. of George Steeltoe Ensemble, solo folk/psych)/Hairizona (DC improv noise-rock) $7, doors at 9pm
Thursday 9/6 @ Velvet Lounge: Wretched (mem. of Earthride, MD doom)/Devil to Pay (Indianapolis doom metal)/Black Canary $7, doors at 9pm
Friday 9/7 to Sunday 9/23: SONIC CIRCUITS DC 2007!
http://dc-soniccircuits.org/2007/ (http://dc-soniccircuits.org/2007/)
Stay tuned for last-minute additions and announcements, and be sure to check the Velvet Lounge website as we are adding many great shows every day.
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I highly recommend Replicator!
Originally posted by snailhook:
If $10 is too much, there's a good show at the Velvet Lounge with excellent Bay Area bands Replicator and Rahdunes.
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The Antiques were good, despite not being able to discern any vocals from the rest of the glorious noise.
Spectrum just wasn't my thing.
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usually, you can't discern greg's vocals anyway, they are so drenched in reverb. i thought we played pretty well, though i fucked up a few times, but nobody seemed to notice. i enjoyed spectrum, but it wasn't quite as good as i was hoping it would be. i talked to sonic boom for a while after the set and he was really cool.
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Clavius Productions presents a rare visit to DC by avant-garde maverick Eugene Chadbourne and original Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black (the Indian of the group):
Sunday, September 2
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$10, doors at 9pm, 21+
Eugene Chadbourne & Jimmy Carl Black
PRV Trio (improv guitars/percussion trio, mem. of Kohoutek/Thee Ultimate VAG/The Bang/Janel & Anthony)
Max Ochs (legendary fingerpicker on first Takoma comp in 1967, played with ESP's Seventh Sons)
The Jack and Jim Show: Think 69
In 2007, Jimmy Carl Black will have his 69th birthday. Dr. Eugene Chadbourne is happy to present his best friend and musical associate in a series of performances featuring Black's favorite musical combination, The Jack and Jim Show.
Chadbourne's knowledge of Black began the first time he saw the cover of Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention, circa the second half of the '60s. Staring at the picture of Black and bandmates in a record store, the youthful Doc Chad was approached by an old woman who ran the music store. "Don't look at that record!" she warned him. "You're a nice boy."
Within a year Black's famous comment "Hi boys and girls, I'm Jimmy Carl Black and I'm the Indian of the group" had become an in-joke among teenagers in Eugene's hometown of Boulder, Colorado.
Every day when the fascistic gym coach took attendance, someone would always repeat Jimmy's comment, totally irritating the coach who had no idea what it was all about.
Dr. Chad finally met Jimmy in the early '90s when the former had a chance to invite 11 musicians of his choice to the improvisation project at the Moers Jazz Festival. When he found out Jimmy and his wife were moving to Europe, the Doc proposed they begin working as a duo, and so the Jack and Jim Show was born.
Eugene became "Jack" based on a painting Captain Beefheart had done of Jimmy Carl Black, at one point one of the drummers in Beefheart's Magic Band.
The picture was of an Indian man and a jackrabbit, Beefheart entitled it "Jack and Jim." Having already stolen alot from Beefheart, Chadbourne decided stealing this title would be allright, especially since it tied in with his lifelong love of rabbits.
The Chadbourne family allow wild rabbits to live in their backyard and the Doctor has often irritated music journalists by insisting his main aesthetic influence is Bugs Bunny.
The Jack and Jim Show has toured in Europe, the United States and Canada ever since and has released 17 CDs of which the latest is "Hearing is Believing" , to be released in March of 2007 by the Boxholder label. A series of DVDs are also coming out on the New York City based Straw Into Gold series.
In the winter of 2001 Jack and Jim invited British keyboardist and electronics player Pat Thomas to join them for a special tribute to Jimi Hendrix organized in Reggio di Emila by Walter Pratti.
The threesome hit it off very well and have done several tours since then, including the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Norway and Action 2005 in Nancy, France.
CDs featuring the trio include "Jimi II" , the double "We'll Be Together Again" and the aforementioned "Hearing is Believing."
The Jack and Jim Show play a wonderful combination of styles associated with both players, in most cases creating a transformation into something else. "Willie the Pimp" of Zappa becomes an oldstyle country blues, for example. Jazz, psychedelic rock, standards, blues, country and western, bluegrass, native American Indian music and folk rock are all part of a typical evening with Jack and Jim. Eugene plays guitar, banjo and sings. Jimmy plays drums and sings.
Eugene Chadbourne
http://www.eugenechadbourne.com/ (http://www.eugenechadbourne.com/)
A seemingly endless -- and endlessly eclectic -- series of releases made the innovative guitarist Eugene Chadbourne one of the underground community's most well-known and well-regarded eccentrics. Born January 4, 1954 in Mount Vernon, NY, Chadbourne was raised in Boulder, CO, by his mother, a refugee of the Nazi death camps. At the age of 11, the Beatles inspired him to learn guitar; later exposure to Jimi Hendrix prompted him to begin experimenting with distortion pedals and fuzzboxes. Ultimately, however, he became dissatisfied with the conventions of rock and pop, and traded in his electric guitar for an acoustic one, on which he began to learn to play bottleneck blues.
Perhaps Chadbourne's most significant formative discovery was jazz; initially drawn to John Coltrane and Roland Kirk, he later became an acolyte of the avant excursions of Derek Bailey and Anthony Braxton. Despite the huge influence music exerted over his life, however, Chadbourne first studied to become a journalist, but his career was derailed when he fled to Canada rather than fight in Vietnam; only President Jimmy Carter's declaration of amnesty for conscientious objectors allowed the vociferously left-wing Chadbourne to return to the U.S. in 1976, at which time he plunged headlong into the New York downtown music scene. After releasing his 1976 debut, Solo Acoustic Guitar, he began collaborating on purely improvisational music with the visionary saxophonist John Zorn and the acclaimed guitarist Henry Kaiser.
Quickly, Chadbourne carved out a singular style, comprised of equal parts protest music, free improvisation, and avant-garde jazz, topped off with his absurd, squeaky vocals. A complete list of Chadbourne's countless subsequent collaborations and genre workouts is far too lengthy and detailed to exhaustively document, although in the early '80s he garnered some of his first significant attention as the frontman of Shockabilly, a demented rockabilly revisionist outfit which also featured the well-known producer Kramer. Following the group's breakup, Chadbourne turned to his own idiosyncratic brand of country and folk, accurately dubbed LSD C&W on a 1987 release, the same year he joined the members of Camper Van Beethoven for a one-off covers project. In addition, he recorded with artists ranging from Fred Frith and Elliott Sharp to Evan Johns and Jimmy Carl Black, the original drummer in the Mothers of Invention; in between, he continued exploring unique styles inspired by music from the four corners of the globe, all the while issuing a seemingly innumerable string of records, most of them on his own Parachute label. (Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide)
Jimmy Carl Black
http://www.jimmycarlblack.com/ (http://www.jimmycarlblack.com/)
Jimmy Carl Black is an unusual figure in American rock music as he achieved lasting fame primarily for a single ad libbed line on the third album by the Mothers of Invention: "Hi boys and girls, I'm Jimmy Carl Black and I'm the Indian of the group." Of course there was more to it than just this line, as bandleader Frank Zappa exploited the eccentric character of this Cheyenne Indian musician, realizing that his personality would be fascinating to certain listeners and quite a departure from the usual rock stars of that day. Black also has roots as a Texan, hailing from a town on the border of that state and New Mexico. This birthplace was almost a symbolic indicator of how Black would straddle different musical geographies.
Although famous for his avant-garde work with Zappa, he is really more of a roots musician and has worked extensively in blues, Tex-Mex, and country-rock. He comes from a generation of musicians for whom working in a rock & roll band meant playing for strippers, four or five sets per night with more than one version of "Wooly Bully." All this would change in 1964 when his band the Soul Giants auditioned a young man named Frank Zappa for lead guitarist. Zappa could smell change in the wind big time and eventually suggested the band quit doing covers and let him write some songs specifically for them. The idea was to create an image of the band as the ultimate set of freaks, to cash in on the peace and love hippie era while simultaneously making fun of it, and everything else that came to mind. Zappa also envisioned himself as an avant-garde composer creating works along the lines of Edgar Varese. It was all a tall order but with the band's name changed to the Mothers of Invention and the 1965 release of the first double album in rock history, Zappa's twisted dream became a reality.
Black went from backing up bumping and grinding to playing at Royal Festival Hall in a few years, but was dumped back out on the street when Zappa decided to disband his original group of Mothers and embark on a solo career in 1970. By then Zappa and the band had released their first and only full-length commercial film, 200 Motels, in which Black was prominently featured in what came to be one of his signature songs, "Lonesome Cowboy Burt." Black and several other of the Mothers rebounded with a new band, Geronimo Black. The group's direction was less of a freak out and more rock and blues, and Black wrote several classic native American protest tunes for the band's debut album.
Black and the group were based out of California up until 1973. A shift in record company management led to the band being dumped, beginning several decades of struggle for Black as he moved around the western United States, almost always having to work at some job other than music in order to survive and support his five children. For Black being impoverished wasn't just a private matter. His former boss Zappa had recorded band meetings and arguments, inevitably about money and the lack of it, and had edited these spoken word bits into several Mothers releases. This material had an enlightening effect on many young listeners who thought all rock band members were rolling in amassed wealth and had not a care in the world, certainly not the worries that plagued middle class adults raising families.
But no matter how hard times became, Black always remained involved in some kind of musical project. From 1973-1982 Black lived in New Mexico and Texas. He performed in a group called the Lotus Family with the banjo player Jim Bowie. Other Black groups from this period were Captain Glasspack and the Magic Mufflers and Big Sonny and the Lo Boys. In 1975, Black joined the band of another avant-garde rock legend Captain Beefheart as one of a set of double drummers. He stayed with the group for less than a year, performing on the Chicago-based Soundstage television program and at the Nepworth Pop Festival in the United Kingdom. He was asked to do some guest vocals on a Zappa album in 1981, producing the off-color country song "Harder Than Your Husband." But this friendly association with Zappa ended when most of the original Mothers decided to sue for unpaid back royalties, winning the case but not allowed to discuss the outcome with the press.
In 1982 he moved to Austin, TX, a town with a promising music scene that led to some new relationships, including one with the British singer Arthur Brown, another individual attempting to survive on a few moments of '60s fame, in his case a bizarre hit single entitled "Fire." That Black and Brown would eventually combine their talents as house painters as well as musically says more about the lack of sufficiently paid musical employment in the Austin area than it does about these men's versatility. Throughout this period there had been attempts to revive the original Mothers, sans Zappa, as the Grandmothers. Most frequent partners in these ventures would be keyboardist Don Preston and reed player Bunk Gardner.
While living in Austin, Black also began a Texas-based version of the group, and began to incorporate not just senior ex-Mothers but young Zappa fanatics eager to take part in a repertory company of Zappa music alongside their hero's former sidemen. In 1991, Black and Preston were both invited to perform at the Moers Jazz Festival in a 12-piece grouping of musicians from different genres organized by guitarist Eugene Chadbourne. One year later Black had the opportunity to relocate in Europe when his wife was offered a job teaching on a military base in Vicenza, Italy. The army wasn't particularly fond of the Blacks and wanted to send them back to Texas, but they opted to stay in Europe, relocating to the Stuttgart area of Germany where, in collaboration with the Muffin records company, he began an intensive effort to expand work possibilities for the Grandmothers.
At the same time Black continued his relationship with Chadbourne. The two formed a duo named the Jack and Jim show after a painting Beefheart had done of Black with a jackrabbit. Black began getting enough work in Europe to survive as a musician, backing up a variety of blues singers in a band led by guitarist and harmonica player Rick Farrell and also appearing from 1994 onward as a guest vocalist with the British band the Muffin Men. Concentrating more on singing than drumming, Black became known as one of the best interpreters of classic Zappa and Beefheart material. Despite threats of legal action from Zappa's widow Gail, the Grandmothers have continued to increase their activity. In 2000 the band embarked on a two month tour of the United States, playing 60 shows in 66 days. Black continues in the life of a journeyman musician. "I'm famous, but I don't have a pot to piss in," he is fond of saying. The University of Liverpool Press planned to publish a biography of Black in 2002, to be written by Black and Rod Gilliard of the Muffin Men. (Eugene Chadbourne)
Max Ochs
http://www.tompkinssquare.com/max.html (http://www.tompkinssquare.com/max.html)
Max Ochs was featured on the very first Takoma Records compilation, Contemporary Guitar, Spring '67, and has since been criminally unrecorded. He was born in Baltimore, is Phil Ochs' cousin, was responsible for turning Robbie Basho on to folk music, and played in the seminal, if obscure, ESP raga band Seventh Sons. Admittedly enamored with Pete Seeger, Ochs until recently operated Annapolis' 333 Coffeehouse, where he occasionally performed. More information on Max can be found in this interview:
http://www.bayweekly.com/year04/issuexii12/lifexii12.html (http://www.bayweekly.com/year04/issuexii12/lifexii12.html)
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Monday, September 3 @ Velvet Lounge: Not Bullshit -- a DJ night for people who hate DJ nights. FREE, 9pm-2am. Come listen to members of Kohoutek and The Points and their friends spin psych, garage, noise, punk, folk, free jazz and whatever they feel like. Where else are you gonna hear some Chilean psych?
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Tuesday, September 4
Velvet Lounge
915 U ST NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9, 21+
Cakes of Light (straight-up songwriter project covered in noise and free-form improv, from NYC, Heat Retention Records)
http://www.myspace.com/cakesoflight (http://www.myspace.com/cakesoflight)
http://www.heatretentionrecords.com (http://www.heatretentionrecords.com)
Phil Duarte (of Pup Tent, solo guitar-noise and vocal excursions)
Hairizona (free improvisational psychedelic punk from the District of Columbia)
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Thursday, September 6
Velvet Lounge
915 U ST NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9, 21+
Wretched (MD doom, mem. of Earthride)
Devil to Pay (Indianapolis doom metal)
Black Canary
Devil to Pay
http://www.deviltopay.net/ (http://www.deviltopay.net/)
Formed in early 2002, Devil to Pay was conceived as the antithesis of strangulated modern rock radio. With a distinct lean towards '70s heavy metal, a love of proto-grunge, and a deep reverence for the stoner rock and doom metal underground, the band continues to torch it's own path to rock and roll glory.
Since their inception, Devil to Pay have won a Battle of the Bands, released two albums, charted on metal radio, toured the country several times, shared the stage with their heroes, and picked up numerous accolades and new friends along the way. Now knee-deep in writing mode for album number three, Devil to Pay is gearing up for the biggest year yet.
"If you dig serious characters plyin' two-ton slabbage with technical precision, then brother head Midwest." (Sleazegrinder)
It's safe to say that anyone who's landed on Peacedogman and is reading this article right now is enjoying this current resurgence of rock as much as we are. So for a band that encompasses the spirit of the new rock resurgence, look no further than Indianapolis' DEVIL TO PAY. After conquering their own local scene and receiving rave reviews for their debut album Thirty Pieces of Silver, they're back with a killer platter of plastic called Cash is King that showcases everything that rock should be: heavy, tight, dirty, dark and dangerous.
From the first track "Kill Everything", one thing is crystal clear: these guys have balls. Vocalist Steve Janiak is truly something special, and his soulful style mixed with gruff screams is a wonder to behold -- man, check out those screams in the chorus of that first song! The guitars are C-tuned but manage to steer clear of muddiness, and the perfect amount of fuzzy distortion gives them a sound that's both classic and modern at the same time. The riffs themselves reinforce the marriage of old and new, rivaling anything HELMET or FIREBALL MINISTRY could come up with. Throughout the album, the mood switches seamlessly between the upbeat fist pumpers ("Born to Rue", southern-fried "The Bottom Line") to the brooding grinders ("Shake Hands with Death", "Belial") to somewhere in between ("Swallow the Fish", "A King's Bounty") and back again. As an added bonus, there's the whole forbidding, slightly arcane feel this guys give off with song titles like "Little Horns", "Over the Coals" and "Niflheim". Still, these tight, rockin' riffs are for everyone, and bring to mind other PDM modern rock heroes like PRIESTESS, AUTOMAG or THE ILLUMINATI. The most important thing is that by the time the 1 hour and 10 minutes of this CD are up, the listener will feel that they got their money's worth, and that's all we ask for around here. So just pick this one up already, because DEVIL TO PAY is due to cash in some well deserved success sooner than later. (Peacedogman)
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And Sonic Circuits DC 2007's opening weekend:
Friday 9/7 @ Velvet Lounge w/ Franz de Waard, Gilles Aubry, Jack Wright & Michael Johnsen, Ben Owen, Brown Wing Overdrive, Buck Gooter, & RDK
$10, doors at 8pm, 21+
Saturday 9/8 @ Warehouse Next Door w/ Humcrush, Christoph Heemann, Goem|FDW, Naila Borensztein, Noveller, Pink Communoids, Element Kuuda, The Cutest Puppy in the World, This Bag Is Not a Toy, Twilight Memories of the Three Suns $15, doors at 7pm, all ages
Bios and more information can be found here: http://dc-soniccircuits.org/2007/ (http://dc-soniccircuits.org/2007/)
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i now need physical therapy after using my scroll wheel to get the bottom of this page.
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well, you can't say that you nothing about my shows. the information's all there!
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certainly is! don't get me wrong, i was just being silly. i'd rather have more information than less. definitely better than having to consult a half-dozen google'd sources to get an overview of a band.
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Clavius Productions presents:
Tuesday, September 11
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9pm, 21+
Souvenir's Young America (Crucial Blast, Richmond atmospheric post-punk)
Across Tundras (Crucial Blast, Denver sludgecore spaghetti western epic psych trio)
The Seventh Gate (Northern Virginia noisy grindcore trio)
The World That Summer (DC doomy shoegaze trio)
Souvenir's Young America
http://www.myspace.com/souvenirsyoungamerica (http://www.myspace.com/souvenirsyoungamerica)
http://www.syarva.com (http://www.syarva.com)
"It's high-lonesome evocative stuff, blessed with electronic flippery, rolling percussion, and haunting, mesmeric guitars." (Decibel)
"Epic-scaled, reflectively cinematic metal with roots in everything...simultaneously suggesting old deserts under wide-open skies and a post-shoegaze zone at its most astringent." (All Music Guide)
"Instrumental art-rock, not easily classifiable. Maybe if Autechre and Sleep got together and wrote a bunch of songs that Tom Waits forgot to record? I've had the pleasure of seeing them live on several occasions and they always just knock me out, extremely creative and extremely heavy." (Aspecialthing)
Lush, shimmering guitar ambience and hypnotic, propulsive instrumental heaviness wind through the dusty highways and burnt twilight skies of An Ocean Without Water, the sophomore album from Richmond's Souvenir's Young America. Divided into six flowing movements, An Ocean Without Water is filled with intensely beautiful melodies that drift on lonesome harmonica strains and sparkling, celestial electronics, shot through with mystic, western slide guitar, passages of crushing angular riffage, rolling tribal drumming, and transcendent blues. Through their intricate song arrangements and moody textures, Souvenir's Young America has created an epic, emotional narrative. The sound draws from the collected DNA of forebears like Popul Vuh, Earth, Labradford, and Neurosis, yet they form a powerfully evocative instrumental language all of their own. Features collaborations with Aughra (Magic Bullet Records) and Nick Forte (Sublight Records, ex-Rorschach/Beautiful Skin). The band has developed their sound even further with this new album, and I couldn't be more entranced with the epic, moody sounds that enfold over An Ocean Without Water's 40-minute running time.
