Your new-look High Places: sing-y, bassoon-y, spooky. "I Was Born," the single, is out today on Thrill Jockey; here is the duo's self-made video for the song, which is suitably scary and features what is either a nearly unrecognizable Mary Pearson or, alternately, an entirely different person. That's definitely Rob Barber though, covered in mud. This is a song about being born again, literally. Take that how you will--we do not think religion is what these two have discovered out in the wilds of Los Angeles. "I Was Born" will get the remix treatment soon, as part of a 12" single that will also feature another new song. In the meantime, Thrill Jockey's selling this one for a dollar.High Places played Soundlab on 02/11/08 with Soft Circle.
Just when it looked like side projects were occupying most of Jamie Stewart's energy, the man's always-disturbing art-pop crew Xiu Xiu shudders back to life.On 10/16/06 Xiu Xiu played Soundlab with Gong For Brums and The Dirty Projectors.
Yesterday, the band's website reported that there's a new Xiu Xiu album on the way. Back in May, we mentioned that they were working on it, but it's done now. The title: Dear God, I Hate Myself. If any other band released an album with that title, it might be shocking. With Xiu Xiu, it's business as usual. According to that post, the album will be out be out the first week of February in the UK, with an American release to follow a week later, via Kill Rock Stars.
There's more. On November 6, the play "Nibbler" will open at L.A.'s Theatre of NOTE. The play features original music from Xiu Xiu and the awesomely named band the Avon Barksdale. Playwright Ken Urban writes that "Nibbler" is "a dark comedy about a group of high school students in the summer of 1992 who are visited by an alien."
And if that wasn't enough, the band's contribution to Merge's forthcoming remix compilation is now available for free online. Right-click here to download their clanking, seasick I Hope Your Train Crashes remix of the 6ths' "Volcana!".
Harris Eisenstadt (drums)Learn more at www.harriseisenstadt.com
Nate Wooley (trumpet), Matt Bauder (tenor saxophone), Chris Dingman (vibraphone), Eivind Opsvik (bass).
Canada Day is the eponymous debut of Brooklyn-based drummer/ composer Harris Eisenstadt's two year-old working quintet. This release, the Toronto native's eighth as a bandleader, documents his book of originals for the band, developed at gigs around New York and beyond. Built around the specific personalities of its members, trumpeter Nate Wooley, saxophonist Matt Bauder, vibraphonist Chris Dingman and bassist Eivind Opsvik, this group has been his primary focus as a bandleader since returning to New York in 2005. "Nate and Matt are known for their experimental sides," explains Eisenstadt, "yet both are lyrical players with totally personal sounds in more jazz/song form-oriented contexts. Chris, who I've worked with since my 2007 record, The All Seeing Eye + Octets (Poobah), brings harmonic sophistication and a skeletal, shimmering texture that only vibraphone can provide. Eivind is one of the premier young bassists working in New York and I felt instantly at home with his lyrical and rock solid approach. He thinks in song forms even when abstracting material, making him the perfect bass player for these compositions.".
Going solo is Old Time Relijun's Arrington de Dionyso. On November 3, K will release his album Malaikat Dan Singa.Old Time Relijun played Soundlab on 05/26/06 with The Stay Lows and Dimetrodon.
Biodiesel lies in razor thin space between band and dj, synthetic and human, man and machine. On one end you have drumming legend Johnny Rabb- pioneer of the freehand technique, who has performed and given clinics the world over. Recognized as an inventor, author, educator and the original World's Fastest Drummer, Johnny is able to execute his passion for live electronic music in ways that few (if any) others are able. His high rhythmic plateau is the foundation on which BioDiesel is constructed. Then add Clay Parnell- who is known throughout North America as bassist for Brothers Past - one of the premiere bands blending rock and electronic music. Put their latest studio release at the top of the growing pile of genre bending releases. Performing regularly with what reads like a who's who list in the edm and livetronica world, Clay has emerged as the go to bassist in this rapidly expanding genre.http://www.mnmpresentsjoenicebiodiesel.eventbrite.com
The most famous American DJ playing Dubstep, Joe Nice founded New York's irregular Dub War club night, which has hosted performances by prominent British Dubstep artists such as Hatcha, Youngsta, Kode9, Mala, and Loefah. He performs regularly in New York, London (including at scene pillar DMZ), and elsewhere. He first heard Dubstep in 2002, at the Baltimore venue Starscape, and began playing it that same year. He has been praised for his charisma and stage presence. In 2005 music journalist Martin Clark also praised him for his access to new dubplates (in contrast to other American Dubstep DJs) and willingness to play tracks by lesser-known producers. In 2007, Nice was selected as one of URB magazine's Next 100.
This Wednesday, Oct. 21st, 2009, at 8pm, Squeaky Wheel will be hosting an evening of live-rendered audio-visual performances entitled The Sick Sense by international sound & video performance artist Brent Coughenour. The Sick Sense features thousands of hours of concentrated research in the Laboratory of Frequency Distribution and Dissemination (LFDD) via Live Cinema performance and composition exercises that seek the elusive algorithm of sentiment.
