Clavius Productions presents:
Friday, April 25
Velvet Lounge
915 U St NW WDC
http://www.velvetloungedc.com 202-462-3213
$10, doors at 9:30, 21+
Black and Tan Fantasy Band (mem. of Thievery Corporation/Fugazi/French Toast/Gogogoairheart)
Chicha Libre (NYC, ex-Combustible Edison)
Os Magrelos (mem. of Bio Ritmo)
Any music aficionado these days can tell you about Tropicalia and how bands such as Os Mutantes flourished in the politically charged atmosphere of â??60s Brazil, doing to bossa nova what the Beatles and the Stones did to blues. But the members of
Chicha Libre are further expanding the minds of stateside psych enthusiasts with their own take on a lesser-heard sound, from one of South Americaâ??s less scrupulously documented music scenes. The Brooklyn-based act performs chicha, a style of South American psych born in Peru in the late â??70s. The chicha that Chicha Libre plays, though, is even more hybridized. The musical export is the brainchild of an expat named Olivier Conan; a longtime Brooklyn resident, born in Paris, who started playing the style with a group of Americans. If youâ??re looking to delve deeper into the history of world psychedelia, Chicha Libre offers an Anglophonically tinged entryway to the Amazonâ??s more obscure aural arenas. (Matthew A. Stern, Washington City Paper)
Psychedelic Surf Cumbias from the Amazon.
Chicha Libre plays a mixture of Latin rhythms, surf music and psychedelic pop inspired by Peruvian music from the Amazon. The Brooklyn-based band mixes up covers of forgotten Chicha classics with French-tinged originals, re-interpretation of '70s pop classics as well as cumbia versions of pieces by Satie and Ravel.
Chicha is the name of a corn-based liquor favored by the Incas in pre-Colombian days. Chicha is also the name of a South American music craze which started out in the early '70s in the Peruvian Amazon. Cumbias Amazonicas, as they were first called, were loosely inspired by Colombian accordion-driven cumbias but incorporated the distinctive pentatonic scales of Andean melodies, some Cuban son, and the psychedelic sounds of surf guitars, Farfisa organs and Moog synthesizers.
Bands such as Los Mirlos, Juaneco y su Combo and Eusebio y su Banjo were playing an oddly post-modern combination of western psychedelia, Cuban and Colombian rhythms, national melodies and idiosyncratic inventions which were close in spirit to both the Congolese rumba of Franco and the pop syncretism of Os Mutantes.
The music was so fresh, so exciting and its appeal so effortlessly universal that it still seems strange that it never managed to find an international audience. Chicha Libre was started as a way to pay tribute to the music. The group includes musicians associated with the Brooklyn barbès scene (which is co owned by two of the musicians in the band: Olivier Conan and VIncent Douglas) and includes keyboardist Joshua Camp, who is one half of lit-rock group One Ring Zero and plays an antiquated accordion/organ hybrid manufactured by Hohner called the Electravox; Olivier Conan (who also play with Las Rubias del Norte) on Cuatro and vocals; bassist Nicholas Cudahy whose former band, Combustible Edison, knew a thing or two about pop syncretism; guitarist Vincent Douglas (of bands Bébé Eiffel & The Humphries) and veteran percussionists Greg Burrows (Andy Statman) and Timothy Quigley (Romashka).
While Chicha Libreâ??s repertoire has evolved somewhat from the Amazonian canon, the sound and approach are completely indebted to the Amazonian bands it originally emulated. Like them, they use surf guitar, organ sounds and Latin percussion to play a mixture of borrowed and homegrown sounds. The borrowings are somewhat different - classical music and pop debris from three continents in Chicha Libre's case â?? but the Latin rhythms that form the basis of the music are both as close and as foreign to them as they were to the Shipibo Indians who first took up the electric guitar.