You can also get your hands/ears wrapped around the band's previous releases, including the awesome September Songs cassette and 12", their self-titled debut CD, and their split 7" with Candiria ambient side project Spylacopa, all through the Crucial Blast webstore. (Crucial Blast)
Across Tundras
http://www.myspace.com/acrosstundras (http://www.myspace.com/acrosstundras)
Dark Songs of the Prairie, the first full-length album from Denver's Across Tundras, holds eight portraits of heavy majesty carved out of massive syrup riffage and spacious melodies. It's almost like hearing some mysterious '70s country-rock outfit thawed out and refitted with mighty amplification, sludgecore tempos, and shoegazey shimmer that conjures up visions of the wide-open prairies and looming mountains of the band's home territory. As weighty as the melodic heaviness coming from the whole "post-metal" camp, but coming from a different place altogether, Across Tundras draw a tangential line from Neil Young to Hum to Neurosis, and unleash a powerful new statement of rustic, crushing Americana. Features former members of Sioux Falls, SD post-hardcore outfits Spirit of Versailles and Examination of the....
"What with Deadwood a now-indelible part of the national consciousness, its Shakespearian dialogue, shit-kicker palace intrigue, and hand-to-hand ultra-violence making for some of the finest drama on American TV, it??s time we give a pound to the Dakota territories. Across Tundras hail from just such a place -?? Sioux Falls, in fact ??- though their bio places them firmly in their adopted home city of Denver, which not only has no cool TV shows about it, but is mere miles from Rocky Flats, where they used to makes nukes. Wherever they call home, the trio, which contains members of Spirit of Versailles and Examination of the..., plays pure Western music, vast expanses of guitar crunch that owe as much to the wide-open spaces of Morricone soundtrack vistas as Neurosis?? San Francisco bonfires and the mind-expanding buzz of Crazy Horse. Now, don??t expect any of Ennio??s twang -?? this is the album the Neil Young of Earth 2 made with Black Sabbath. (I think it was called Everyone Knows This Is Sweet Leaf. Or was it Cortez the War Pig? Six of one, either way.) Most of the songs are power trio whump ??n?? roar, but both ??The Old Sexton? and ??Aura Lea, Maid of Gold Hair? are overblown acoustic sing-along/rants worthy of Royal Trux at its most fried, the ramble-tamble sound of filthy zombie hippies around the campfire chewing on the flesh of meth-addled bikers dumb enough to camp in their territory. You cocksuckers and hoopleheads need to know: Thar be the new West, here be the new Westerners." (Decibel)
"If ever an album title so aptly described the contents within, the debut from Denver's Across Tundras would be the one. Throughout the course of its 51 minutes, you're teleported, via a delectable mix of twangy, barbiturate-infused outlaw country, colossal post-metal a la Pelican/Isis and stirring indie shoegaze, to the dusty trails and backroads connecting America's ghost towns, where everyone rolls their own smokes, facial hair is not an urban trend and the alcohol comes from bathtub stills. Across Tundras can crush with the most crushing, as exemplified by vocalist/guitarist Tanner Olson's interplay with the unnervingly raw sounding drums in "Ramblin' In the Shadows" and the title track. The plodding string trills and superb chord progression of "If God Cuts You Down" adds to the music's transient and nomadic feel as do the vistas featured in the booklet photography, while "The Old Sexton" and "Aura Lea, Maid of Golden Hair" are two filmic drones that could be precursors to a Sergio Leone-directed gunfight. Dark Songs of the Prairie has all that, plus the distinction of being that rare extreme music album that can take you back to a time where men were men and sheep were nervous." (Kevin Stewart-Panko, Terrorizer)
The World That Summer
http://www.myspace.com/theworldthatsummer (http://www.myspace.com/theworldthatsummer)
Vibration-heavy sounds using primarily drums and guitars. Although constantly evolving, it
sound a bit like Sigur Ros if they were knuckle-dragging apes from swampy Florida, rather than twee, mincing Icelanders.
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Wednesday, September 12 @ Velvet Lounge: Der LSD-Nacht!
If you weren't lucky enough to catch Mani Neumeier with Acid Mothers Guru, and are still vainly waiting for your invite to Manuel Gottsching's 55th official birthday party on Sept. 9th, or are unable to catch his lone US show in ages on Sept. 20 in Texas(!), then do the next best thing and come down to the Velvet Lounge on Sept. 12 for Der LSD-Nacht, where your fave Krautrock ravers will be featured via the magick of mind-blowing DVD footage. The usual suspects (Amon Duul II, Can, Kraftwerk, Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Guru Guru, etc.) will be on brain-searing display along with many others such as Xhol Caravan, Achim Reichel, Organisation, and Floh De Cologne, just to name a few. Doors open at 8, der show commences at 10ish. And it won't cost you one deutsche mark!
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Clavius Productions and Sonic Circuits DC 2007 present:
Thursday, September 13
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
http://www.dc-soniccircuits.org/2007/ (http://www.dc-soniccircuits.org/2007/)
202-462-3213
$8, doors at 8, 21+
Exploding Star Quintet (Thrill Jockey avant-jazz ensemble, featuring Rob Mazurek of Chicago Underground Duo/Mandarin Movie)
Radio Shock (NYC noise-party one-man band with keyboard/guitar/toys)
36>Ca$H $lave Clique (DC improv psych/noise duo, mem. of Nimrod/Sikhara/Steve Mackay & the Radon Ensemble/Acid Mothers Temple/Nik Turner)
Myo (solo laptop noise from Baltimore)
Exploding Star Orchestra
http://www.robmazurek.com/ (http://www.robmazurek.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/explodingstarorchestra (http://www.myspace.com/explodingstarorchestra)
In 2005, cornetist Rob Mazurek was approached by The Chicago Cultural Center and the Jazz Institute to put together a group that would represent the more contemporary/avant-garde side of sound in Chicago for a concert in Millennium Park??s Frank Gehry-designed concert hall. The music was conceptualized/composed in Manaus Brazil, Fontevraud, France and Chicago, and developed over more than a dozen performances of the Orchestra before it was recorded by John McEntire at his Soma Studio in Chicago.
We Are All From Somewhere Else is comprised of three distinct sections, and corresponds to a story involving an exploding star, cosmic transformation, a sting ray, the travels of the sting ray, intelligent conversations with electric eels, the destructive power of humans, the death and ascension of sting ray, the transformation of sting ray ghost to flying bird, and the transformation of bird to phoenix to rocket to flying burning matter to a new-born star.
Says Mazurek, ??I could clearly see and hear the events as a kind of animated adult/children??s story that could be presented in book or video form. In the end you have a poem text based on the original story line that is then flipped backwards to reveal another perspective on the poem. The flipped text was orchestrated by Portuguese video artist and conceptualist Joao Simoes, while I was in Lisbon making final preparations for the release of this recording.?
As the arrangements of the parts of the pieces came together it became more and more evident that Nicole Mitchell??s flutes would play a major role in the realization of the music. That said the intent of the music is not to featuring individual players (although this very well could have featured any individual in the group, as they are all very strong soloists and improvisers) it is more about the projection of a certain sound pertaining to imagination and the trajectory of the sound as movement in time and space, weaving patterns and non-patterns around and inside the idea of the poem. The overall organic approach included actual organic sounds -- for example, the sounds of electric eels recorded by Mazurek at INPA research laboratory in Manaus. The juxtaposition of two drums, two basses, two mallets, multiple flutes, two cornets, bass clarinet, ARP synthesizer, guitar, trombone, voices and flugelhorn all played important roles in the development of the final sound.
??Psycho-Tropic Electric Eel Dream? is a group improvisation centered around the sound of electric eels. The electric eel tanks Mazurek recorded at INPA contain two species of eels, Pulsating and Waveform. The sound was recorded in a special tank of 15-20 eels of various sub-species, each with its own tone. The results are fascinating tonal clusters not unlike the sound of violins. This track reveals the beauty of these fine creatures and juxtaposes our improvisation with them, and concludes with spoken word by Rob Mazurek (??Robert Ashley was in my head during this part?), some ARP by Jim Baker and some final cascades of Nicole??s flute, which was snuck into the recording on the bass amp mic sitting in the hallway while Nicole was playing in another room. ??Black Sun? features Jim Baker??s lovely piano playing. ??This piece was originally written for the great French pianist Jeanne-Pierre Armengaud,? says Mazurek, ??who I had the pleasure of working with at Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud in France during my residency there.? What you hear is Jim??s emotionally charged and understated improvisation on the theme of the composition. The sound corresponds perfectly to the text/poem of the recording in which the death of the stingray is a new re-birth of the bird and eventually a new star.
??Cosmic Tomes? starts out with storm sounds from the Amazon reversed. The powerful first section reveals a wide-open improvisation on a specific theme and then deconstructed through three harmonic centers. The Cornet is that of composer and leader Mazurek. Corey Wilkes?? poignant flugelhorn plays an important role within the center of the piece and for a moment he takes off in a more grand gesture. The song then melts into the second part of this suite; repeated lines based on the last harmonic chord of the first section find the bass taking the lead and Matt Bauder??s two tenor parts and bass clarinet part playing a major role. One hears Jeff Parker??s guitar, Jeb Bishop`s trombone, Josh Berman`s cornet, Matt Lux`s electric bass, Jim Baker`s modified piano, Nicole Mitchell`s flute, and some excellent cutting, filtering post-production work by John McEntire. Part 3 of ??Cosmic Tomes? is meant as a kind of prayer or meditation on the idea of unity in the world/universe.
??15 Ways of Looking at a Finite Universe? is a quick piece inspired by the Anna Levine book ??How the Universe Got Its Spots?, and catapults the recording into the last piece, ??Part 5,? in which we travel back to space, birthing or re-birthing new galaxies. Nicole Mitchell??s flute floats over the thick harmonics with Matt Bauder`s bass clarinet doubling the bass of Matt Lux and Jason Ajemian, creating the foundation for the sweet melodic interplay.
Radio Shock
http://www.radioshock.org/ (http://www.radioshock.org/)
http://www.myspace.com/radioshock (http://www.myspace.com/radioshock)
Radio Shock is a one-man band that plays sometimes danceable, often dissonant, noise-party music. Radio Shock??s infectious beats will make you want to get up and dance while trying to trip you up at the same time. Created by M*P*Lockwood specifically to tour and entertain live audiences, Radio Shock is designed for maximum mobility. The music is made using only a found Yamaha keyboard, a uniquely tuned guitar, and a collection of Toys??R'Us noise-makers (sometimes played all at the same time), all of which can be carried on M*P*??s person. Because of this, he has been able to tour across the country by Greyhound bus. In fact, Radio Shock is considered to be on ??permanent tour? and any lack of shows in the immediate future should be considered a brief break.
M*P*Lockwood has been a member of the critically-acclaimed No-Core band Cock Robot, and one half of the laptop-hardcore duo Lotus. But with members of these bands living in different cities, M*P* wanted a musical vehicle to play live shows right NOW, and as often as possible. Since its inception, Radio Shock has been lucky enough to play shows with like-minded artists such as Nautical Almanac, Wolf Eyes, Sightings, The Haters, Hair Police, Forcefield, Cock ESP, and many others.
Radio Shock has put out two split releases with the similarly, yet more obviously, named band ??Radio Shack,? a cassette on Ignivomous Records and a 7#8243; record co-released by several hip noise labels. Radio Shock has also produced several self-released CDRs and provided a track for the Cock ESP remix CD. Just released is a cassette tape on Pink Triforce Tapes out of Montreal. The latest release is a self-released CDR EP called Burn Down Radio. Coming soon is a 30-second looped tape on Human Conduct out of Baltimore.
Ca$h $lave Clique
http://www.myspace.com/cashslaveclique (http://www.myspace.com/cashslaveclique)
Unbeknownst to Threat Williams, OhSlamma 36 ded Mazafaqaz, and Crealonious Funk, a strange set of cosmic yet real (CREAL) events would bring them together to finally give voice to THE CA$H $LAVE CLIQUE. Yet everyone is a CA$H $LAVE. Thus they are just a small arm of Le Clique that has been CREALLY chosen by their master Dr. Fantasti to rain down sonic terror. Dr. Fantasti charged these three with the daunting task of creating a new sound, to unite CA$H $LAVES everywhere. Influenced by the indigenous of their native Washington D.C., Le Clique has taken go-go music and made it their own. Creating the undeniable force that is GO-GO NOISE CORE (go-go-no-co).
Who is this Dr. Fantasti? Some say a God, some say the Devil. The truth lies somewhere in between. The good doctor was ordered to create cash to enslave this world by his evil master, Greedasty. After doing this Fantasti fell into a deep depression and began to question his loyalty to Greedasty. Upon finding out about Fantasti??s treasonous thoughts Greedasty banished him from the heavens and sent him to earth to live forever as a plush singing hamster. Fantasti, thus was destined to live his life as a discarded novelty gift only to be used once or twice and then thrown away. However, he was purchased for Crealonious and he did not just throw him away or stuff him in a closet. Crealonious sat Fantasti in a prominent spot in his house and the doctor saw his chance to escape his terrible predicament. Using his super intellect he rewired the sound mechanism in himself so that he could speak to Crealonious.
At this time cataclysmic events were about to bring Le CLique together. Crealonious and Threat were already friends, but they had never met OhSlamma. Autumn winds began to blow and soon like a speck of pollen being blown to a flower, OhSlamma landed at Crealonious??s door step, and was welcomed in. The doctor saw his chance. He began to transmit subliminal messages to the three when they were together. Finally it began to work and they started to unconsciously prepare for the creation of THE CA$H $LAVE CLIQUE. The dye was cast on the fateful day that Fantasti, through his subliminal messages, ordered OhSlamma to pinch his foot thus allowing the doctor to reanimate himself into a living plush singing hamster.
Like Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-San the doctor began to mold his disciples. He trained them for months transforming them from conspicous consumpton machines into sonic suicide bombers. The chosen three were then given their crusade. Create a sound to unite all CA$H $LAVES and bring about the destruction of the Spectacle. So the sound was created thus fulfilling the Fantasti prophecy ??Let there be CA$H?, and the CA$H $LAVE CLIQUE was ordered to unleash their sonic terror on the world.
36
http://www.soundsfromthepocket.com/36.htm (http://www.soundsfromthepocket.com/36.htm)
Drummer Sam Lohman displayed his talents with such bands as Sheer Terror, Nimrod and Maji, before taking on the numeric spelling of his name, Sa(3) Mu(6), while beginning his solo percussion project in Japan. After his initial show, April 1994 at Zokai Center in Osaka, 36 continued to play throughout the South Pacific and at major international events, including the ??What is Music?? fest in Sydney, Austrailia and the ??Pacific Rim Job? in Vancouver BC. 36 contributed tracks to well known Japanese compilations ??Osaka Pirate Radio? and the tribute to legendary live space ??Bar Noise?.
2004 saw a renewed flourish of activity for 36. During the first Radon Portugal showcase, Lohman did triple duty, playing with Steve Mackay, Sikhara and 36. After returning to the States, 36 joined the ranks of Spaceseed to back Hawkwind frontman Nik Turner for his US tour. 36 toured the rest of ??04 on the Ovo USA rampage, sometimes infiltrating Cock ESP concerts as well as continuing his work with Steve Mackay and the recently founded Ca$h $lave Clique.
In addition to these numerous projects, Lohman joined the ranks of Japanese ??Soul Collective? Acid Mothers Temple for a series east coast concerts in 2005 Radon??s first quatro-continental performer shows no signs of slowing in ??07 with numerous projects in the works.
Myo
http://www.myosound.com (http://www.myosound.com)
Myo is Cory O??Brien, an improviser and experimenter who works with digitally processed voice and objects. Myo??s live manifestations have been described by Vital Weekly as ??louder, dirtier, gritty and angular, but still with ingredients of microsound.? Previous collaborations have included Kenneth Yates (of Harm Stryker, Insects with Tits), and video artist Metaphreaq. He currently lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Friday, September 14
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
http://www.dc-soniccircuits.org/2007/ (http://www.dc-soniccircuits.org/2007/)
202-462-3213
$9, doors at 8pm, 21+
Ramon Churruca (performance artist from Bilbao, Spain)
xedh (sound artist from Bilabo, Spain)
Piasa (harsh noise from Virginia)
Scraping Teeth (guitar/drums improv noise-rock trio from Miami, featuring Rat Bastard of To Live and Shave in L.A./Laundry Room Squelchers)
Ahlzagailzehguh (NYC harsh noise, Hospital Productions)
Kakerlak (Baltimore harsh noise)
Ramon Churruca
Ramón Churruca was born in Bilbao in 1964. He belongs to an important family from Las Arenas. Since childhood, he??s expressed interest in comedy, film and pornography. He studied at the agustino school, Padre Andres de Urdaneta, and recalls that ??it was a concentration camp. A soccer culture existed: if you didn??t play, you were gay or weird.?
Influenced by the work of Doug Hall, he traveled at the age of twenty to the United States to study experimental film at the Art Institute of San Francisco where he majored in performance/video. His stay in the city made him very open-minded. Nevertheless, Ramon discovered that social class systems exist in the art world. ??Those supposed liberal worlds are really conservative.? This would be a recurring idea in his work.
When he returned to California in 1989, he acted under the pseudonym Ramón Quantalagusta in the Bilbao Safi Gallery on Las Cortes street. That??s where they did the first performances of Botxo where artists like Bada, Alberto Safi or Álex de la Iglesia participated. In this gallery, Churruca talked about for the first time of the unveiling of the new Basque: ??El Technoaldeano Urbano? (The Urban Technopeasant), the illuminated messianic figure that is reflected in Ibarretxe for those that want to build a gigantic ??bidegorri euskaldun? where they can channel their paranoias.
For Ramón, the performance ??is a declared madness. It takes a lot of mental work and written preparation. I give myself a set of guidelines that I modify according to what I see happening. The public looks for immediacy, the connection and the rush. After ??Tecnoaldeano Urbano? (The Urban Technopeasant), Churruca was ??Olentzero Farlopero?, ??Siamés Separatista? and currently acting as ??Negruri? wearing a mask of an elderly man. ??Often times, the topics are reality. I handle myself according to the language of the topics. From there comes the Negruri. He??s the devil. Like the Euskal Herria of PNV looks at the ancient society of Neguri. I am 100 years old. It has to do with the operation of the social class system in Bilbao and in the art world. For some to prevail, others must fail.? Film is one of his greatest passions and he considers himself ??a very good spectator? although he creates the fiction of others but not his own. He has made several short films and acted in a dozen of films, always in special collaborations. Álex de la Iglesia counted with him for ??El día de la bestia?, ??Muertos de risa? y ??Crimen Ferpecto.? In spite of him, Churruca assures that he works better as a performer.
The apparent tranquility and timidity of Ramón shifts when he goes into battle, in hyperactivity, madness and destruction. In his performances he has a tendency to disrobe, to confront and to criticize everyone. His criticisms are fundamentally directed to society, nationalists, the public and even himself. He laughs about everything and at everyone but he doesn??t consider himself crazy, ??They think that you are a lunatic because you do things that venture outside convention.?
xedh
http://www.xedh.org/ (http://www.xedh.org/)
xedh is the soundwork of the Basque Country-based artist Miguel A. García.
selected works & live:
2007 - live at El Tanque exhibition centre, Santa Cruz (Tenerife, Spain)
2007 - released ??Nacht & nebel? split with Fever Spoor at Anima Mal Nata (Holland)
2007 - sound installation at L´Mono (Bilbao, Spain)
2007 - released ??Sex? LP at Smell the Stench (Australia)
2007 - live at Arto Artian festa #5, Mogambo (Txintxerpe, Spain)
2007 - live at Bebarruko Jardunek, Matadeixe (Azkoitia, Spain)
2007 - live at Dislokes fest w/ Tüsuri (Barakaldo, Spain)
2007 - released ??Composition in red? EP at Camomille Music (Canada)
2006 - live at MEM 2006, Bilborock (Bilbao) w/Merzbow
2006 - released ??Agujero negro? LP at Hamaika (Getxo, Spain)
2006 - released ??Rencloser? EP at Picomedia (France)
2006 - live at Bilbao Arte (Bilbao, Spain)
2006 - soundtrack for Closing Time film by Iñigo Cabo & Robert Todd (Bilbao, Spain)
2006 - live at LEM 2006, EART Gallery (Barcelona, Spain)
2006 - live at MRB/AMM, Arteleku (Gipuzkoa, Spain)
2006 - released ??La indiferancia demostrada? LP at Nervous Nurse (Germany)
2006 - released ??Sort:zen? EP at Expanding Electronic Diversity (Canada)
2005 - sound installation for ??somos buena gente? exhibition (Asturias, Spain)
2005 - sound for contemporary dance piece, MID-E 2005, Arteleku (Gipuzkoa, Spain)
2005 - live at Mano Dura fest (Barcelona, Spain) w/Valvula Antirretorno
2005 - live at Portinho project (Galicia, Spain) w/Valvula Antirretorno
2005 - released ??Xenophile experimental density hamper? collab. with Zan Hoffman (USA)
2005 - released ??Dios existe? LP at Slaughter Rec. w/Valvula Antirretorno (Italy)
2004 - released ??Serpents? EP at Verato Project (Germany)
2004 - live at Colectivo Noize Fest, Montehermoso w/Valvula Antirretorno (Gasteiz, Spain)
??Conceived by Miguel A. García as a vision of industrial past and future landscapes, the music distilled by Xedh is a music of immersion, inscribed in a broad and evocative current that makes textures and their alternation an excellent narrative element. A music of planes where silence envelops perverse rhythms and opens gaps through which oppressive atmospheres slip in -- pulsing music, inviting us on an inner journey, full of images and colours, of a strangely pictorial quality.? (Victor Nubla)
??Xedh confirms by planting an enormous (rusted) nail in the allegedly apocalyptic landscape of the modern industry of sounds assembly. Heir of a certain old-school tradition (and not least), the man of Bilbao dismantles some musical commonplaces for better building a singular work which takes all his actual relevance -- There is this amplitude, the density of a formal, unnarrative suggestion of reality filtered through the abstractive prism of Xedh composition, and these constant calls to break up, if you definitively refuse to look beyond.? (Thierry Massard)
??In a constant struggle for balance, Xedh explores mathematics and cognitive logic on one side and pits it against nature and harmony. The result is an abstract brawl for domination, as you can discern the organic tissue from the synthetic in their collisions.? (camomillemusic.com)
Piasa
http://www.myspace.com/pieuhsaw (http://www.myspace.com/pieuhsaw)
Piasa (pronounced pie-uh-saw) are a harsh noise band from Virginia.
Currently, Piasa is: William, Scott, Damian, Tristan, Jason, Ian, and other various collaborators.
The idea for what would become Piasa, was originally conceived in 2004 by William Mansfield and Scott Nussman, out of a desire to do something different. An early incarnation would see that idea evolve into a guerrilla noise squad...leaving bewildered patrons in shopping and strip mall parking lots scratching their heads...or running quickly back to their cars, hands held tightly against their ears, whatever the case may be.
Autumn of 2005 saw the birth of a tighter, more creatively focused, and collaborative incarnation of the band, playing shows in local basements and venues, concentrating on heavy improvisation.
In early 2006, Piasa became a mobile audio terror unit, taking their dirty sounds and filthy minds out on the road, touring in support of their first full length effort.
As of summer 2007, Piasa have been on a handful of tours, self-released an earful of recordings, continue to terrorize the everyman, and show no signs of slowing down.
Piasa has been fortunate enough to share the stage with some incredibly gifted artists and musicians, including: Realicide, Them Natives, Facemat, Kohoutek, Halflings, Yellow Tears, Shallow Waters, Medhammer, Warmth, Bobby Vomit, Orgasmic Response Unit, Being, Alan George Ledergerber, Perpetual Amnesia, Kakerlak, Spunky Toofers, Grails, Kayo Dot, Cough, Pygmy Lush, The New Flesh, Deathroes, Panicsville, Nautical Almanac, Donna Parker, All Violet, Ultimate VAG, Hollow Bush, Skeleton Warrior, HZMT, Prurient, Aaron Dilloway, Hair Police, Wolf Eyes, etc, etc, etc.
Scraping Teeth
http://squelchers.net/ST/teeth.htm (http://squelchers.net/ST/teeth.htm)
You might think the tight-minded would walk on by, saying this isn??t music at all, it??s just damn noise, turn that shit down! However, the members of Scraping Teeth assure such is not the case. ??We always get a strong reaction?, says bassist Isaac Ersoff. The groups guitarist, Frank ??Rat Bastard? Falestra, picks up on the idea: ??Rock and roll is supposed to cause a reaction. When it first came in, people hated it. That??s what rock and roll is. People either hate us or like us, there??s no in-between.? Does it bite, or does it have bite?
If it is difficult to embrace the ragged, jagged sounds of Scraping Teeth, well, that??s part of the challenge, part of the fun, and ultimately, part of the payoff. The Miami-based trio is breaking new ground that lies somewhere between aggressive (call it progressive if you absolutely must) rock and dissonance for its own sake, between the obscure and the ungrippable styles of new music and the blatant and overly popular structures of standard rock-roll. They may be way out there, but once you get the hang of it, they become way-in as well. It??s, um, cool.
It??s unlikely you??ll find yourself humming along to songs such as ??Death by Refrigerator? or ??Machine God Noise,? but that doesn??t mean Teeth music doesn??t contain logic and structure. It does, coached in a dense and often flatulent combination of angry guitar riffs, drones, squawking bass, more drones, screams from hell, drums that punctuate in blood, progressions that seem aimless except that the aim is not to be linear and predictable. Both active and reactionary, this music??s boundaries are drawn only by the inspiration of the moment. This stuff??s wild, man.
??I call it ??pizza music,??? Ersoff says cryptically. Falestra points out that it??s ??music not to think to.? And drummer Dimthingshine sums up the Teeth grind as ??acid-rock mayhem of the day, of the moment. Feelings of the world as we feel it.? At first glance, then, the world hurts like a misdirected dentist??s drill on full blast. Hitting a nerve.
As unfair, critically speaking, as it may be, you did get some idea what this terrifying trio is up to by checking a few song titles: ??Torture and Stuff," ??Blow Me While I Shit? and ??My Car Blew Up and Took Me With It.? This ain??t exactly Bobby McFerrin territory.
This reason it??s unfair to go by a handful of songs titles is that, much like the actual songs, the music of Scraping Teeth is timeless, endless, boundless. They don??t play songs, really, it all runs together, changing at every show, and it??s all on tape -?? you could say the trio doesn??t have any songs, or you could say they have thousands of songs. ??We have more hooks per minute,? Falestra notes. But it all happens so fast. Most bands rehearse a song, play it, and play it at a club. Then they??re married to that song for the next three years. I??ve done that (with other groups). I want to come up with something new every minute. That??s why we record every show. We can look back and refer to things, and redo a song if we want. It??s all documented. It??s a challenge to us to equal a group with a planned format, but this is viable music.? (At one point the band found itself playing to a completely empty club. Someone walked in and asked them what the hell they were doing playing to no one. ??We??re recording,? came the quick reply.)
Falestra knows what he??s talking about. Like his two associates, he??s made his bones in a number of areas, including work with more traditional rock bands. He also writes a music newsletter called Second Opinion, runs a productive recording studio called Esync, is a accomplished producer, engineer, has his own record label called Esync Ocular Exchange, and organizes the annual Expo-mental music series, which begins on Tuesday.
Bassist Ersoff is a classically trained player (the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York), records and occasionally performs with another group, Spongong, and also runs a label, Fuk-M-All Disc. Drummer Dimthingshine was behind a number of vinyl slabs released in the eighties, also runs his own label (Thingsflux Music), composes for film, writes reviews for various publications, and has worked with groups ranging from jazz to metal. He can also scream like the devil??s own whipping boy. ??I didn??t know I was going to be screaming my head off,? he says. ??But when I heard the music, I felt it needed screaming.?
Falestra was already running the show on Thursday nights at Churchill??s Hideaway (presenting a mondo bizarro mix of music and performance art), when Scraping Teeth came together in January. He had known Ersoff for about a year and had been familiar with ??Shines work for about eight years; the first time the three played together as Scraping Teeth was onstage. No rehearsal, no nothing. Get up there and rock. ??The first lyrics,? Falestra recalls, ??were the front page of New Times. Whatever was there on the cover became our lyrics. Then Isaac started coming up with concepts on tape and paper. We played off the sounds coming out of the monitors -?? it??s always improvised.? (To this day, the band still hasn??t rehearsed. It??s all done live, on the stage, now.)
Ersoff believes some people follow the group just to see what they might do next. Even the band doesn??t know that. Generally, Ersoff will kick a groove on bass, Dimthingshine will pick it up, and Falestra will squeeze from his alternately tuned guitar progressions and riffs inspired by the polyrythms of the other two. Sometimes ??Shine, who calls himself a cross between a rock drummer and a Muppet, will take the improv lead. Whatever the case, the three are savvy and talented enough to immediately react to one another??s playing. Then it all comes together as a sort of dense noise that, if you mentally peel away the layers of distraction, contains surprisingly smart and compelling melodies (and, yes, hooks) that are unlike any that have come before. ??We do things that aren??t cliche,? Falestra notes. ??We break ground, we break sound barriers. Ten years from now when this becomes pop, we??ll be able to show people our tapes from ten years ago and say, ??See??
Apparently some portion of the Miami music audience is smart enough to see already. Scraping Teeth are now booked every Wednesday at Washington Square, and Thursdays at Churchill??s. Perhaps there is something to be said for challenging music. Maybe there isn??t anything to be afraid of. ??I??m not satanic,? Dimthingshine asserts. ??I??m not possessed. It??s just that everyone thinks I am.? Falestra adds, ??You can??t be afraid of what the audience thinks.? You can only hope the audience does think. (Greg Baker, New Times, November 1990)
Ahlzagailzehguh
http://www.geocities.com/collapsedhole/ (http://www.geocities.com/collapsedhole/)
"Damn! 25 tracks of harsh noise on a 20-minute 3" CD. That's unexpected! Few of these pieces run more than a minute, and none longer than a minute-and-a-half, so the short bursts of explosive noise actually move along quite nicely, especially because a lot of different sounds are explored throughout. Sure, they're all fairly in your face and aggressive, and lots of distortion is employed, but at the same time, there are different ways to manipulate different tones and styles of distortion. Apparently all of this stuff was created using broken electronic devices, metal, various household objects, effects pedals, and synths. That sounds about right, because there is a certain lo-fi quality to the recording here, and the compositions are fairly minimal as far as layering and such. From straightforward walls of harsh distortion to banging and clanging sounds, to garbled rumbles and caustic treble, there's a little bit of everything, and then some. And it rarely calms down a notch. That's not to say this is like Masonna or Merzbow or anything, it's not, but it's not at all ambient either. I tend to be bothered by tracks that start and end abruptly, as it makes things feel unintentional, and that's something that can be disruptive here. But there are so many tracks that the stuttered beginnings and endings become common enough to work. Limited to just 44 copies, the first seven came in handmade sleeves with melted black/gold wax and glue. This one, like the rest, comes in a small sleeve printed on cream-colored paper with an abstract collage of images on the front and back, and a small xeroxed insert with the song titles inside. Not bad. I like the visual aesthetic and there is a certain feeling to most of the tracks, it's a little boring, but I can appreciate it. I'd be interested to hear longer, more developed works for sure. (Aversionline)
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Clavius Productions and Sonic Circuits DC 2007 present:
Saturday, September 15
Warehouse Arts Complex
1017 7th St NW WDC
http://www.dc-soniccircuits.org/2007 (http://www.dc-soniccircuits.org/2007)
http://www.warehousetheater.com (http://www.warehousetheater.com)
$12, doors at 8pm, all ages!
Baseline (Bilbao, Spain)
Esther Venrooy (Netherlands)
Oier Etxeberria (Bilbao, Spain)
Hal McGee (Florida)
Gunung Sari (NYC electro-acoustic trio)
Zan Hoffman (Louisville)
Ironing (Florida)
Constant Mauk (Richmond, mem. of Harm Stryker)
am salad (Baltimore)
Musica Ex Machina festival presentation
Baseline
http://www.baselinenoise.com (http://www.baselinenoise.com)
Baseline is the work of the polifacetic artist (music, video, design, webs...) from Bilbao, born in Gijón, Pilar Baizán.
She started by including sound in video-art, where she already used loops and her own recordings?and little by little, she developed her musical side until she formed Baseline, which really came about as an independent project in 2004.
Baseline is a Sound Artistic Project, Electronic industrial sound with deep and dense textures. She manipulates loops from sound fragments. She uses glitch, field recordings...rhythmic, emotional, visceral, sensual, evocative she often accompany her shows with video, which are intended to provide more depth to the sound, an idea which comes from video-art.
Esther Venrooy
http://www.esthervenrooy.com (http://www.esthervenrooy.com)
http://www.myspace.com/esthervenrooy (http://www.myspace.com/esthervenrooy)
Esther Venrooy (b. 1974, Rosmalen, The Netherlands) is a composer and sound artist working in the field of electronic music.
After completing studies in classical saxophone, Venrooy attended the European Dance Development Center (Arnhem) as a composer in residence, where she began employing electronic and digital techniques in pieces aimed at choreography and stage performance. Gradually her music evolved into an independent means of expression and she continued her work with electronica at the IPEM (Institute for Psycho-acoustics and Electronic Music) in Ghent, Belgium where she still resides. At this time she started utilizing film editing paradigms as a foundation for her personal composition methods.
Her works range from purely electronic composed music to improvised combinations of electronica with traditional instrumentation such as piano, flute and satsuma-biwa. She has created site-specific works as well as multimedia performances and installations. Much of her music has been released on CD or vinyl and has received good critical acclaim.
Esther Venrooy has performed her music extensively for audiences in cities such as Antwerp, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Madrid, Hamburg, Cologne and The Hague. Upcoming concert destinations include Washington DC, New York and Rotterdam.
Apart from her artistic activities, Venrooy is a lecturer on 20th century music and experimental arts at the Ghent school of fine arts, where she also runs the audio workshop. Together with her husband she runs Odradek -- an organization that curates events, releases and concerts dedicated to sound art and innovative or experimental music. Venrooy also presides the board of (k-raa-k)3 organization.
Oier Etxeberria
Oier Etxeberria is a musician and visual artist living in Bilbao. He has been involved in collective and individual projects such as the music band Akauzazte, K.O. Toys, the free tv AmatauTV and Periferiak07 art programme. He has exhibited, played and participated in different venues, art galleries and festivals.
Hal McGee
http://www.halmcgee.com (http://www.halmcgee.com)
httP://myspace.com/halmcgee (http://httP://myspace.com/halmcgee)
My name is Hal McGee. I have been making homemade recordings of my own experimental, electronic, industrial and noise music since September 1981. In Indianapolis, Indiana in the early 1980s I recorded several tapes of experimental industrial avant pop with Debbie Jaffe, as a duo under the name Viscera. Viscera appeared on countless international compilations. In 1984 we each started solo recording projects. Jaffe recorded several tapes as Master/Slave Relationship, and later several LPs and CDs, on into the 1990s. In the 1980s I recorded about two dozen tapes of power electronics, industrial, and experimental electronic music under the name Dog As Master. I had a track on the first Dry Lungs compilation, as well as many other international compilations. In the mid-1980s Jaffe and I operated the Cause And Effect International Distribution Service. We distributed homemade experimental music tapes from artists all over the world: U.S.A., Canada, England, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Norway, The Netherlands and others. We sold, traded and gave away more than 5,000 tapes in three years from 1984-87. Cause And Effect was also a label. In addition to our own tapes, Jaffe and I released recordings by Nurse With Wound, Merzbow, Borbetomagus, Controlled Bleeding, F/i, D.D.A.A., Negativland, John Duncan, Blackhouse, Haters, Vox Populi, Algebra Suicide, Jabon, Human Flesh, and more. We also released four compilations, which I have recently reissued on CDR. In 1988 I moved to Florida. Within a few months I began a new project: Electronic Cottage Magazine, which took ??an inside look at The Hometaper Phenomenon, Cassette Culture and Electronic & Experimental Music?. I published six issues of the magazine from 1989 to 1991, and sold something like 5,000 magazines. I also published three 90-minute tape compilations in conjunction with the magazine. I have recently reissued these compilations as well. In the 1980s and early '90s I collaborated with several of the best underground hometaper recording artists: Al Margolis of If, Bwana (under the name Bwana Dog), Chris Phinney (of Mental Anguish), Jabon, Dimthingshine, NOMUZIC, David Prescott and others. I took a three year vacation from music-making activities, from 1992 through mid-1995. Since then I have recorded more than 60 full-length tapes and CDs of new experimental and electronic music. I have done a lot of solo recordings, but I have also collaborated extensively with other recording artists: Chris Phinney (Mental Anguish), Ironing (Andrew Chadwick), Microwave Windows (Brandon Abell), Paramutual Operator (Jenifer Abell), Brian Noring (EHI, 360 Sound), Phil Klampe (Homogenized Terrestrials), Charles Rice Goff III (Turkey Makes Me Sleepy), L.G. Mair, Tom Sutter, Emil Hagstrom (Cock ESP), Keith Nicolay (Post Prandials), Dave Wright (Not Breathing), Big City Orchestra, Al Margolis (If, Bwana), Carl Howard (NOMUZIC), John Hajeski (Busyditch), Bret Hart, and others. In 1997 I published a few issues of a personal zine reporting on my music activities, called HalZine. In 1998 I produced the Tape Heads International Compilation Series, eight 90-minute cassettes of recordings by more than 200 audio artists from all over Planet Earth. Over the last 24 years I have made recordings in a wide variety of experimental music subgenres and styles (and have crossed and mixed these styles to make new creations): electronic, free improvisation, space music, electroacoustic, tape cut-ups, tape collage, industrial, power electronics, deconstructed rock, spoken word, ??noise?, ambient, abstract sound sculpture and painting, etc. Recently I became a member of the Tapegerm Collective, the Internet??s premier musician community. And in October of 2006 I started doing live performances again, after a dry spell of 19 years. I have released 158 albums.
Gunung Sari
http://www.neckandtongue.com/gunungsari.htm (http://www.neckandtongue.com/gunungsari.htm)
Gunung Sari is an experimental performance group based in Brooklyn, New York. Formed in late 2005, they have performed in festivals like Bent 2006 + 2007, La Superette at Eyebeam, Noise! Fest organized by free103point9 radio at The Ontological Hysteric Theater, Flow at Monkeytown, Phi Phenomena, and Frequencies. They have also played in venues such as The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Issue Project Room, and Cake Shop.
Their influences range from obscure gamelan and folk music from Southeast Asia, to the avant noise of downtown New York. They combine home-made electronics, analog boxes, percussions, saw, wood, metal, and toys in their performances. They also do video projections at times, and in some events utilize the computer as a tool for sound and image synthesis.
As a collaborating unit, they are interested in the similarities and differences regarding the physicality of manipulated circuits and more traditional instruments such as percussion, and using these opposing means in interplay of the intentional and interference.
Gunung Sari is Nick Lesley, Stanley Ruiz, and Michael Dotolo. Their latest recording is available at Neck and Tongue music.
Zan Hoffman
http://www.zh27.org (http://www.zh27.org)
http://www.myspace.com/mastersoftheungentlemanlyart (http://www.myspace.com/mastersoftheungentlemanlyart)
http://zmotua.blogspot.com (http://zmotua.blogspot.com)
Since the mid-1980s Zan Hoffman has been active in the international noise scene. He has released more than 987 albums and they all have a reason to exist. That is, they exist for a reason. Zan says, ??I??m driven by an imperative to do works that make a point nobody else is making. Every one of my releases exist separately from the excellent body of home-taping recordings which is my listening consciousness, yet informed by it, influenced by it, and driven by it.?