Chicha Libre 's debut CD will be released March 25 of 2008.
http://www.barbesrecords.com/chicha.html http://www.myspace.com/chichalibre +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Monday, April 28
$8, doors at 9pm, 18+
Kohoutek (Music Fellowship/Sockets)
Cloudland Canyon (Holy Mountain/Kranky)
Titan (Tee Pee)
Flying Eyes (MD psych-rock)
Kohoutek http://claviusproductions.alkem.org/kohoutek/ The Washington, DC-based experimental collective Kohoutek plays improvised psychedelia, ranging from unsettling, discordant noise to delicate melodies, inspired by the likes of Can/Amon Duul 2/Agitation Free/Ash Ra Tempel/Krautrock, Trad Gras Och Stenar/Parson Sound, Dead C, Skullflower, Sun City Girls, Sonic Youth, Bardo Pond, Ghost/White Heaven/Japanese psych, Sun Ra/Art Ensemble/free jazz, early Pink Floyd, MBV/shoegaze, drone, doom/sludge metal, etc.
Though quite musically adept, the band -- always an ever-evolving lineup featuring different instrumentation -- favors a textural and visceral approach and a reliance on environment, rather than technical proficiency and predictability. However, there are core members and a common thread that connects all of the lineups and improvisations; for instance, drummer/percussionist Scott Verrastro has been the only member to play in every single permutation, and the band was built around his tight interaction with longtime bassist Craig Garrett. A year into its existence, Scott Allison joined with his perplexing array of homemade electronics and computer software.
In October, Kohoutek performed with legendary Can vocalist Damo Suzuki, and in March 2005, backed George Kinney of late '60s Texas psych band The Golden Dawn. They have participated in numerous festivals throughout the Northeast and Midwest, including Chicago's Four Million Tongues, Amherst's Gladtree, NYC's Diamond Days, Richmond's 804Noise, Fredericksburg's Wallofsoundfest, and DC's Sonic Circuits and Free Folk Phantasmagory. Kohoutek is slated to perform at this year's Terrastock in Louisville. Their discography includes two self-released recordings ("Kohoutek" and "The Trails of Kohoutek"), a DVD/CD on Sockets-CDR ("Hair on the Sidewalk"), and a collab CD-R with Soil Sing Through Me (members of Sunburned Hand of the Man/Feathers/Witch) on Wabana. "Expansive Headache" (Music Fellowship) is their first studio album.
Some notable bands Kohoutek have played with are Bardo Pond, Acid Mothers Temple, Lightning Bolt, Kinski, Green Milk From the Planet Orange, Suishou No Fune, Miminokoto, Unearthly Trance, Grey Daturas, Noxagt, Teeth of the Hydra, Titan, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Landing, Charalambides, Volcano the Bear, P.G. Six, Tono-Bungay, Jack Rose, Fursaxa, Mouthus, Double Leopards, Richard Bishop, Steve Mackay (of the Stooges), Avarus, Wooden Wand, Mike Tamburo, Mammatus, Zoroaster, Costes, and Z'EV. Kohoutek has also toured with Alasehir and Little Howlin' Wolf, and were supposed to tour with Up-Tight in November 2007.
Besides the current core of Verrastro, Garrett, Allison, Vic Salazar, Damian Languell, Jeff Barsky, John Stanton and Damien Taylor, Kohoutek has been joined by Paul Flaherty, C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), Little Howlin' Wolf, Jason Simon (Dead Meadow), Chris Grier (To Live and Shave in L.A.), and Vinnie van Go-Go (Rake/From Quagmire/Fern Knight), as well as an assortment of some of the best improvisers in the region.