Appearing live for the first time in 20 years, last seen opening for the Henry Rollins Band in the Des Moines Botanical Center, Masters of the Ungentlemanly Art bring their international and intranational collaborative extravaganza to the Sonic Circuits festival.
Uncomfortable in traditional situations this concert??s highlight is Masters of the Ungentlemanly Art plan to use recordings from as many artists taking part of Sonic Circuits as possible.
Masters speciality is large global structures of sound gathering and regeneration and they are fiercely independent and irrational as need be.
34 releases 1985-2007 have been recorded to date by Masters.
Ironing
http://www.myspace.com/ironing (http://www.myspace.com/ironing)
Ironing is focused on manipulating and recontextualizing somewhat autobiographical sound sources, altering them through lo-fi analog processes. A pile of cast off equipment, hissy tapes and damaged records get worked into a collage of microcassette field recordings, blown out Miami beats, local radio and abused cassettes in a noise collage meets hyperactive dub frenzy.
Andrew Chadwick (Ironing) hails from Gainesville, FL, where he also spends time on the bedroom label Hymns.
Constant Mauk
http://www.myspace.com/constantmauk (http://www.myspace.com/constantmauk)
Incorporating sounds generated by feedback loops and self-oscillating, mysterious boxes, Constant Mauk represents restrained, subtle tones and droning sub-bass backdrops among a sea of manipulated samples. A veteran of the 804noise collective, Constant Mauk (aka cstmk) performed for several years as the ??gentler? half of Richmond??s harshest two person project, Harm Stryker, before striking out on her own as a one-woman microcassette assault. This is noise for noise??s sake. Cstmk will be throwing out bass. Be ready to throw back some midrange.
A.M. Salad
http://www.amsalad.com (http://www.amsalad.com)
http://amsalad.blogspot.com (http://amsalad.blogspot.com)
A.M. Salad is an ever-changing sound sculpture set in motion, currently existing at a junction between energized, chaotic rumble and waves of trancing drone; a moody, schizo-sensory treatment fusing meditation and destruction. Sounds are teased from mic??d wire, metal, tools, assemblages, and junk instruments by way of flailing, untamed movement from man, device, and environment. Sounds are altered and infused with various electronics.
A.M. Salad began in 1994 as the longer-named Amish Macaroni Salad by small town introvert and boredom connoisseur Keith Childress (me). Amish Macaroni Salad recorded a lot of solitary lo-fi sound experiments during the early to mid-90s, using a cheap karaoke machine and an arsenal of thrift store gadgets, appliances, distressed vinyl, and various mic??d sound makers. Some of the recordings were released on E.F. Tapes, while others were self-released in small numbers.
Following the early Amish Macaroni Salad explorations, I began playing in groups with some other musicians on the rural Eastern Shore of Maryland, including Algebrassiere who rarely played live though released some recordings on labels such as Ecstatic Yod, Scratch-N-Sniff, Imvated, Deathbomb Arc, etc.
Reducing the name of my solo project to A.M. Salad, I have continued to explore new sound sources, and new techniques. In 2004 a collection of my early tape work was re-released on a CD called ??Lo-Fi for Hi-Fi? by a consortium of labels: Eerie Materials, Gold Soundz, Little Mafia, Nihilist, Sloth Jinni, SunShip, and White Tapes. I continue to work with DIY labels, though most of my newest work has been self-released. My recordings range from collage amalgamations to loose improvisations to planned attacks. Absurdity and bad humor also have their place in my work. I view my art as a serious passion, though without (hopefully) taking myself too seriously in the process.
I began playing A.M. Salad live in 2005, and have participated in festivals including the 804noise Fest in Richmond, Virginia; the SoundScape Movement Fest in Chapel Hill, N. Carolina; and the International Noise Conference in Miami, Florida. In my live sound, as in my recordings, I continue to have an interest in giving a voice to utilitarian objects whose purposes are not generally associated with sound as a primary function, or whose sound is not generally associated with a musical context. I continue to gravitate towards the faulty, spastic, accidental, and untamed while melding textures and unstable environments into a myriad of half-emotions and fleeting sensory stimuli. A.M. Salad welcomes the chaotic and unknown, as well as the clumsy and uncomfortable.
I consider myself a smiling pessimist at war with myself, while attempting to open up to the other, and embrace the forgotten or otherwise deemed unimportant in this egocentric, power dominated world. I currently receive junk mail, greasy restaurant menus, and bills in Baltimore, Maryland. I try to visit ??the wild? as much as possible...
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FOUND Magazine's There Goes The Neighborhood Tour "2007!"
with Davy and Peter Rothbart
September 25, 2007
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9pm, 21+
with special guest Echolalia (solo theremin)
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Dang, you *knew* it wasn't safe. And you were right. To celebrate the release of FOUND #5 -- The Crime Issue -- our madman duo of Davy & Peter Rothbart are back on the road this fall on a 65-city, 38-state, 3-month rampage! At each show, Davy will share a trunk-load of sparkling, brand-new finds, and Peter will blast you with his new jams based on notes from FOUND #5.
"Davy and Peter Rothbart are utterly engaging performers!" -- The Los Angeles Times
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The FOUND show is a rowdy reading-and-music performance, full of heartbreak and humor. Davy shares his favorite found notes from his magazine and bestselling FOUND books, and Peter plays songs based on finds. The Los Angeles Times said, "Davy and Peter Rothbart are utterly engaging performers."
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Davy Rothbart
Author and filmmaker Davy Rothbart is best known as the Creator and Editor of FOUND Magazine, a publication dedicated to discarded notes and items found and sent in by readers. A frequent
contributor to public radio's "This American Life," Rothbart is also the author of The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas, a collection of short stories.
Peter Rothbart
Peter Rothbart is an award-winning singer/songwriter and front man for The Poem Adept. His albums, Songs for the Long, Lonely Drive (2004) and The Sight of Any Bird (2007) have been featured in The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and SPIN Magazine. After extensive touring in the U.S. and U.K., he recently moved to Seattle.
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Clavius Productions presents:
Friday, September 28
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, doors at 9pm, 21+
Alasehir (mem. of Bardo Pond, Important Records)
Suishou no Fune (atmospheric Japanese psych, Holy Mountain/The Lotus Sound)
Kohoutek (pseudo-CD release show...we're still waiting for it!)
Slasher Risk (NYC improv noise-rock guitar/drums duo)
Alasehir
http://www.bardopond.org (http://www.bardopond.org)
Alasehir is the project of Bardo Pond brothers John and Michael Gibbons with drummer Jason Kourkounis (ex-Mule/Delta 72/Burning Brides/Hot Snakes). Unlike the Gibbons' project Alumbrados, also being released on Important at the same time, Alasehir is more rock-oriented, establishing a heady, heavy groove and jamming on it throughout.
"The ear of the musician detects a certain musical note in every city which is different from that of another city. He hears in each street a new
melody, and to him the sound of wind in the treetops of different forests gives a varying sound. In the Desire World, seemingly, SOUND
PROCEEDS FROM FORM. But in the music of ALASEHIR it is different, for while each form occupies and obscures a certain space there, form is
nonexistent when viewed from the standpoint of ALASEHIR. Where the form was, a transparent vacuous space is observable. FROM THAT EMPTY VOID
COMES A SOUND which is the "keynote" that creates and maintains the form whence it APPEARS to come, as the almost invisible core of a gas-flame is the source of the light we perceive." (Michael Gibbons)
Suishou no Fune
http://suishounofune.web.infoseek.co.jp/suishou.eg.html (http://suishounofune.web.infoseek.co.jp/suishou.eg.html)
http://www.myspace.com/suishounofune (http://www.myspace.com/suishounofune)
Suishou no Fune was formed by Pirako Kurenai and Kageo in Tokyo, July 1999. Basics of their music are formed by twin guitars in duo. Twin guitar
players are influenced and create songs.
Kageo's guitar work establishes the basics of a song in the case of most. Pirako plays a lead guitar mainly, and often receives inspiration from free-style playing, and sing a song ad lib. The artistic sound is the psychedelic rock that twin guitars work that is full of sensitivity by the freedom that is not bound by stereotype.
Suishou no Fune usually make much songs by ad lib, sing the song which make the best use of the Japanese poetic beauty. The songs of "Spirit, Light and Darkness, Soul, Love and Hatred, Shamanistic, Life and Death" will touch your heartstrings. You will enjoy the sound of Japanese verse and their psychedelic world, if you don't understand Japanese.
Suishou no Fune is magic music.
Formed in 1999 as a duo of female guitarist Pirako Kurenai and male guitarist Kageo, Suishou no Fune have been making some of the most charmingly
chaotic dream music coming out of Japan. Their sound contains subcutaneous elements of no-wave energy mixed with psychedelic rock a la early Fushitsusha or Kousokuya. Other songs approach balladry with oddly beautiful twinned vocals and distorted guitars. They have performed around Tokyo with a list of people who could succinctly be described as everybody and were even invited to play Scotland's Weekend festival in 2005.
The group's sound runs from massively distended nod-outs that recall parts of the first Fushitsusha album through weird duo tracks that orbit a parallel universe where late-period John Fahey was the prime influence on Charalambides,
infernal Dead C/Gate style guitar abuse and achingly beautiful comedown ballads. The twin vocalists are massively different in their approach, with Pirako singing in a high wayward style that's all throat and no lungs while Kageo works from the other end of the pipes with a ripped Father Yod/Jim Morrison/Keiji Haino polyglot. Simply one of the greatest out-of-nowhere groups to come out of the Tokyo underground in years and the undisputed stars of PSF's recent Tokyo Flashback 5 compilation. (Volcanic Tongue)
* Featured on PSF's recent Tokyo Flashback 5 comp and Durtro Jnana's 5xCD Not Alone benefit disc
* For fans of Fushitsusha, Kousokuya and Les Rallizes Denudes
Kohoutek
http://www.claviusproductions.org/kohoutek (http://www.claviusproductions.org/kohoutek)
Hey we are a four-piece origional rock band seeking our final member. We are looking for someone very experienced yet in our same age group
(21-26). We have several influences including Pink Floyd, Muse, and Smashing Pumkins, Sublime, TBS, The Doors... The music mus always be growing. To be our drummer you have to be dedicated, highly motivated, and a good person (meaning fun to hang out with, contribute to the music, etc.) We are 420 Friendly but usually not during practice unless we feel like we need a creativety boast. We have our own studio, record every practice, so we can make sure everything is improving. Practice
at least twice a week. Thanks!
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Upcoming:
Saturday 9/29 @ Velvet Lounge: Wooly Mammoth/The Brought Low/The New Flesh $8, doors at 9pm
Saturday 9/29 @ Bobby Fischer Memorial Building (1644 North Capitol St): The Apes/These Are Powers/The Wayward
Monday 10/1 @ Velvet Lounge: The Hipshakes (UK garage-punk on Goner
Records)/CoCoComa (Chicago garage-punk)/Suns of Guns/Not Bullshit DJ
night $7, doors at 9pm
Tuesday 10/2 @ Velvet Lounge: Human Host
(Baltimore experimental rock, ex-Charm City Suicides)/True Womanhood
(DC folk-psych duo)
Friday 10/5 @ Velvet Lounge: Wretched (MD doom, mem. of Earthride)/King Giant/Ol' Scratch/13 Legion $8, doors at 9pm
Sunday 10/7 @ Velvet Lounge: Dermaptera (Northern VA ambient
instrumentals)/Northern Valentine (Philly shoegaze/psych a la Windy
& Carl/Landing/Fuxa)/Field Shaman (Northern VA guitar/cello duo)
$7, doors at 9pm
Monday 10/8 @ Velvet Lounge: Slim Castle (solo
experimental guitar with projections, ex-Kohoutek)/A Tundra (Chicago
spazzy art-rock, mem. of Locks)/RLV (of N Collective, solo laptop) $7,
doors at 9pm
Tuesday 10/9 @ Velvet Lounge: Paradise Island
(Jenny Hoyston of Erase Errata)/Partyline (ex-Bratmobile)/My Disco
(angular post-punk from Australia)/Adrienne Anemone $8, doors at 9pm,
all ages!
Thursday 10/11 @ Velvet Lounge: Grey Daturas (Crucial
Blast, heavy instrumental drone/doom/psych from Australia)/Thee
Ultimate VAG (mem. of Kohoutek/To Live and Shave in L.A.)/Jason Simon
(of Dead Meadow)/Dactyl (Baltimore noise-rock) $7, doors at 9pm
Friday 10/12 @ Velvet Lounge: Black Pus (Brian Chippendale of Lightning
Bolt)/Kites (Load Records)/Video Hippos/MM-DD-YYYY/Russian Tsarlag $8,
doors at 9pm, all ages!
Saturday 10/13 @ Velvet Lounge: Upsilon
Acrux (heavy prog/math-metal from LA, Planaria)/TWIN (formerly King
Cobra, ex-Kicking Giant/The Need)/Always (solo noise from Australia)
$8, doors at 9pm, all ages!
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How about a 1 AM-ish Charalambides show at 611 Florida for those of us who want to see both them and weedeater? :)
They're playing at the black cat at roughly the same time Weedeater is at the velvet.
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well, no way will weedeater play before 11:30, so you can actually go see charalambides and then weedeater. i'm actually going to see both. i love alisdair roberts, too. sucks it had to fall on the same night.
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Clavius Productions presents a weekend full of mind-melting psych, brain-twisting prog, and enough noise to almost eradicate the stale sounds of blandness emanating from the nation's capitol these days. Note the return of Brian Chippendale (of Lightning Bolt) to DC after a six-year absence:
Thursday, October 11
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, 21+, doors at 9pm
Grey Daturas (heavy improv psych from Australia, Crucial Blast)
Jason Simon (of Dead Meadow)
Thee Ultimate VAG (improv guitar/percussion duo, mem. of To Live and Shave in L.A./Kohoutek)
Dactyl (Baltimore noise-rock)
Grey Daturas
http://www.greydaturas.com (http://www.greydaturas.com)
It's hard to categorize the sound of a band like GREY DATURAS from Melbourne, Australia. But if it has to be done, they are probably best described as an improvised/instrumental noise-rock band. Since their earliest shows in 2001, the Grey Daturas have been celebrated as one of the loudest and most uncompromising live acts in Australia.
As for their influences, they couldn't be any more varied. Their influences range from such diverse acts as Sonic Youth, The Stooges, Earth, John Coltrane, Cluster, John Cage, Dark Throne, and '70s no-wave and post-punk.
Thunderous heavy psychedelia masquerading as metal soundscapes performed in an arthouse manner reminiscent of other like-minded, contemporary sonic explorers (i.e. Wolf Eyes, Acid Mothers Temple, SubArachnoid Space, Paik (they even sport a similar multimedia show), Sunno))), Boris, Sonic Youth, Melvins, Glenn Branca, etc...) that is heavy and metal-ish and focused on darker vibes but without the weight of negative emotions to tie them down to a particular style or mood or that need for "toughness" that hampers other metal bands' ability to be everything the Grey Daturas are...simultaneously beautiful, menacing, scary, loud, and serene...
Thee Ultimate VAG
http://www.claviusproductions.org (http://www.claviusproductions.org)
http://www.myspace.com/accidentswithmagnets (http://www.myspace.com/accidentswithmagnets)
Ear-massaging melodies scientifically calculated by axeslinger Chris Grier (To Live and Shave in L.A./Sean McArdle Band/ex-Mungo Jerry) and skinpounder Scott Verrastro (Kohoutek/Insect Factory/Sequence Chair/PRV Trio/Kuschty Rye Ergot/The Antiques/Facemat/ex-Lemon Pipers). Completely and utterly devoid of any humanistic emotional content, this duo contructs automated jingles designed to relax your esophagus as the smooth taste of chianti goes down after a romantic candlelit dinner. Last seen on RockCruise '07.
Dactyl
http://www.myspace.com/dactyl (http://www.myspace.com/dactyl)
The loud shall inherit the music industry.
With major record companies losing money by the yacht-load these days, it's a good thing that bands like DACTYL can continue to work and thrive. Like cockroaches surviving after a nuclear war, underground rock bands must do whatever they can to survive and make records. Finding affordable alternatives to expensive recording studios is a must, and DACTYL seems to have found that. According the liner notes, this record was tracked at a club in Baltimore, with the vocals recorded "by Adam in his living room." (Adam is the record's producer.) It doesn't get more DIY than that.
The fact that the live recording setting gives Teething a distinct and organic feel is a given. The intensity of the music ebbs and flows quite nicely, creating a unique overall listening experience instead of sounding like just a bunch of songs thrown together. DACTYL's freeform sound has a lot in common with current noisemakers like SHELLAC and BOTCH. There's no shortage of punk enthusiasm here. Guitarist/vocalist Eric Smith does not come from the cookie monster school of singing, but his voice is still very non-traditional. For the most part, he sounds like FU MANCHU's Scott Hill with Bell's palsy (see track two, "Tooth Magic.") The rest of the band follow suit with strong, albeit left of center performances. Smith and fellow guitarist Rick Major really know how to use feedback for great dramatic effect. Listen to the opening build-up on the final track "Pull the Pin!" for an example.
If DACTYL is any indication, indie/underground rock still has a lot of life left in it. Empires rise and empires fall, but cockroaches will always survive. (Broadbent, Peace Dog Man)
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Friday, October 12
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, 18+, doors at 9pm
Black Pus (Brian Chippendale of Lightning Bolt!)
Kites (Load Records, solo harsh noise from Providence)
Video Hippos (Baltimore/DC guitar/drums multimedia duo, Monitor Records)
DD/MM/YYYY (Toronto temper-tantrum art-punk)
Russian Tsarlag (mem. of Byron House, solo noise from Providence)
Black Pus
http://www.myspace.com/theblackpus (http://www.myspace.com/theblackpus)
http://www.fauxfetus.net/faux/bands/blackpus/ (http://www.fauxfetus.net/faux/bands/blackpus/)
Black Pus, Brian Chippendale's current solo project, showcases Brian's hurricane drumming in a chaotic outburst of distorted saxophone, percussion, and his trademark contact mic'd vocals. Black Pus' two releases are a lot crazier than Lighting Bolt's output so don't expect another Wonderful Rainbow.
A one-man dervish, Black Pus is Lightning Bolt drummer and Ninja artist Brian Chippendale battering drums, bass, and oscillating whatever, disgorging the squall via his DiareahRama Records imprint. Chippendale's third hand-screened CD-R's stuffed with signature noise spills ("Which Is Which"), wind-tunnel huffs ("The Mad Scatter)" and Angus MacLise treks ("Exerschism"). The catchiest bit, "Earth Ain't Enuff," is a warbling Pink Floyd/Sun City Girls polka that even an adventurous Baba might like. Leading the warped parade, Chippendale shouts bullhorn-style through a melted vocal loop and bass drum, sounding out a posse of Lollipop Kids marching for housing rights along the yellow brick road. (Tech nerd note: Chippendale says he used a Line 6 loop delay pedal.) The infectious oom-pah-pah -?? "Come by my neighborhood/To buy my neighborhood/Come at the crack of dawn/Singing your slimy song/wearing a fresh-pressed suit/Crafted from wireless loot/Then grab my neighbor's place/Leading the property race/Buy all the water, too/Earth's not enough for you" ??- is aimed at Providence developers, but in this post-Turkey Day holiday season why not retroactively point the musket, too, at our small-pox-toting forefathers? Pass the black pus...errr, gravy. (Brandon Stosuy, Paper Thin Walls)
Kites
http://www.loadrecords.com/bands/kites.html (http://www.loadrecords.com/bands/kites.html)
One-man electrical system operator Kites continues his man-and-machine battle for your mind. A blend of painful, electronic feedback nerve bake, quirky, simplistic songwriting, tinkling soundscapes, and atmospheric roars. Violent, sweet, unpleasant, and nice.
One-man organic sturm and scowl returns with his fourth record for LOAD. Following 2006's Peace Trials blend of campfire informed Wilheim Reich downer crunch and burn, this new release journeys into deeper tunnels of solid frozen anthracite. While definitely part of the contemporary American noise scene, KITES (Chris Forgues) blends percussive chug and homemade sine wave generation into a dynamic somewhere in between early '80s electro schoolyard loiterers THROBBING GRISTLE and Sheffield's CABARET VOLTAIRE.
Where Peace Trials took the song form to an almost confusing and happy place, songs on the new record feature a colder tone. Gone are the stringed instruments of the last record, replaced with more home-constructed oscillation batteries. Disembodied voices ping-pong from speaker to speaker, dry percussive chatter fills the headphone foam and you are prisoner in a room you can never leave.
The record is entirely self recorded. Chris constructs his entire electronics setup.
Video Hippos
http://www.videohippos.com (http://www.videohippos.com)
http://www.myspace.com/videohippos (http://www.myspace.com/videohippos)
Like members of any good scene, the bands in Baltimore's Wham City collective and satellite friends -- Dan Deacon, Ponytail, Lizz King, Lexie Mountain Boys, Santa Dads, Video Hippos, to name a few -- approach a similar aesthetic from different angles. Common ground: the exclamation point (everything is invariably rad! or free! or awesome! or something you can yell), indulgence in rebellion and art-school regression (warehouse squalor, communal everything), and, relatedly, a warped sense of nostalgia. This last point, though, is where the bands part ways: Lexie Mountain Boys sound like a playpen getting knocked over, Dan Deacon has encouraged audiences to imagine themselves in the rec rooms of their parents' houses scarfing pizza, and Video Hippos -- well, Video Hippos took me longer to parse.
It wouldn't be fair to call them the scene's melancholics, but let's propose a dichotomy: Dan Deacon makes kiddie overstimulation sound like fun. Relentless, ga-ga fun. Call the doctor! because I'm choking on fun. Video Hippos' approach of wrapping simple, melodic pop-punk and Blondie riffs in toylike synths and effects pedals is that feeling's underbelly: numb, slate. Unbeast the Leash is 13 terse theme songs for an eight-hour day of cartoons and video games. And pre-adolescent boredom, lest you forget, is a rigorous bitch. Of course, the effect isn't just to retrieve that queasy, socked-out feeling from childhood, but -- and this is abundantly obvious from drummer Kevin O'Meara's video projections that blare during the band's performances -- to remind you that, yeah, media is still crammed down our throats, Bush Jr.'s smiling face is burned into our eager eyes, America eats its young, civilization is doomed, and so forth.
In that sense, Unbeast the Leash is a uniquely sad record, one that reminded me at first of the way New Order made dance music for clubgoers and downcast eyes alike -- at a Video Hippos show in mid-July, I was among only a few people dancing, and the dancing was more like swaying. Photographs subsequently revealed Smiths fans quarantined in suburban bedrooms. O'Meara's kit faces away from the audience. He could be replaced by a drum machine (and often plays along with one), but the irony of letting a human do a machine's job is too rich to pass up. Guitarist and vocalist Jim Triplett stands motionless, staring at nothing in particular. He lets would-be rallying cries fizzle into statements of resignation. He swallows his words, and whatever comes out, comes out faint.
Unbeast the Leash hits the same emotional note for about 30 minutes, but a) That's part of the point, and b) It's a note that most bands aren't able to hit: the deep comfort of a true bummer. In that sense, they're Baltimore's shoegazers. They turn the garage-party aesthetic into a faded photograph the way My Bloody Valentine suffocated eros with a pillow. It's not that Unbeast the Leash is a triumph on the scale of Loveless by any stretch, but like that album, it sounds at once a part of its scene and completely contrary to it, the warm crash as the sugar wears off. (Mike Powell, Pitchforkmedia)
DD/MM/YYYY
http://www.ddmmyyyy.net/ (http://www.ddmmyyyy.net/)
http://www.myspace.com/ddmmyyyy (http://www.myspace.com/ddmmyyyy)
Today is a new day.
You can sing the same song a hundred times and it will never be the same. Nothing is, everything is, movement. Toronto's DD/MM/YYYY just released their sophomore album Are They Masks? on July 10th, 2007.
Ranging from subdued atmospherics to tempo-tantrum art punk, the album retains the experimental learning of the band, while poking fun at familiar pop formats. The follow-up album to 2005's Blue Screen of Death, Are They Masks? documents the continued evolution of the band with twenty-one new songs.
Taking influence from the works of Frank Zappa, Melt Banana, Dada art and video games, DD/MM/YYYY formed in 2003, out of the ashes of two recently disbanded Toronto acts.
They have since released a split CD with Panserbjorne in 2004, The World Is So Unreal, as well as Blue Screen of Death.
They have supported their releases with incessant touring, having successfully toured Canada many times over. This past May, DD/MM/YYYY embarked on their first full North American tour. The tour, which ran May 1, 2007-July 9, 2007, included dates with Japanther, Matt & Kim and Dan Deacon. DD/MM/YYYY has had the pleasure of performing with The Blood Brothers, Aidswolf, Tokyo Police Club, Gogogoairheart, An Albatross and White Mice, amongst others. DD/MM/YYYY will be touring again throughout the fall, with both Canadian and United States dates.
DD/MM/YYYY is: Tomas Del Balso, Matt King, Moshe Rozenberg, Mike Claxton, Jordan Holmes
Russian Tsarlag
http://www.geocities.com/nemomutton/jesus.html (http://www.geocities.com/nemomutton/jesus.html)
Carlos Gonzalez, from Indiana (Bloomington, specifically), is the sole perpetrator of Russian Tsarcasm. If the sheer fantasticness (made it up) of this moniker doesn't urge you to download or buy my life..., you have no appreciation for wit, and frankly, i think a little less of you. Just thought you should know. Carlos is also in Byron House (Cephia's Treat darlings), Hepatitus Youth (see Byron House), Crotch Council, DKG Sleep Trio and assuredly others. He also puts out other people's music (as well as his own) on his Kinky Noise label.
Yay, a polarizing tape. This one, more so than his Kinky Noise released photography is for assholes, will divide listeners. Photography seemed a bit more experimental and loose sounding, while My Life Is as Natural as My Grip on the Machete is cemented in structure. Don't mistake structure for conventionality, this is not that. If there's anything that you might not like, it'd be Carlos' creepy, nasally, plaintively spoken vocals. Personally, I think they're fucking great. He could easily pass for (Anticon hip-hopper) Dose-one's younger brother. Additionally, the lyrics are very repetitious and have the distinct air of free association. You won't find any insight with "scent of the woman, scent of the unknown planet, keep it, i can't afford it", but you'll be amused. I am anyway.
On the topic of instrumentation, this is lo-fi, bedroom something or other. Expect a guitar, a sparingly used trumpet (maybe? what do I look like, a musician?) and a source of simple percussion, amongst a few other instruments. It's those repetitious guitar chords and mysterious percussive sounds that'll stay with you. Well, that and the vocal + lyrics combo, obviously. "I touched a dude. I washed his hands," the lyrics are a huge selling point. Carlos is also showing off a great ear for production with the spot-on layering job, panning and multi-tracked vocals. For a guy fucking around on a guitar, four-track, and not much else, I couldn't be happier. When you actually pay attention to the total package, you'll find that the sound is quite full and busy, without there feeling like too much is going on at once. Russian Tsarcasm has a unique approach, and it's paying off well for Carlos on this particular tape. Pretty damned catchy in parts, too. (Smooth Assailing blog)
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Saturday, October 13
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-463-3213
$8, 18+, doors at 9pm
Upsilon Acrux (brutal prog from LA, Cuneiform/Planaria)
TWIN (post-punk/progressive homocore from NYC, formerly King Cobra, ex-The Need/Kicking Giant)
Opines (mem. of Barkitecture)
Always (solonoise from Australia)
Upsilon Acrux
http://www.meszlermedia.com/upsilonacrux/ (http://www.meszlermedia.com/upsilonacrux/)
http://www.myspace.com/upsilonacrux (http://www.myspace.com/upsilonacrux)
Los Angeles-based Upsilon Acrux is among the best of the young bands (The Flying Luttenbachers, Hella, Ahleuchatistas) transforming punk rock's landscape, reinvigorating punk's physically powerful, aggressive and speed-driven sound by infusing it with a compositional intensity and technical prowess long associated with various forms of metal (speedcore, technical metal, thrash) and progressive rock. In Upsilon Acrux's hands, this sonic fusion results in an explosive new music that is both exhilarating and abstract. While the band cites an encyclopedic array of influences -- everything from progressive and math rock (Henry Cow, King Crimson, Magma, Univers Zero, The Muffins, The Ruins, The Flying Luttenbachers, Zappa, Don Caballero); Krautrock (Faust, Neu!, Kraftwerk); metal and death metal (Morbid Angel, Necrophagist, Meshuggah, Frederick Thordendal's Special Defects); the energy and spirituality of jazz and free jazz (John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and The Mahavishnu Orchestra); and more (This Heat, Nels Cline) -- and proclaims "any version of Magma" as its "favorite rock band ever" -- its music is not derivative of, nor directly comparable to, any one band -- or any pre-established genre. An abstract tapestry of complex and hyperkinetic instrumental sound, Upsilon Acrux's music is composed of disparate elements, dissonance and unexpected time changes daringly interwoven with, and/or punctuated by, beautiful and accessible melodies.
The band's fifth album, Galapagos Momentum (Cuneiform Records) features 41 minutes of aggressive, intricate, athletic and composed post-punk instrumental rock contained on 10 tracks. It should attract listeners from across the broad spectrum of "non-slacker" music -- fans of everything from punk rock to classical minimalism, death metal to Neu!, Captain Beefheart to The Flying Luttenbachers, King Crimson to Koenjihyakkei, Magma to Orthrelm, Don Caballero to Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Ruins to Hella and Ahleuchatistas.
TWIN
http://www.wearetwin.com/ (http://www.wearetwin.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/wearetwin (http://www.myspace.com/wearetwin)
TWIN (formerly known as King Cobra, who released records on Kill Rock Stars and Troubleman), from Olympia WA, is the most recent art-band project of seminal Riot Grrl artist/musician Rachel Carns (ex-The Need/Kicking Giant). Carns rose to fame in the late '90s in Olympia's nationally recognized feminist/queer/punk scene working with Miranda July, Radio Sloan and Chainsaw Records. She gained the attention of Time Magazine and was selected as part of Salon.com's Real Life Rock Top 10 in 2000. Her recent project, TWIN, has been described as "lesbian math rock," "homo-core," and "post-punk progressive."
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Upcoming shows:
Sunday 10/14 @ Velvet Lounge: Pup Tent/Mannequin Men (Flameshovel, garage-punk from Chicago)/Bunnyranch (Portuguese garage rock) $8, doors at 9pm
Tuesday 10/16 @ Velvet Lounge: The Mantras/A Decent Animal/Dennis Kane/Noise Vendors $7, doors at 9pm
Wednesday 10/17 @ Velvet Lounge: Gongzilla (ex-Gong)
Thursday 10/18 @ Velvet Lounge: Yellow Swans (Load Records)/Mouthus (Ecstatic Peace/Troubleman/Important)/Insect Factory $8, doors at 9pm, 18+!
And the Free Folk Phantasmagory IV, featuring Damo Suzuki of Can with Kohoutek, October 20-22 (details and descriptions coming soon):
Saturday, October 20
611 Florida Ave NW WDC
http://www.claviusproductions.org (http://www.claviusproductions.org)
202-360-9739
4pm, $5 suggested donation
BYOW!
Douglas Ferguson (Austin, experimental solo guitar)
Venison Whirled (Austin, ex-Brave Combo/ST-37, experimental solo percussion)
Jonathan Horne (Austin, experimental solo guitar)
Jason Simon (DC, singer/guitarist of Dead Meadow)
Chris Grier (DC, solo experimental guitar, mem. of To Live and Shave in L.A./Ultimate VAG)
Aunt Dracula (Philly psych in the vein of Animal Collective/Excepter)
Jorge Martins (Baltimore, mem. of Harrius, solo experimental guitar)
Eric Franklin (Baltimore, solo theremin/strings/percussion)
Great White Jenkins (Richmond folk-psych ensemble)
Facemat (DC improv psych/noise, mem. of Kohoutek)
Google Earth (Richmond percussion/Gameboy ensemble)
Twilight Memories of the Three Suns (DC improv psych/noise collective)
Stymphalian Birds & White Stags (DC experimental solo bass, a la Thrones)
True Womanhood (DC folk-psych duo)
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Sunday, October 21
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, 21+, doors at 9pm
Sic Alps (San Francisco folk-psych-garage, Animal Disguise, mem. of Hospitals, ex-Ropers/Henry's Dress)
Violet (DC, solo electronics, Zero Moon Records)
Guy de Bievre (Belgium, avant-garde composer/Phill Niblock collaborator/experimental solo lap steel)
Sequence Chair (DC/Philly improv psych, percussion/electronics/tapes ensemble)
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Monday, October 22
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$12, 21+, doors at 9pm
Damo Suzuki (of CAN) w/ Kohoutek
The Sounds of Kaleidsocope (DC/Philly fuzzed-out psych-pop)
Carlos Giffoni/John Wiese/Spencer Yeh (improv noise electronics/violin/vocals trio, mem. of Monotract/Bastard Noise/Burning Star Core)
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Conflicts this and next month are ridiculous.
Unfortunate for those of us who want to see 2-4 shows on the same night but great for the music scene here as a whole.
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yeah, one conflict that really sucks: jesu/torche vs yellow swans/mouthus. another: boris/damon & naomi vs stinking lizaveta/wooly mammoth.
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Free Folk Phantasmagory night 2 V. witchcraft V. Rodrigo Y Gabriela V. Castanets is another.
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Clavius Productions presents:
Thursday, October 18
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, 18+, doors at 9pm
Yellow Swans (psych/drone/noise duo, Load Records)
Mouthus (NYC noise-rock guitar/drums duo, Ecstatic Peace/Troubleman/Important Records)
Insect Factory (DC improv psych-drone)
Yellow Swans
http://www.jyrk.com/yellowswans/ (http://www.jyrk.com/yellowswans/)
Yellow Swans play a constantly evolving mass of psychedelic noise that is both physically arresting and psychically liberating. Their music is a powerful rendering of free rock, black electronics, and white light vibrations. Consisting of Pete Swanson (vocals, drum machine, and electronics) and Gabriel Mindel Saloman (guitars, feedback, electronics), Yellow Swans create a dense ocean of sound using various analog and digital machines, all locked in a spiraling web of feedback. Yellow Swans, having spent two years in Oakland, CA, are based once again in Portland, OR, where they originally formed in the Fall of 2001. They have just finished a year in which they toured the USA, the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and are about to embark on their 3rd US tour in the Fall of 2006. They have also just released their second studio album, Psychic Secession, on Load Records.
Mouthus
http://www.ecstaticpeace.com/mouthus.php (http://www.ecstaticpeace.com/mouthus.php)
Mouthus is duo Brian Sullivan and Nate Nelson of Brooklyn and they absolutely destroy, fuzzing minds wherever they blow. Super psyche-snarled feedback guitar and overload drum squall w/ hep sick-wave edge. A brain-gouged cross of Manowar head implosion and New York dustbomb detonation. Total surf skum blooze drone.
"Somewhere between electronic noise, drone and psychedelic rock, you will find the Brooklyn duo, Mouthus, coiled and ready to strike. On Loam, Brian Sullivan's impenetrable guitar stirs your emotions and Nate Nelson bangs a primeval beat that pounds through your chest to your very being. Sinister vocal sounds on 'Must Anubis' threaten to spin you back to your caveman past. The movement of sound from chaos to structure is Venus emerging, not from the ocean, but from primordial ooze, then melting back into the goo." (Forced Exposure)
Insect Factory
http://www.insectfields.org (http://www.insectfields.org)
http://www.myspace.com/insectfactory (http://www.myspace.com/insectfactory)
Insect Factory is the project of minimalist sounds from guitarist Jeff Barsky. His playing explores subtle and detailed textures with acute
attention to overall composition, creating hypnotic fields of dense sound. Barsky frequently adds additional minimal instrumentation to Insect Factory performances. In the mid '90s, Barsky studied classical guitar and composition for several years at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut. Barsky also currently plays with the DC improv band Kohoutek, which combines elements of abtract noise, heavy rhythms, free jazz, and psychedelic rock. In addition to having collaborated onstage with avant-trumpeter Forbes Graham and bass player Joe Lally (FUGAZI), his various projects have performed on bills with acts as diverse as Kayo Dot, Mazen Kerbaj, Peter Wright, Bardo Pond, Double Leopards, Charalambides, and Carla Bozulich, and he has performed with Kohoutek at Suoni Il Per Popolo festival in Montreal. Barsky also co-runs Insect Fields cd-r, which serves as an outlet for musical projects he is involved with, as well as his contemporaries.
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Clavius Productions presents:
Thursday, November 1
611 Florida
http://www.claviusproductions.org (http://www.claviusproductions.org)
8pm, $5 suggested donation
202-360-9739 for info
BYOW!
Mike Tamburo (Music Fellowship/New American Folk Hero, Pittsburgh experimental fingerpicker, ex-Meisha/Arco Flute Foundation)
Horseback (heavy drone from NC)
Kuschty Rye Ergot (DC improv psych, ex-Redeemers, mem. of Kohoutek)
Mike Tamburo
http://www.miketamburo.com/ (http://www.miketamburo.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/miketamburo (http://www.myspace.com/miketamburo)
Hello, I was born on March 30, 1977 in New Kensington, PA. When I was around 15 months old I was diagnosed with Otitis Media. My ears had filled with fluid and I was unable to hear correctly for several months. I had surgery and was sent to ear specialists that introduced me to the world of test tones and perceptual challenges.
Music has always been a part of my life. My father played guitar and sang me Beatles songs and sometimes his own self penned songs when I was young. My Grandmother and Aunt also played piano and sang Italian influenced songs. They all seemed happiest or at least at peace when they were playing music. I guess perhaps through imitation I decided I wanted to play music as well. For as long as I can remember I was playing something, hitting something, making some kind of noise. I first started out playing chord organ and toy xylophone. I can still remember holding out long tones on the chord organ. I remember that I loved to just hold down the chord buttons for as long as I could. Oddly enough one of my first musical performances was for Ralph Nader. I was probably around 5. My mother was doing a video interview with him. I was on the floor underneath them banging on my toy xylophone. I doubt he was impressed. In school I took up clarinet and played with the school band. At the time I hated it, but now looking back I realize that I learned the fundamentals of music on a B Flat clarinet.
Aside from various art projects I took up, I don't remember ever wanting to do much other than just being in a band. I started my first one when I was 13 or 14. I met some local kids that were playing together. I ended up singing for them. We were called Lurch. A very strange, I guess emo-type, band that included a bass player with a hunchback. This went on for a few years, until guitarist Chris Pecoraro and I decided we wanted to be a little freer and more experimental. I was still singing and I took up drums. Chris still played the guitar. This became Eskimo 88. We did this for the rest of our high school careers. We recorded and released to cassettes Open Your Ears and Hear a Sound and Inside Outside.
In 1995 I went away to Edinboro University. Instead of going to class I spent all of my time reading and writing music. I decided to try to learn the guitar. I made over 200 recordings of myself trying to learn the guitar. I was reading as many books on 20th century composition that I could find and then after trying to figure out what it all meant, I tried to apply it to guitar.
I dropped out of school at the end of the semester. I came back to Pittsburgh and started playing with Ken Camden and Brian Camphire. This was the start of Meisha. Shortly after Brian left, Pete Spynda joined. We recorded several times and released Meisha, Meisha Returns, Meisha Forever, The First Lessons in New Era Time: The Universal Orchestra of Pituitary Knowledge Sing Om to the Disturbed Onlookers, Who were Meisha and Robin Anyway?, The Fourth Lesson In New Era Time: The Republic of Meisha, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, Meisha Machine Music, and A Celebration of Life.