Cloudland Canyon http://www.cloudland-canyon.com/ "...a stunning neo-psychedelic experience where the musical spirits of This Heat, Ash Ra Temple and The Mahavishnu Orchestra are evoked, celebrated and absorbed inside Uhlhorn and Wojan´s shifting cloud formations of sound." (The Wire)
"As the Beaches and Canyons school of music assembly gradually blossoms onto an outright genre, enough imitators have made themselves known that the cream has begun to rise to the top. Known entities like Gang Gang Dance and Exceptor have inked their marks, but it´s only just now that acts like Growing and Cloudland Canyon are really making an impact." (Dusted Magazine)
"I´ve been listening to this record a lot, when the 10,000 other records i have are all boring me to bits or insulting my intelligence or trying to sell me something no one wants, this record acts like a firehose blast, blowing the rabble right off my path." (Outsideleft)
"This record totally knocked us for a loop. And the thing is, I´m not entirely sure we can explain why. This is one of those rare records that is darn near indescribable. It´s almost like some super computer a million years in the future began picking up these strange transmissions from the old Earth, German Oak, Faust, Amon Düül, but after travelling billions of miles and being interpreted by some alien machinery, those songs and sound came out sounding, well, completely nuts. Georgeously and incredibly fucked. And thus completely recommended!" (Aquarius Records)
"...a lullaby, as sweet and evocative as your mother´s voice. This is wonderful, tantalizing music, with melodies buried under fuzz and all the interesting stuff happening at the periphery. You may never fully get a grip on it - it´s always slipping away and shape-shifting into something entirely different from what you expected. Still, even the attempt to understand something as weirdly compelling as Requiems Der Natur is mind-expanding." (Pop Matters)
"The group´s debut album Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004 is a starry-eyed psych rock opus with mystical aspirations and a Ph.D in minimalist-drone composition. It´s as if they have read the world´s great religious tomes and studied drones under mastery minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and Terry Riley." (Alternative Press)
"Here was a duo who conjured the soul-inflating drones of the great minimalist composers (Steve Reich, Terry Riley, David Behrman, Phillip Glass et al.) and ´70s Kraut-rock psychonauts like Ash Ra Temple and Embryo. Unusual to say the least. Bolstered into a deep mystical vein of sonic poetry and rare melodic beauty they make most freak folkies sound like fey daisy-pickers. One of this years finest brain-massagers." (Seattle´s The Stranger)
"As often happens when a crooked musical bone rips through the skin of mainstream, the unlikely rise of Animal Collective has produced an unfortunate side effect: now any band with a whooping jungle-jam vibe gets branded as one of the Collective´s descendants. That tag will surely be inflicted on Cloudland Canyon, but pay the band´s accusers no heed. Not only does this duo´s mix of chanted vocals, tribal drums and noisy sheen transcend mimicry, there are so many other audible influences on Requiems Der Natur - Fennesz, This Heat, Flaming Lips, even the Beatles- that the resulting hybrid becomes the unique product of its creator´s omnivorous minds...a kind of Sgt. Pepper´s for people who like to dig through haystacks of sound to find needles of song. That kind of primal pop proves to be Cloudland Canyon´s sneakiest trick." (Baltimore City Paper)
"Analogs and synthesizers bubbling with ´70s electronics mesh with savvy krautrock orchestrations and then the raw edges of free jazz. Elements of no wave and freak folks splash, foam and crackle through the album´s tracks, making a sound evocative of what might happen if Syd Barrett scrambled from his seedy nest to jam with the Black Dice." (The San Francisco Bay Guardian)
"This is the shit, man. I could listen to this all night long." (Alan Bishop, Sun City Girls)
Titan http://teepeerecords.com/bands/titan/index.php Titan, formed in Brooklyn, NY, has steadily grown into an improvisational and progressive powerhouse. Tee Pee Records is proud to present their first official studio release, A Raining Sun of Light and Love For You and You and You.
A Raining Sun of Light and Love, For You and You and You, was recorded in Brooklyn by Steve Revitte (Black Dice, Liars, Jimmy Eat World), and captures the band in a professional studio for the first time. Prior to the album, earlier improvisation-based efforts were self-released by the band onto CDR, in addition to a limited edition debut CD on the British label, Paradigms. on Tiger Style records.
The group played its first show with Zombi in early 2005, and has since toured the East Coast with Saviours, and decimated stages opening for sonic contemporaries such as Comets on Fire, Lightning Bolt, Boris, Witch, DMBQ, Blue Cheer, and Suishou no Fune. Wonâ??t you please welcome Titan to the fray, the band that is single-handedly saving the muddy mess of â??stoner rockâ?ť from itself?