I returned to Edinboro University to study and make films. While there Pete Spynda and I formed Arco Flute Foundation with Matt McDowell, Rob Dingman and Jeff Komara. We recorded and released The Second Lesson in New Era Time Exploring the Possibilities of New Wave Villains; And What of Boy?, The Third Lesson in New Era Time: Running Slow-Motion Marathons With Purple Rejoice; Who Killed the Party House?, Everything After The Bomb Is Sci-Fi, Everything After Everything Is The Bomb Is Sci-Fi, I Ate Tony Conrad's Pierogies, The Fifth Lesson in New Era Time: The Unconsciousness of Yukon Steve. We also created a new system of time that was 3 hours and 14 minutes behind Eastern Standard Time.
Both bands did several tours and imploded leaving the shattered ashes for all to see. I now play alone and am always recording, painting, making films and video, listening to music, studying Enthobotany, thinking or watching T.V.
Horseback
http://www.myspace.com/horsebacknoise (http://www.myspace.com/horsebacknoise)
Fuzz-washed, blessed drone.
"Drone records are a dime a dozen these days. Not that we don't love drone records, we do. In fact, often we're way too easy on the purveyors of drone, since the very essence of that sound, is so simple, and yet so completely satisfying to listen to. A guitar against the amp, a handful of keys on a keyboard held down, a loop cycled over and over and over, almost any sound smeared into a near static drift, we could listen to that stuff forever, and often do. But it's the rare drone record that uses the drone as just the jumping off point, as a foundation upon which to build a fragile and ephemeral structure of minimal melody and movement, instead of the beginning AND end. Stars Of The Lid are a good example, as is William Basinski, Tim Hecker and a handful of others.
Horseback too. We were sent this disc out of the blue and immediately fell in love. Only later to discover that this was the work of a faithful AQ mailorder customer by the name of Jenks Miller! Small world. Horseback is most definitely a drone record, but manages to incorporate plenty of not specifically drone-like sounds. At once massive and dense, dark and distorted, but also ephemeral and airy, soaring and dreamlike. The root of the sound is a guitar, or guitars, allowed to reverberate and ring out, unfurling billowing clouds of distorted buzz and whir, that settles on the speaker like a thick blanket of snow, glistening and blinding, but at the same time warm and enveloping. The guitars pulse and swell, melodies drifting in and out, streaks of feedback, all wound up into a huge softly roiling glowing orb of sound. It's almost unfair to call this a drone record, as it's so lush, and rich, and full of motion, sprawling out like some sort of sonic sunrise, the sounds gradually changing color, everything shifting and shimmering and transforming subtly as the record progresses. So much more than just a simple 'drone' record. In fact, it's easy to hear Galaxie 500, Spacemen 3, Loop, Flying Saucer Attack, that sort of spaced out doped up drift, all smeared into Horseback's haunting sun dappled world of slow burning sound. Elsewhere piano drifts amidst the dense guitar swells, and rhythms are provided by pulsing guitars and various sounds beating against one another. Vocals hover way below the surface, barely audible, but adding another layer of lilting mystery, near the end, the guitars peel back gradually revealing a blurry expanse of swirling cymbals and splattery free jazz percussion, all spread out into a buzzy sizzling swirl, over which the final haunting piano notes drift and fade. So gorgeous. Absolutely one of our favorite new records, a practically perfect fade-out-drift-off-drone-dream-disc, and quite an auspicious start for this brand new label..." --Aquarius Records (New Arrivals 270, July 2007)
??'Finale' is a pretty brazen debut for Chapel Hill noisician Jenks Miller, an ebow-chugging mix of ever-overlapping drones and shimmering squall. Calling it 'Finale' ??- even though it??s the first track on the record -?? was as obvious a choice as, say, 'Exit Music (For A Film)' or 'Ascension.'" (9/10) --Paper Thin Walls (March 2007)
"Miller's attention to detail is astonishing as he builds and deconstructs his instrumental tales. The songs lull you into a blissful dream-like state before slowly bringing you back into consciousness." --Sound as Language
"Though it be noise, it isn't abrasive. [Its] atonality becomes a densely layered blanket that sweeps over the listener heavily, but without smothering. The faintest hints of a melody seep through the fog from time to time, like the remnants of a pleasantly remembered dream." --The Daily Tarheel (June 2007)
"A compelling effort to say the least, as the space of these songs provide for enough personal feeling to ensure a connection, be it in a live setting or repeated spins of this album." --N/A Reviews (October 2007)
Kuschty Rye Ergot
http://www.myspace.com/kuschtyryeergot (http://www.myspace.com/kuschtyryeergot)
Kuschty Rye Ergot is the new project from long-time DC area multi-instrumentalist/vocalist John Stanton. A collective as opposed to a fixed lineup, performances range from drifty slowburn Popol Vuh-ish watercolour solo guitar/synth constructs to full blown ensemble sonic exhaust blasts, along with occasional stripped down acoustic folk musings. Elements of many of Stanton's wide-ranging previous efforts (Redeemers, Cash Slave Clique, Nik Turner/Harvey Bainbridge of Hawkwind, Spaceseed, Promise Breakers, Cotton & Billawtm) are in evidence, refracted via a prism of spatial folk, electronics, and whatever else the lineup du jour shakes loose from their collective tree. A universe where Ronnie Lane and COB channel Dome and Peter Hammill? You decide.
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Clavius Productions presents kicks off 2008 with a couple of experimental and entertaining shows:
Thursday, January 3
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9pm, 18+
Jason Ajemian (solo bass performance, mem. of Born Heller/Chicago Underground Trio/Exploding Star Orchestra/Dragons 1976/Mandarin Movie)
PRV Trio (guitars/percussion improv, mem. of Kohoutek/Janel & Anthony)
Layne Garrett (of Cutest Puppy in the World)
Jason Ajemian
http://www.myspace.com/lovealloverit (http://www.myspace.com/lovealloverit)
http://www.sundmagi.com/ (http://www.sundmagi.com/)
Acoustic bassist Jason Ajemian is one of the members of the underground music scene in Chicago, playing a variety of creative improvised, noise, and experimental musics based in rock and jazz. He is a graduate of the William Patterson College in New Jersey, where he studied with bassist Rufus Reid and percussionist Kevin Norton. Arriving in Chicago in the fall of 2000, Ajemian embraced the then-burgeoning progressive music community. Ajemian also vocalizes and utilizes electronics. His dizzying number of credits include work with Rob Mazurek, the Exploding Star Orchestra, Dragons 1976, Lay All Over It, Born Heller, Matt Bauder, Ken Vandermark's Crisis Ensemble, Who Cares How Long You Sink, Triage, Mandarin Movie, The Chicago Underground Trio, and countless others. (Michael G. Nastos, All Music Guide)
Layne Garrett
http://www.myspace.com/lostspaces (http://www.myspace.com/lostspaces)
Layne Garrett's sounds are wide-ranging, from swallow-you-whole improvised noise freak-outs to unnervingly patient, shimmering compositions. Elements include: prepared and re-tuned guitars,
found-object percussion, thumb piano, field recordings, brutish bass clarinet, shaky voice, live sampling/processing, drift, collapse,
transformation. Lately, Garrett's solo performances have centered around extended finger-style acoustic guitar compositions in weird tunings.
Garrett lives in Washington DC and plays in the improv duo The Cutest Puppy in the World. He has received grants from the American Composers Forum and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He has performed regionally and nationally and has several recordings available on the DC-based Sockets label, as well as forthcoming releases on New American Folk Hero. His recordings have been praised by the likes of Wire, Terrascope, Fakejazz, Foxy Digitalis, Free103point9, and Arthur.
"Patient cosmo-dronez with ear juice acoustic guitar improvisations and just fine clackery." (Thurston Moore/Byron Coley, Arthur Magazine)
"He obviously understands sound (as well as some of the required tools) enough to push his compositions/ experiments well beyond what might be comfortable and commonplace into the realm of new and challenging. What really elevates 'Space Superiority' above many of its contemporaries is that it sounds like Garrett is having a really good time making noise. He is obviously very serious about what he is doing, but allows levity and celebration to be the motivating force for the music." (Chris Jacques, Foxy Digitalis)
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Friday, January 4
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, doors at 9pm, 18+
Satanized (Philly theatrical spaz-prog, Badmaster Records, mem. of Normal Love/Dynamite Club)
The Acid Achievers (long-running DC-area improv troupe sans Alzo, last show for a while!)
plus:
Mugu Guymen (treated drum-based duo, hyping up free improv, bringing freshness to outerworldlyness via Nigerian email scams via kalimba + contact mic + synth + drum)
http://www.myspace.com/muguguymen (http://www.myspace.com/muguguymen)
Dick Neff (one-man drum-beating circuit-bent noise excitement machine)
http://www.myspace.com/burzee (http://www.myspace.com/burzee)
Important Eagle (inspired soul sure to please true peoples)
http://www.myspace.com/themnatives (http://www.myspace.com/themnatives)
These four individuals are involved in many happenings such as THEM NATIVES band, SOUNDS FROM THE POCKET label, AC TEMPLE house venue, SILVER REICH band, BLAK CASL house venue, THE ASHTON VELVET ROCK CLUB RECORDING COMPANY label, EYEDRUM art + music gallery, RATWARD art hostile, NO-FI noise group, and BLACKBLACKS noise ensemble.
Satanized
http://www.myspace.com/thetruesatanized (http://www.myspace.com/thetruesatanized)
http://www.badmasterrecords.com (http://www.badmasterrecords.com)
Satanized is a chaotic noise-rock band from Philadelphia, PA consisting of guitar, bass, drums, turntable and vocals. Scathing treble frequencies and heavy rhythms, alternately slicing and pummeling the listener, are made all the more freakish sounding by occasional moments of high musical complexity occurring amidst the assault.
??Surface versus content is intrinsic to the Satanized sound, disguising musical complexity within an overall primitive aesthetic. Where dissonance is traditionally utilized to create musical tension towards a consonant resolution, Satanized brings dissonance to the fore, revealing a sometimes primitive and sometimes complex, but always harsh sonic texture that is most likely perceived as being somewhat more akin to noise. To put it another way, it's all tension without the resolution. That outwardly primitive feel is enhanced by Gaspar's blunt bellows and Angevine's knack for providing accentuation that manages to provide a steady, headbangable rhythm while punctuating the swarming nuances of the guitar/bass interaction. It also provides uniformity to a batch of music that otherwise lacks it. What's nice about Satanized is that because it has this omnipresent treble going on, it's pretty easy to take music that's not really all that similar and make it work within this certain aesthetic context.? (Philadelphia Weekly, Shaun Brady
Satanized??s first show was on 06/06/06. Since then, they have performed with Pissed Jeans, Dan Deacon, Aids Wolf, The Flying Luttenbachers, Magik Markers, Old Time Relijun, To Live and Shave in LA, QUI, Clockcleaner, White Mice, Child Abuse, Neptune, Athletic Automaton, The Mai Shi, Night Wounds, Blood Baby, WZT Hearts, and many others.
Members of SATANIZED have collaborated and/or recorded with various folks including: RUINS, David Grubbs (Gastr del Sol), Kayo Dot, Book of Knots, Dynamite Club, NORMAL LOVE, Make A Rising, Pauline Oliveros, Norbert Möslang (Voice Crack), Dr. Dog, XthoughtstreamsX, Ensemble (Montreal - Bjork collaborater), illuminea, and many many more.
The Acid Achievers
http://www.nutmusic.com (http://www.nutmusic.com)
http://www.myspace.com/alzoboszormenyiandtheacidachievers (http://www.myspace.com/alzoboszormenyiandtheacidachievers)
DC improvising rock band once called a "Northern VA version of The Fall", also heavily influenced by Sun Ra, Funkadelic, Gong, Can, etc. 7-piece group includes two guitars, bass, drums, keyboard and theremin.
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Sunday, January 6
Velvet Lounge
915 U Street NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9pm, 21+
Screen Vinyl Image (DC shoegaze electro-rock, ex-Alcian Blue, Safranin Sound)
28 Degrees Taurus (Boston shoegaze)
Teething Veils (DC, mem. of The Antiques, ex-Revolt/Still/Union Suit)
http://www.myspace.com/teethingveils (http://www.myspace.com/teethingveils)
Screen Vinyl Image
http://www.myspace.com/screenvinylimage (http://www.myspace.com/screenvinylimage)
"Sometimes a sound, a groove, a beat, a rhythm, a crank and grind...just comes running at you like a Japanese bullet train in a hurry and on fire. It just plunges at you, layer after layer, and sits in your ears and demands to be put on repeat for days and days. You begin to see life as a 1967 test pattern on a B&W TV set (through a haze of cheap cigarette smoke). This is the case with the track below, the lead song from a new EP by the band Screen Vinyl Image (who are J. Sequential and Electra Blue). The sound is a disturbed
landscape, an alien-infested and acid-tinged one, that takes you straight (backwards or forwards?) to a moment where kraut-rock makes love to the world and everyone, by troika-endorsed law, can only communicate in signs and symbols and must possess at least three LPs, each, by Can and Suicide (playing them backwards, in week-to-
week cycles, whilst wearing VU dark sunglasses, a dangerous attitude and a wicked pout). This is my music of choice. I'm simply blown away. In fact, it's the best sound I've heard since playing this
album for the first of many times. Live shows are forthcoming, check the links below. Happy Revolution Day, comrades." (And Before the First Kiss)
28 Degress Taurus
http://www.sonicbids.com/28degreestaurus (http://www.sonicbids.com/28degreestaurus)
http://www.myspace.com/28degreestaurus (http://www.myspace.com/28degreestaurus)
"explosive, intense, dreamy, ultra romantic neo-psychedelia that walks the thin line between darkness and light...there is a sharp separation between our studio world and our live world. the records are dreamy, intimate and romantic pieces that sit somewhere between a Slowdive record and a Japanese folk-song. the live shows are a loud, ultra high energy, psychedelic, noisey, chaotic freak out session."
"It's as though Mirah joined a bubblegum rock group. The spacey, ambient pop is loaded with guitarist/songwriter Jinsen's reverb, melding perfectly with the eerie voice of Karina Dacosta. Drums and a good bit of tambourine from percussionist Kyle Courcy complete this unique sound. The band's melodies also possess this strong tinge of the unexpected, as exemplified by the traditional Asian sounds layered over the Sonic Youth-influenced keyboard/guitar interplay. The band is able to balance meandering Asian melodies with irreverent, sarcastic ?? even vulgar ?? lyrics. Either quality has the potential for being obnoxious, but 28 Degrees Taurus is able
to play them off one another with charming sincerity. In keeping with the band's eclectic influences, the album is equally suited to being the soundtrack to a drinking night with friends as it is to a quiet night of personal introspection. (Self-released)
(Kate Cole, Northeast Performer Magazine, June 2007)
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Upcoming at Velvet Lounge:
Tuesday 1/8: FFFFs (Sockets)/Pacific Before Tiger/Broken Connection (mem. of Northern Valentine)/Field Shaman
Wednesday 1/9: Gestures/Terrior Bute/Big Fun/Adventure
Friday 1/11: Soft People (featuring Eric Carbonara)/Begushkin (Locust)/Dark Sea Dream
Wednesday 1/16: Little Women (Sockets)/Twilight Memories of the Three Suns/Thee Ultimate VAG/Serfs
Friday 1/18: Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra Arkestra!) & Elliott Levin, more TBA
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TONIGHT! Clavius Productions presents:
Friday, January 11
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, doors at 9pm, 18+
Soft People (Philly psych-pop, featuring Eric Carbonara)
Begushkin (Locust, NYC experimental psych-folk with an Eastern influence)
Kuschty Rye Ergot (DC improv psych, ex-Redeemers, mem. of Kohoutek)
Dark Sea Dream (VA psych, ex-VOG)
Soft People
http://www.softpeoplemusic.com/ (http://www.softpeoplemusic.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/softpeople (http://www.myspace.com/softpeople)
Formed in the winter of 2007,this West Philly band combines the lyrical wit and cynicism of Ray Davies, Mayo Thompson and Frank Zappa with the fluid musical versatility of Lee Hazlewood,Can, Os Mutantes, and various international reactions to the psychedelic, garageand prog rock explosion. Zach Sulat (vocals,guitar), Matt Ricchini (drums,vocals), and Michael Heinzer (bass) spent five years refining their songwriting, performance, free improvisation, and communal-living tensions as members of The Doctor & Philip and Burrs. Eric Carbonara (guitar), a solo musician with a record released recently on Locust Music??s Wooden Guitar series joined them to form Soft People.
Soft People have shared the stage with Damo Suzuki's Network, Dirty Projectors, Jennifer Gentle, The Dodos, Birds of Maya, Stinking Lizaveta, Castanets, Shapes and Sizes, Alec K Redfearn, Madagascar, Anup Pradhan, Lizz King, Whales and Cops, Public Record, Mike Tamburro, members of the Teeth and the Spinto band, and others.
Begushkin
http://www.myspace.com/begushkin (http://www.myspace.com/begushkin)
"Amidst layers of circular, minor-key guitar passages and a full band which includes instruments like violin, accordion and singing saw, Smith colors his stark songs with rich imagery that's just surreal enough to keep things from being too dirge-y. His throaty waiver and lyrical abstractions are actually reminiscent of Destroyer's Dan Bejar, only Smith seems to be reaching for many of the same trad-folk songbooks that Will Oldham goes to, as opposed to Bejar's well-worn copy of Hunky Dory. Unlike either of the two, however, Begushkin's songs twist through more exotic locales, be it tip-toed flirtations with Gypsy music during "Stroll With Me" or the Middle Eastern-inspired guitar snaking through "Hearth Light of Our Home." (Other Music)
"A good all-killer-no-filler folk album is hard to come by, but Dan Smith has aimed for the dark forests of the night and hit the ghoulish-looking trees on every shot." (Audiversity)
"Dan Smith makes Richard Thompson sound like Lou Christie. Smith isn't a basso profundo or anything like that. His style is conversational, but he sounds like he's making grave pronouncements about dark doings in bleak places." (andmoreagain)
Begushkin is the project of multi-instrumentalist Brooklynite Dan Smith & a cadre of merry friends:
Stephanie Rabbins - violin, backing vocals
Stephan Ryskewitch - guitar, bass, backing vocals
Dan Smith - vocals, guitar, bass, mandolin, piano, percussions
Cynthia Hopkins - accordion, saw, backing vocals
Josh Saltzman - drum set
live performance by Begushkin: http://keepingscoreathome.com/?p=295 (http://keepingscoreathome.com/?p=295)
Kuschty Rye Ergot
http://www.myspace.com/kuschtyryeergot (http://www.myspace.com/kuschtyryeergot)
Kuschty Rye Ergot is the new project from long-time DC area multi-instrumentalist/vocalist John Stanton. A collective as opposed to a fixed lineup, performances range from drifty slowburn Popol Vuh-ish watercolour solo guitar/synth constructs to full blown ensemble sonic exhaust blasts, along with occasional stripped down acoustic folk musings. Elements of many of Stanton's wide-ranging previous efforts (Redeemers, Cash Slave Clique, Nik Turner/Harvey Bainbridge of Hawkwind, Spaceseed, Promise Breakers, Cotton & Billawtm) are in evidence, refracted via a prism of spatial folk, electronics, and whatever else the lineup du jour shakes loose from their collective tree. A universe where Ronnie Lane and COB channel Dome and Peter Hammill? You decide.
Dark Sea Dream
http://www.myspace.com/darkseadream (http://www.myspace.com/darkseadream)
Northern Virginia trio (two guitars and drums) playing atmospheric psych, combining elements of fuzzed-out shoegaze, epic post-metal, and noise-rock. One of the best new bands in the DC area.
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Upcoming:
Wednesday 1/16: Little Women (Sockets, mem. of Zs/Owl Sounds, NYC no-wave free-jazz skronk)/Twilight Memories of the Three Suns (DC improv)/Thee Ultimate VAG (DC improv, mem. of Kohoutek/To Live and Shave in L.A.)/Serfs (UK solo experimental guitar) $7, doors at 9pm, 18+
Friday 1/18: Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra Arkestra!) & Elliott Levin w/ members of Kohoutek & Barkitecture, more TBA $10, doors at 9pm, 18+
Monday 1/28: Cash Slave Clique w/ Ginger Wagg/Drums Like Machine Guns (Philly noise)/Echolalia (solo theremin, mem. of The Acid Achievers) $7, doors at 9pm, 21+
Saturday 2/2: A Sunny Day in Glasgow/Screen Vinyl Image/The Offering/Twin Earth $8, doors at 9pm, 18+
Tuesday 2/5: Tetuzi Akiyama (Japan, solo experimental guitar)/Josef van Wissem (Netherlands, solo experimental lute)/Max Ochs $8, doors at 9pm, 21+
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Clavius Productions presents:
Wednesday, January 16
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9pm, 18+
Little Women (NYC no-wave free-jazz skronk, mem. of Zs, Sockets)
Thee Ultimate VAG (DC guitar/percussion improv, mem. of Kohoutek/To Live and Shave in L.A.)
Twilight Memories of the Three Suns (DC improv)
Serfs (UK solo experimental guitar improv)
Little Women
http://www.myspace.com/littlewomensounds (http://www.myspace.com/littlewomensounds)
Little Women "has a very genuine raucousness. Also though there's a gorgeous sense of structure. The band -- two saxophones, guitar and drums -- works a lot with these sort of fanfare-type themes, often with jagged, proggy rhythms. For the improvisations, the band atomizes, constantly splitting up into different mini groups. The guitarist Ben Greenberg plays with a crazy snarling tone and extreme volume, giving the music a real attack feel, and the saxophonists just completely go for it as well. Tenor player Travis Laplante has an absolutely huge sound, with an apocalyptic-free-jazz meets R&B kind of vibe. The set ended with this amazing coda: the two saxophonists -- the other being the excellent Darius Jones -- took off their mouthpieces and just started basically ranting/moaning/emoting into their horns, using the keys to fuck with the sound. It was unsettling and beautiful." (Hank Shteamer, Time Out NY)
Members of Little Women have recorded and/or performed with Mark Dresser, Cooper-Moore, Mat Maneri, Extra Life, Joe Morris, Dave Liebman, Anthony Braxton, The Fugue, Trevor Dunn, Gerry Hemingway, Zs, Jim Black, George Garzone, Matt Wilson, and Michael Formanek among many others.
Thee Ultimate VAG
http://www.claviusproductions.org (http://www.claviusproductions.org)
http://www.myspace.com/accidentswithmagnets (http://www.myspace.com/accidentswithmagnets)
Hazy ambiguous melodies as imagined by axeslinger Chris Grier (To Live and Shave in L.A./Sean McArdle Band/ex-Mungo Jerry) and skinpounder Scott Verrastro (Kohoutek/Insect Factory/Sequence Chair/Kuschty Rye Ergot/PRV Trio/ex-Stryper). Examining the ghettoes and rural wastelands of America, this duo contructs melancholic odes to ancient Peruvian deities translated to these modern, godless times. Bring a pen and some paper, for a new chapter in the Rock Bible shall be written.
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Clavius Productions is proud to present the return of original Sun Ra Arkestra member Marshall Allen to DC. Joining the 83-year-old legend will be Philly stalwart Elliott Levin (sax/flute/vocals), Kohoutek members Scott Verrastro (percussion) and Damian Languell, and upright bassist Brit Powell of Barkitecture. Space will be the place Friday night in DC:
Friday, January 18
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$10, doors at 9pm, 18+
Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra Arkestra!) w/ Extra Terrestrial Guests Elliott Levin, Scott Verrastro, Brit Powell, and more
Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind (DC free-jazz)
Marshall Allen
After joining the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1958, Marshall Allen (alto saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, bandleader, arranger) led Sun Ra Arkestra's formidable reed section for over 40 years. As a featured soloist with the Arkestra, he pioneered the avant-garde jazz movement of the early 60s. Marshall was one of the first jazz musicians to play traditional African music and what is now called "world music." He is featured on over 200 Sun Ra releases, as well as appearing with Phish, Sonic Youth, Digable Planets, Medeski Martin & Wood, et al. Marshall assumed the helm of the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1995 and continues to reside at the Sun Ra Residence in Philadelphia, composing, writing and arranging.
Elliott Levin
Elliott Levin (flutes, saxophones, words) was born and raised in Philadelphia, pursuing early studies with Michael Guerra (legendary saxist/clarinetist of Philadelphia Orchestra under Stokowski); and composer/flutist Claire Polin (collaborator with flute innovater William Kincaid). For Elliott, studies with masters- pianist/improvisor/composer Cecil Taylor; and later with saxophonist/improviser/composer Odean Pope-led to long time relationships of performing and recording with their ensembles. A member of many groups in Philly/NYC area over the past 30 years, he has continued to work with his own ensembles as well.
Scott Verrastro
Drummer/percussionist Scott Verrastro utilizes a plethora of sticks, brushes, bells, shakers, cymbals and gongs, metal, contact mics, and household items -- in addition to a traditional drum kit -- to coax a wide palette of sounds. Verrastro received a degree in music literature from Northeastern University in Boston and continues to examine many forms of music, including all styles of improvisation and traditional folk. His main percussion influences are Milford Graves, Rashied and Muhammed Ali, Sunny Murray, Han Bennink, Jaki Liebezeit, Bill Bruford and Jamie Muir on Larks' Tongues in Aspic, and yes, even John Bonham, Bill Ward, Keith Moon, and Nick Mason. His improv psych band Kohoutek explores all of this territory, veering from drony Krautrock-inspired psych to abstract noise freak-outs and everything in between. Verrastro also plays in a guitar/drums duo with Chris Grier called Thee Ultimate VAG, often accompanies guitarist Jeff Barsky in Insect Factory, and has collaborated with saxophonists Paul Flaherty and John Dikeman, as well as multi-instrumentalists Mike Tamburo and Little Howlin' Wolf.
Mind Over Matter Music Over Mind
Bobby Hill ?? record players
Chris Downing ?? laptop, keyboards, samples
Thomas Stanley (a/k/a Bushmeat) ?? electronics
Our medium is sound. Sound generated. Sound borrowed and relocated. With this sound we create places and we create events. Some of these events are music. Many are not. To the extent that the places and events we create are extraordinary and the manner in which the events are allowed to occur within these places is extraordinary, our work product is extraordinary. This is the critical dimension of MOMMOM. The semantic dimension of the project is a bit more nuanced. First point of order: Our work is not a text. By intention, the sounds that we have generated, collected and brought into conjunction are not to be taken as a socially conditioned statement to be decoded or read, nor as an instance of personal or cultural expression to be felt. MOMMOM seeks to change minds not fiddle around with their contents. The political dimension of MOM2 is rooted in the distinction between these two approaches. Art can do many things. It need not be limited to making additions to the clutter of facts, beliefs, ideological warrants, and emotional tropes within which our attention flutters like debris in a strong wind. MIND OVER MATTER MUSIC OVER MIND is directed at the function of consciousness, not at its contents. For the mind, morphology is physiology and MOMMOM seeks to redraw the boundaries of mental health. This radical re-normalization of mental possibility is inherently political, challenging as it must, the most basic premises of social organization and order. It is only with new minds that we will first dream, and then build the new world that is implied by the tide of political frustration that has engulfed our age. Then MOM2 is a timely mental prosthesis, similar in quality if not degree to prosthetic agents found in the chemistry of certain plants and fungi, agents that have been employed for thousands of years to expand human consciousness beyond its personal and cultural containments. MIND OVER MATTER MUSIC OVER MIND is emancipating sonic medicine.
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Some Clavius (and related) events this week:
Freak Out in a U.K. Daydream
Flashback to the heady daze of the '60s/'70s U.K. underground via the magick of rare video clips featuring the likes of vintage Bowie, Van Der Graaf Generator, Family, and others. Platform boots, 6 shooter bong, mandrax, and kaftans optional...FREE!!!!
Sunday, January 27
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
Free, films at 9pm, 21+
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A night of experimental improv, dance, multi-media performance art:
Monday, January 28
Velvet Lounge
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors 9pm, 21+
Projexorcism (audio/visual political pranksters from NC)
Ca$h $lave Clique w/ Ginger Wagg (DC improv duo with dance accompaniment)
Chic Nerve (mem. of Caution Curves/Gestures)
Drums Like Machine Guns (Philly noise duo)
Projexorcism
http://www.multiultramedia.com/projexorcism.htm (http://www.multiultramedia.com/projexorcism.htm)
Formed in 1999, Projexorcism started life with the acquisition of two Bell & Howell 2592 auto-shred projectors and 200 educational films. Originally much time was spent making splice reels to accompany various musical projects. Lens manipulation and shuttling film back and forth through the projection gate were the hallmarks of the early days.
Early in 2003, Projexorcism made great advances in their unique flavor of experimental hyperactive expanded cinema and has since been pushing the boundaries of weirdness. Projexorcism began using a quad 16mm projector array suspended from a lighting pole -- the projectors synchronized with a 4-channel sound-actuated variable speed lighting controller. The projected images are split, inverted, and bent using silver reflective CD-R's and plastic fresnel lenses. The optical audio is replayed directly from the internal projector speakers, though on occasion the audio is routed through effects and samplers. In May 2005, The Catawba Council for the Arts awarded Projexorcism an Innovative Project Grant to add a Film-to-Video Regurgitation Array to their quad 16mm setup. Unbound from the linearity of film, the 16mm setup is now augmented with real-time video capture, manipulation, and projection devices.
The film is "PJ'd" using various techniques to create new contradictory action sequences and soundtracks in real-time in the found sound/plunderphonic tradition -- without splicing. Films are chosen to reflect relevant, and at times irreverent, themes. Some of our recent themes include presidential politics, African-American history, math, water, chemicals, Middle-Eastern war, spiders, gila monsters, voting, and "Do androids dream of electric sheep at xmas?", a mixture of pro and anti-consumer film and Charles Dickens' "Christmas Carol."
You never know what to expect at a Projexorcism show. Film often breaks or passes through the projection gate in a manner inconsistent with film preservation, much to the dismay of Jedi film preservationists. The kinetic swinging and shaking of the projecto-tree will warp reels and pool hundreds of feet of film all over the floor -- CDs and lenses fall to the ground -- the shriek of optical sound feedback as dust clogs the sound bulb, the randomly choreographed accidents of brilliance and stupidity, the audience turned projection screen, the audience on the projection screen.
Projexorcism is often joined by a rotating cast of musicians and frequently collaborates with other artists (see the live show archive). 2005 has Projexorcism touring with a melange of experimental noise musicians and collaborations with the likes of Michael Thomas Jackson, Jabberwocky, Former Yugoslavia, Khate, Feralcatscan, Hellblinki, and more.
Ca$h $lave Clique
http://www.soundsfromthepocket.com/csc.htm (http://www.soundsfromthepocket.com/csc.htm)
CASH $LAVE CLIQUE, hailing from DC, have debut release on the Sounds From the Pocket label brand, Let There Be Cash. LE CLIQUE feature Fantasti (a living, plush, singing hamster) as coordinator of sonic suicide bombings -- and we cannot forget to namedrop either that this group holds in its ranks ex-members of organizations like SHEER TERROR, 36, NIMROD, SIKHARA, STEVE MACKAY & THE RADON ENSEMBLE, ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE, NIK TURNER, SPACESHIPS PANIC ORBIT.
Ginger Wagg is a dance artist focused primarily on improvisation. She performs with two DC-based companies: Sharon Mansur/mansurdance and Daniel Burkholder/The Playground. She has performed with Shua Group (NYC), Amber Kendrick (DC), Marcy Schlissel (NYC), and Havana Select (DC) among others. She received her BFA in Dance from George Mason University, VA and has studied extensively at various improvisation workshops and festivals.
Chic Nerve
http://www.thecautioncurves.com/ (http://www.thecautioncurves.com/)
Rebecca Mills is a sound artist based in Washington, DC who uses found sounds and samples of live instrumentation to create laptop compositions under the name Chic Nerve. She comprises one-third of the avant-rock band The Caution Curves, described by The Sound Projector as "a single-minded trip into mild dementia that is totally engaging". The band's unique approach to sound has garnered critical recognition by sources such as The Wire and The Washington Post. Rebecca also plays clarinet in the avant-jazz horn-and-percussion ensemble Gestures, and documents aural experiments and oddities through the label Initiated Eye Recordings. Recently she collaborated with dancers Jane Jerardi and Ginger Wagg on the performance installation piece Façade, and composed a live mix from an original score by Audrey Chen for performances of Daniel Burkholder's piece Together/Apart.
Drums Like Machine Guns
http://www.iwanttobeloved.com/ (http://www.iwanttobeloved.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/drumslikemachineguns (http://www.myspace.com/drumslikemachineguns)
Drums Like Machine Guns, masters of the seven-minute sonic set, reign supreme as visionaries of all things aural. They will urge you to "Get Radical," and get radical you will.
An occurrence: when you hear them, you will think you've heard them before. This is not uncommon. In the darkness of your subconscious, in the subconscious of us all, there lives a common spectre which hums their assault into our collective memory.
Some will say they are from the future. They will say "We are not, for there is no future." Enjoy them now before the present comes to an end and the great wall comes crashing down upon us, wrenching bodies and twisting pure flesh into shapes unnatural.
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Tuesday, January 29
Black Cat
1811 14th St NW WDC
http://www.blackcatdc.com (http://www.blackcatdc.com)
202-667-7960
$8, doors at 9pm, all ages
Knyfe Hyts (NYC psych-metal, mem. of Ex-Models)
Double Dagger (Baltimore noise-rock)
Stymphalian Birds & White Stags (solo electric bass excursions, accompanied by Kohoutek's Scott Verrastro on percussion, think OM/Lightning Bolt/Thrones)
from the Washington City Paper:
The music of Knyfe Hyts may not be heavy metal in the traditional sense, but that doesn??t mean that the Brooklyn band couldn??t have burst forth from one of Cliff Burton??s paranoid delusions. Sharing members with beloved spaz-rock outfit Ex-Models, Knyfe Hyts mines a similar shrill and fuzzy vibe. But where Ex-Models skitters through songs like an epileptic Pokémon, Knyfe Hyts locks into extended trance jams that are skunkier than the glass on your college roommate??s vaporizer. Songs such as ??Exalted Tones? hammer metal riffs down to their barest, most basic essence, resulting in head spinning pysch-rock that??s more claustrophobic than the music video for ??Sweating Bullets.? Let the war inside your head commence. (Aaron Leitko)
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Saturday, February 2
Velvet Lounge
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, doors 9pm, 18+
A Sunny Day in Glasgow
Screen Vinyl Image
The Offering
Twin Earth
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Tuesday, February 5
Velvet Lounge
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, doors 9pm, 21+
Tetuzi Akiyama (solo experimental guitar, from Japan)
Josef van Wissem (solo experimental lute, from Holland)
Kuschty Rye Ergot (DC improv psych, ex-Redeemers/Ca$h $lave Clique, mem. of Kohoutek/Insect Factory)
Max Ochs (legendary MD acoustic fingerpicker, featured on the first Takoma compilation)
Tetuzi Akiyama
http://www.japanimprov.com/takiyama/ (http://www.japanimprov.com/takiyama/)
Tetuzi Akiyama is a highly unique and experimental guitarist heavily applying free improvisation and noise. Besides guitar, he also plays electronics, viola, and self-made instruments. Akiyama became an enthusiastic hard rock fan when he was eleven years old, and started playing electric guitar at the age of thirteen. Later, he also came to be very interested in free improvisation and classical music. He formed the improvised music band Madhar in 1987. He also started playing classical viola, and formed the Hikyo String Quintet in 1994. The band, which played avant-garde improvised classical music, consisted of a viola, two cello, and two violin players, and included Taku Sugimoto on cello. Sugimoto soon left the band, which thus became a quartet. Later that year, Akiyama and Sugimoto launched their guitar duo, Akiyama-Sugimoto. They played gigs in New York in 1995, and in the Midwest (including Chicago and Detroit) in '96. For about a year
starting in early 1994, Akiyama was also a member of Nijiumu, one of guitarist Keiji Haino's bands.
Josef van Wissem
http://www.josefvanwissem.com (http://www.josefvanwissem.com)
Jozef van Wissem probably plays and composes for the most unlikely instruments in the world of contemporary improvised music: the Renaissance and Baroque lute. He has accomplished the strange feat of bridging the idiom of seventeenth century lute literature and twenty-first century free improv of the silent type. Although Van Wissem uses subtle electronic sound manipulation, he has largely stayed faithful to the particular timbre, resonance and playing technique of the lute. Van Wissem first came to be noticed a few years ago because of his radical conceptual approach to Renaissance lute music: he deconstructed existing compositions, for instance by playing them backwards. He also composed his own pieces for lute, using palindromes and mirrored structures. His music therefore does not have a traditional linear progression, nor leads to a climax, it rather stays on the same level of intensity. His music is quiet and not so much demands concentrated listening, as it will bring the listener in a state of concentrated listening -- an aspect that makes Van Wissem a natural ally of the current post-reductionist improvising musicians. Van Wissem also runs the Incunabulum label, and performs regularly around the world in duo with guitar-wizard of Captain Beefheart-fame,
Gary Lucas. He also works with M.B./Maurizio Bianchi, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Elliot Sharp.
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Saturday, February 9
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
No Wave book release party w/ performances by Kohoutek and surprise guests, plus DJ sets by Mark C. (Live Skull)
More info coming soon...
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"Tuesday 2/5: Tetuzi Akiyama (Japan, solo experimental guitar)/Josef van Wissem (Netherlands, solo experimental lute)/Max Ochs $8, doors at 9pm, 21+"
Approximate set times for this? How late do you think it'll go?
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snailhook, can you please bring Carla Bozulich to Velvet Lounge? :)
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Approximate set times for this? How late do you think it'll go?[/b]
max ochs will go on first at 9:30. tetuzi and josef will play from 10:15-11:15ish. kuschty rye ergot will end the show. it'll go by pretty quick since three of the acts are solo acoustic.
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snailhook, can you please bring Carla Bozulich to Velvet Lounge?[/b]
i would do it if her booking agency (kork) asked. i booked her at the warehouse in july 2006 and it was awesome.
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from the Washington City Paper:
A number of rock musicians have sought to make bedfellows of Ren-faire harmony and electrified boogie: Jimmy Page, Tony Iommi, Nigel Tufnel. But few have approached the idea as earnestly as Japanese guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama. On Proletarian Drift, Akiyama doesn??t simply settle for plucking out a few mid-shredfest Vivaldi riffs??he brings in Dutch lutist Jozef van Wissen to really lace up the doublet. However, the resulting duets will hardly send listeners skipping through the gilliflowers. Akiyama??s sparse and textural style combines with van Wissen??s traditional plucking to create a series of hushed melodic improvisations that fluctuate between tranquil meditation and unsettling emptiness. Akiyama performs with van Wissem and Max Ochs at 9 p.m. at the Velvet Lounge, 915 U St. NW. $8. (202) 462-3213. (Aaron Leitko)
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Clavius Productions and Marc Masters present a celebration of No Wave, Masters' recently finished book on the history of no wave. There will be sets by Vapour Theories (the Gibbons Bros of Bardo Pond laying down some mighty guitar drone), locals Kohoutek and Dark Sea Dream, and DJ sets by Mark C (of Live Skull) and Masters. Now's your chance to hear Mars and UT blasting through club speakers!
Saturday, February 9
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, doors at 9pm, 18+
Kohoutek (Music Fellowship/Sockets, DC improv psych)
Vapour Theories (mem. of Bardo Pond, guitar drone overload)
Dark Sea Dream (VA heavy psych)
plus DJ sets by Mark C (Live Skull)
More info on No Wave coming soon...
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Sunday, February 10
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, doors at 9pm, 21+
Jack Wright (saxes)
Stephane Rives (saxes)
Andrea Neumann (inner klavier)
Bonnie Jones (circuits)
Andy Hayleck (bowed metal, laptop)
Paul Neidhardt (percussion)
Anthony Pirog (solo experimental guitar, mem. of Janel & Anthony/The Bang/PRV Trio)
About the players:
Andrea Neumann
http://www.japanimprov.com/profiles/aneumann/ (http://www.japanimprov.com/profiles/aneumann/)
Born 1968 in Freiburg, grew up in Hamburg. Since 1996 primarily active as improviser and composer in the areas of experimental and new music. In the process of exploring the piano for new sound possibilities, she has reduced the instrument to strings, resonance board and metal frame. With the help of electronics to manipulate and amplify the sounds (sometimes to make parts of the sound audible which are inaudible without amplification), she has developed numerous new playing techniques, sounds, and ways of preparing the dismantled instrument. Because the original inside piano is very heavy, a piano builder (Bernd Bittmann, Berlin) constructed a new and lighter one for her. She has worked intensively in the crossover area between composition and improvisation, and in the field between electronic and handmade sounds, with Berlin musicians such as Annette Krebs, Ignaz Schick, Axel Dörner, Robin Hayward and Burkhard Beins.
Stephane Rives
http://www.myspace.com/stephanerives (http://www.myspace.com/stephanerives)
"The mechanism of the saxophone permits a concrete-acoustic approach to the instrument. The possibilities of acting directly on the pads and the flexibility of the reed offer subtle means of altering the sonic wave generated by breath. Once one adopts a way of thinking based on the sort of filtering any electronic musician does, one??s attention is drawn to the tiny micro-events that are barely audible in a traditional approach. The sonic planes twist and acoustic distortion emerges, revealing the subtle grains and textures lying "inside" the acoustic sound. New materials arise as though they had always been right there, hidden behind the immediately perceptible. In order to gain control of them, one reduces any idea of willful intervention to an absolute minimum, leaving only the flow of air through the metal cone, an action that is discrete in certain parameters. My playing is not about arriving at something; instead, it is an instant that answers to that logic. My musical reflection focuses on questions of praxis. I am not driven by musical intention in the strict sense of the term, but the experience of sound I propose represents a means of "exciting" the listener, a way of questioning, of shaking up his feeling of psychological security and transforming his relationship to listening."
Jack Wright
http://www.springgardenmusic.com/jackbio.html (http://www.springgardenmusic.com/jackbio.html)
Jack Wright has over sixty partners around the US and in Europe with whom he plays on his travels and records. His most recent tours have been with Fabrizio Spera and Alberto Braida in Italy; with Agnes Palier and Olivier Toutlemond in France, Switzerland and Germany, with Michael Johnsen and Sebastien Cirotteau in Europe; with French soprano sax player Michel Doneda and percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani in Japan, France and the US; Carol Genetti, sound vocalist of Chicago, and Jon Mueller, percussionist of Milwaukee; cellist Bob Marsh of the Bay area; Nate Wooley, trumpet, of NYC in Europe; Michael Griener percussion and Sabine Vogel flute of Berlin; Reuben Radding, NYC bassist; and Phil Durrant, English laptop musician.
Bonnie Jones
http://bonniejones.wordpress.com/ (http://bonniejones.wordpress.com/)
Bonnie Jones was born in South Korea in 1977 and until recently her work has focused largely on text and performance. However, a recent trip back to Korea introduced her to the digital delay pedal and circuit bending. For the last year she has been collaborating with Korean musicians, such as the duo Astronoise (Choi Joon-yong & Hong Chul-ki), and expat Joe Foster. A very pleasant trip to Japan gave her the chance to play with percussionist Toshi Makihara and saxophonist Kenichi Matsumoto. Bonnie likes to imagine that she makes sound the way she has always tried to make text - focusing intently on various unique tensions within the space, meaning, and connectivity of the things we use to make art. She also finds collaborative/collective action the most useful thing to do with her time.
Andy Hayleck (b. 1972) composer/ musician and recordist. Explores the aesthetics of sound, especially regarding how sound is perceived by the ear. He uses extremes of volume, pitch, and sound complexity, and variations in change over time. For the past few years he has concentrated on using unamplified bowed metal (cymbals and saw) in performance and using contact mics, hydrophones and regular mics in recording. Although he has used a computer for many years, recently he has begun to use one live. Currently a member of Trockeneis, he recently made a solo tour of the west coast of the United States (playing the amplified gong/wire). Recordings include: "Gong/Wire" (earlids), "Various Recordings Involving Ice" (HereSee), and "The Disappearing Floor" (Recorded).
Baltimore's Paul Neidhardt is one of the countries most astonishing new music percussionists. A trained, highly disciplined player with a flair for complex textural sound produced by friction, Neidhardt's approach to improvising covers the majority of the terrain explored by the explosive side of European free music and subtle textural players like Sean Meehan and Jason Kahn, while retaining a freshness and flexibility of purpose all his own. His background playing rock and African music adds a potential for propulsive intesnivty to his playing not usually found in players so skilled in the arts of minimalist reductionism. Despite recovering from injuries that limited his time playing in recent years, he is a highly in-demand player, working with groups like Trokeneis, Death in the Maze, and Multiphonic Choir, as well as frequent collaborations with Jack Wright.
Anthony Pirog
http://anthonypirog.com/ (http://anthonypirog.com/)
http://www.myspace.com/janelandanthony (http://www.myspace.com/janelandanthony)
http://www.myspace.com/thebangband (http://www.myspace.com/thebangband)
from a nice piece in DCist on Anthony:
"A jazz guitarist by training, having graduated from New York University's music school and having spent time at the Berkelee School of Music, Pirog is technically brilliant and able to take that brilliance into the experimental realm. Taking the stage already chock full of effects pedals (23 in total), Anthony began the night with an almost ambient post-rock song and progressed through the night with pieces that were at times jarring, calming, challenging and multi-dimensional. By the second song, Pirog was pulling the rug of "ordinary" out from under us. He introduced a variety of sounds through both the electronics he had onstage and his guitar (at one point playing a child's keyboard into his guitar) ?? tweaking them, processing them, looping them and then layering them.
Throughout the night, he painstakingly set up all his pieces; he continued to layer sounds until that moment when the cacophony could not get any more intense and then would pull everything together into one coherent and melodic piece, playing his guitar soaringly above the fray. It was at those moments when chaos triumphantly became ordered that Pirog's genius was most exposed. As he revealed to us in his interview, "I had the first loop prerecorded to get me going and that was it. The rest was improvised." His facial expressions while doing so revealed his genuine interest and curiosity in each new sound he was creating and in figuring out how best to fit those sounds into an overall melodic structure. Using his extensive knowledge of music and combining it with electronics-galore, Pirog is essentially a one-man experimental orchestra, taking the roll of composer, musician and conductor. At the end of the show, all the music geeks came out of the woodworks to look at all his pedals and discuss with him his process ?? which he kindly did."
http://dcist.com/2007/03/29/three_stars_ant.php (http://dcist.com/2007/03/29/three_stars_ant.php)
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Clavius Productions presents:
Tuesday, March 4
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9pm, 18+
Debate (from Brazil, experimental post-punk a la Shellac, just recorded with Albini)
The Convocation (GSL/Tiger Style, ex-Moss Icon/Born Against/UOA/Great Unraveling)
Double Dutch (DC)
from the Washington City Paper:
D.C. postrock bands like the Sorts and their peers drank deeply from the well of Brazilian Tropicália music, so you can't fault Debate for borrowing back some of the District's postpunk grit. São Paulo's Debate scoops up some of Jawbox's angularity and a little bit of Faraquet's math and crossbreeds it with epic, Rush-inspired arena riffs and an affection for the Ex's screeching improvisations. But Debate wisely refrains from lodging its music too firmly in the summer of '93. On its most recent recordings, the group bravely dabbles in electronics??throwing crackling synthesizers and dub delays into an already cacophonous mix. (Aaron Leitko)
http://www.myspace.com/debaterock (http://www.myspace.com/debaterock)
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Thursday, March 6
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$7, doors at 9pm, 21+
Screen Vinyl Image (ex-Alcian Blue, DC nu-goth-crunk)
Julie Ocean (ex-Velocity Girl/Tree Fort Angst/Swiz)
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Friday, March 7
The Lighthouse
1421 Buchanan St NW WDC
9pm, $5 suggested donation
202-360-9739 for info
BYOB!
Sunburned Hand of the Man (Ecstatic Peace/Eclipse)
Kohoutek (DC improv psych, Music Fellowship/Sockets)
Bill Nace (solo electric guitar from MA, mem. of Vampire Belt/Northampton Wools)
Chris Grier (solo electric guitar from DC, mem. of To Live and Shave in L.A./Thee Ultimate VAG/Sean McArdle Band/Scarcity of Tanks)
Lexie Mountain (Baltimore's finest chanteuse)
*If you're not in the mood for tweaky psych, go to the Velvet Lounge to check out: The Hall Monitors, The Shalitas (NYC garage-pop), The Right Ons (garage-rock from Spain) $8, doors at 9:30pm, 21+
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Saturday, March 8
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, doors at 9pm, 21+
Len Bias (DC)
Appomattox (NYC mathy post-punk in the vein of Unwound/Chavez)
Mussels (NYC)
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Sunday, March 9
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com (http://www.velvetloungedc.com)
202-462-3213
$8, doors at 9pm, 21+
Nadja (epic drone/doom from Toronto)
Field Shaman (DC guitar/cello duo)
Pacific Before Tiger & Andrew Marino (minimal drone duo from NC)
Ami Dang (solo sitar from Baltimore)
Nadja is a duo of Aidan Baker (guitars/vocals/piano/woodwinds/drums) & Leah Buckareff (bass/vocals) currently based in Toronto, Canada. Nadja originally began in 2003 as a solo project for Baker to explore the heavier/noisier side of his experimental/ambient guitar-based music. In 2005 Buckareff joined in order to make the project more than just a studio endeavor & allow Nadja to perform live.
Nadja creates music that has been variously described as drone, ambient doom, and shoegazer-metal. The duo combines soundscapes, electronics, & atmospheric vocals with snail-crawl, epic riffs & dirge-like percussion, tempering the cacophany with a certain ethereal melodicism such that the listener is enveloped in a sublimating wall of amorphous sound.
After several limited edition CDR releases, Nadja released their first official album Truth Becomes Death on Montreal's Alien8 Recordings in 2005. They have since released material on Conspiracy Records, Profound Lore Records, Archive Records, & The End Records. They perform regularly in Toronto and Montreal, and have toured Europe and USA, sharing the stage with such artists as Kayo Dot, Knurl, Khanate, Francisco Lopez, Isis, Ocean and Bloody Panda.
http://www.nadjaluv.ca (http://www.nadjaluv.ca)
http://www.myspace.com/nadjaluv (http://www.myspace.com/nadjaluv)
"The band's latest long-player, Radiance of Shadows, finds the duo scaling Lovcraftian peaks of oversized terror in pursuit of an unfathomable union of beauty and barbarousness. Commanding, encompassing and occasionally savage, the album employs all of the band's hallmarks: sinewy strands of guitar layered beyond individual recognition, errant yet powerful percussion and an unconstrained but no less purposeful sense of buildup." (Casey Rae-Hunter, Dusted Magazine)
"When Toronto electro-metal duo Nadja are at the height of their powers, the entire world feels as if it could collapse beneath the pressure of a manipulated guitar, a drum machine, a bass, and two bent voices. Radiance of Shadows...pushes to and pulls from such apocalyptic promise for 80 minutes, saturating their cathedral volume with sounds both thick and rich." (Grayson Currin, Pitchfork Media)
"Nadja have all the style, velocity and impact of a Stealth bomber. To label their work simply as drone, however, would be to do it a disservice, as the music is more multi-layered and complex, with slabs of guitar, bass and drum machine rising up and then falling back without warning into an abyss of strummed chords and hovering Ambience. Elsewhere Nadja's sound resembles that of a full symphony orchestra, a maelstrom of different tunings blended into a single thrust...Nadja [is] one of the most exciting groups to emerge in recent years, and Radiance of Shadows is one of their finest achievements." (Edwin Pouncey, The Wire)
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Tuesday 3/11: Ghastly City Sleep, Pygmy Lush, Tideland (all of these bands are ex-Pg. 99 and probably City of Caterpillar) $7, doors at 9pm, 18+!
Wednesday 3/12: Big Noose's birthday bash w/ Dark Sea Dream (VA psych, ex-VOG), Pastures (mem. of The New Flesh/Vincent Black Shadow, ex-VOG/Piasa), and more! $5, doors at 9pm
Friday 3/14: The Hounds of Hasselvander w/ very special "ghoul" (ex-Pentagram/Raven/Blue Cheer/Spirit Caravan -- a real doom supergroup), Revelation (original MD doom!), Ol' Scratch
$10, doors at 9:30pm, 18+!
Friday 3/21: The Lookies (ex-Velvet Monkeys/Gumball), The Rambling Shadows, 7 Door Sedan $8, doors at 9:30pm
Saturday 3/22: Spontaneous Infinity pre-festival show w/ Steve Lehman (avant-garde saxophonist from NYC), DCIC $10, doors at 9pm, 18+!
http://sponinf.alkem.org/ (http://sponinf.alkem.org/)
Sunday 3/23: Admiral Browning, Scale the Summit (Houston prog-metal), Periphery $7, doors at 9pm
Monday 3/24: Make a Rising (Philly art-rock/indie-prog), Gestures
$7, doors at 9pm
Tuesday 3/25: The World That Summer, Xeper $7, doors at 9pm
Thursday 3/27: Suns of Guns, Vincent Black Shadow, Rise of Man
$7, doors at 9pm
Friday 3/28: Spontaneous Infinity w/ Elliott Sharp (legendary experimental guitarist, SST Records), Blaise Siwula/David Wilson/Toshi Makihara (sax/sax/percussion), Jaimie Branch/March Riordan (trumpet/percussion duo from Chicago), Thus (sax/inventions duo from Baltimore), Nate Scheible & Matt Wascovich (Cleveland, drums/guitar) $15, doors at 8pm, 18+!
http://sponinf.alkem.org/ (http://sponinf.alkem.org/)
Saturday 3/29: Spontaneous Infinity w/ Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra Arkestra) & Elliott Levin, Uri Caine (experimental keyboardist from NYC), Sabir Mateen & Michiko Duo (sax/voice, mem. of TEST/No Neck Blues Band), Matthias Muller & Christian Marien (trombone/percussion duo from Germany), PRV Trio (DC guitar/percussion trio, mem. of Kohoutek/Ultimate VAG/Janel & Anthony/The Bang) $15, doors at 8pm, 18+!
http://sponinf.alkem.org/ (http://sponinf.alkem.org/)
Sunday 3/30: Kuschty Rye Ergot (ex-Redeemers/Promise Breakers, mem. of Kohoutek), Dame Satan (folk-psych from SF) $7, doors at 9pm
Wednesday 4/2: Twin Earth, Women, Plums $7, doors at 9pm
Friday 4/4: Apes (Gypsy Eyes/Birdman), Health (LA noise-rock) $8, doors at 9:30pm
Sunday 4/6: Eat Forever, Snack Truck (mem. of Ultra Dolphin) $7, doors at 9pm
Thursday 4/10: Nick Schillace (Detroit acoustic fingerpicker), Eric Carbonara (Locust, Philly solo flamenco guitar) $8, doors at 9pm
Friday 4/11: Turbojugend (Turbonegro tribute society) party w/ The Shirks (featuring Al Bud!), The Cheats
Sunday 4/13: Three Faces of Eve/Battlemaster/Jefferson Plane Crash/Monarch
$7, doors at 9pm, 18+!
Tuesday 4/15: Public Record (from Philly, High Two Records, ex-Ropers/Saturday People), The Mantras $7, doors at 9pm
Wednesday 4/16: Carla Bozulich's Evangelista (Constellation Records, ex-Geraldine Fibbers), Tom Greenwood & Joanne Robertson (mem. of Jackie-O Motherfucker), Vampire Hands (Minneapolis psych-rock on Freedom-From)
$10, doors at 9pm, 18+!
Thursday 4/17: The Holy Attack, Trouble vs Glue (synth-punk from Italy)
$7, doors at 9pm
Friday 4/18: 9353, Unorthodox $10, doors at 9:30pm
Saturday 4/19: Gary Higgins (Drag City, legendary folk-psych from CT)/Brandon Butler $10, doors at 9:30pm
Wednesday 4/23: Nudity (heavy psych from Olympia, ex-Tight Bros From Way Back When) $7, doors at 9pm
Thursday 4/24: Dora Bleu (folk-psych from Montreal, ex-Laconic Chamber/From Quagmire, mem. of Shalabi Effect) $7, doors at 9pm
Thursday 5/1: Pinche Gringo (one-man garage band from Mexico)
Saturday 5/3: Iron Man (original MD doom!), Revelation, Pale Divine
$8, doors at 9:30pm
Sunday 5/4: Sudden Infant (experimental noise from Germany), Violet, Twilight Memories of the Three Suns, Caustic Castle $8, doors at 9pm
Thursday 5/8: Portable Noise Kremator (experimental noise from Belgium), All Violet
Sunday 5/11: Gildon Works (mem. of Relay, shoegaze/psych rock from Philly)
Wednesday 5/14: The Midgetmen (trash-punk from Austin)
Thursday 5/15: Mouthbreather
Friday 5/16: Deceased (Relapse, VA thrash/death metal), Sacrificial Blood, Vermefug $10, doors at 9pm, 18+
Tuesday 5/20: The Mutators, Modern Creatures (noise-rock from Vancouver)
Thursday 5/22: Adam Caine-Nick Lyons Duo (sax/guitar improv duo), Circus of Saints
Thursday 5/29: Lo-Pan (stoner rock from Columbus)
Friday 5/30: Fern Knight (CD release show on VHF), Alexander Turnquist (VHF)
Friday 6/6: Dysrhythmia (Relapse)
Thursday 6/26: Sharron Kraus (amazing folk singer from the UK)/United Bible Studies (improv folk-psych from Ireland)
Tuesday 7/15: Vialka (prog/psych/punk from France)
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new velvet lounge website is up!!!
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Wow. A real website. Nice!
Friday 04.04.08 Apes
Friday 04.18.08 9353
Even better :)
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gary higgins???
is this a current date or from last year?
i can't tell from this post.
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Originally posted by chromataphors:
gary higgins???
is this a current date or from last year?
i can't tell from this post.
According to the Velvet Lounge website - http://www.velvetloungedc.com/calendar.html (http://www.velvetloungedc.com/calendar.html) - it is this year. But the date is 4/26, not 4/19 as shown above.
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yup, gary higgins is indeed coming here. i just switched the date from 4/26 to 4/19 because his keyboardist couldn't make the 26th.
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Nice...now I can make that Gary Higgins show.
:D
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cool...i saw him in november 2005 with espers and he was 75% great (he played a few new songs that were a little too CSN for me, but otherwise, he was fantastic).
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Magik Markers and Mammatus are touring together?
That at the velvet would be huge.
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this i did not know. i'll get on that...
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Only west coast as of now.
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How about trying to get a hold of Lou Reed and convincing him to play a 3-hour version of Metal Machine Music at the velvet after the 930 show? :)
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hahaha, that would rule. brian walalce will be first on the guest list.
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Any idea on Skaters times?