Utilizing a thumb piano, a hacked Guitar Hero video game controller, and a computer as control devices, the works employ a meticulously selected sampling of both stuffily old-fashioned and trendily newfangled strategies culled from the history of audio and video synthesis including--but not limited to--computer vision, phase vocoding, FFT analysis, granular synthesis, filtration, gesture-mapping, and stochastic algorithms to create a tag team grudge match in which visual and auditory frequencies combine forces in a visceral assault on two, mayhap three, of the five senses.
James Jackson Toth, better known as Wooden Wand, is releasing a couple of new slabs of vinyl on People in a Position to Know Recordings. One is Haunting the Stagecoach, a four-song EP recorded under Toth's Wand name. It's hand-packaged and on clear vinyl, and it's limited to 100 copies. The other is "Topless Cow Girl", a single from Jescos, a new band that features Toth alongside members of the Mendoza Line and Glossary. They're both available for preorder right now, and they'll both ship on November 2.On 07/16/05, Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice played Soundlab with Castanets and I Heart Lung.
Josh has been fascinated with sound from an early age: many of his earliest memories involve making a lot of noise, as well as seeing and hearing loud things such as cannons, foghorns, and jackhammers. To this day, he continues to find music in unexpected places, enjoying both the sounds of a cityscape (droning engines, rhythmic hammering) and that of a mountain path (distant humming bee tree, rhythmic walking).
Josh is enrolled as a Ph.D. student at the University at Buffalo where he studies composition with Cort Lippe.
"The height of virtuosity was achieved after intermission, with Joshua DeScherer playing Failing (A Very Difficult Piece for Solo Doublebass), by Tom Johnson and the world premiere of his own Exercise on a Breeze, based on a "tune" by Alban Berg. The first consists of a spoken monologue, accompanied by progressively more difficult bass figures, on the meaning of "failure" in the title – if the piece is played correctly, does that mean that the performer has failed?
If one hadn't heard both performances, one would have said that they were impossible. DeScherer gets more exhilarating sounds out of a bass than most full orchestras." - Portland (ME) Press Herald
The Soundpainting Orchestra conducted by Christian Brandjes performed at Soundlab on 07/28/05 and 07/30/05. On 05/10/06, the group brought Soundpainting founder Walter Thompson to direct another Soundlab event.
Beginning this past September, the BSPE have been in residence at Hallwalls developing a new project that explores aural hallucinations, religion, Utopianism and their relationships to American culture. In their latest project, THE EPHERMAL MECHANICS PRESENT: IALDABOATH, AN ICHTHYOPOETIC, IMPROVISED FOLK DRAMA, the BSPE utilizes both found and improvised text, extended voice, movement, music and visual art, continuing its dialogue with the American subconscious, utopianism, electricity, spoken narrative itself. “Ephemeral mechanics” are those who labor in the trenches of the transient, creating wisps of thought, whispers and screams, battling entropy and constructing reality out of personal epiphanies, psychotic breaks, hallucinations, glossalalia, the voices of gods and ancestors, and ultimately help us to define (or in some cases, refine) our own conception of the chaotic and seemingly orderless reality in which we all float. The ensemble will attempt to inhabit the psychic, physical and linguistic grammar of hallucinatory experience, exploring its relationship to personal epiphany and how those experiences contribute to the creation of religion and order in an otherwise chaotic reality.
The BSPE is a cooperatively run ensemble of actors, singers, and musicians dedicated to the exploration of non-linear and improvisiational forms of narrative including the deconstruction of existing texts, the creation of vocally improvised sonic environments and improvisational composition of theatrical texts. The ensemble's influences include the Dadaists, the Surrealists (especially Antonin Artaud) and the musical innovators of the 20's through today including Luigi Russolo, John Cage, and the great improvisational performers of recent decades. "Soundpainting is the live composing sign language created by New York composer Walter Thompson for musicians, dancers, actors, poets, and visual artists working in the medium of structured improvisation. At present the language comprises over 750 gestures that are signed by the composer/conductor indicating the type of improvisation desired of the performers. Direction of the composition is gained through the parameters of each set of signed gestures."
Tickets for the event are $10 general, $8 students/seniors, and $6 members. For more information about the Buffalo Soundpainting Ensemble, please visit www.bspe.org.
Break Science is the culmination of a career of beat bending by its brainchild, Adam Deitch. Whether performing a DJ set with drums / programming or helming a live band, Break Science is club music in the vein of a "live mix tape," blending live trip-hop, broken-beat, dub, drum & bass and hip-hop. The live band features some of the most talented musicians on the New York scene today (sidemen and producers the Fugees, G-Unit, Matisyahu and more). Guests have included luminaries such as Wyclef, Matisyahu, Rob Swift of the Executioners and Talib Kweli.http://www.mnmpresentsbreakscience.eventbrite.com
Adam Deitch is the son of two professional funk drummers, first picking up sticks at the age of two. Adam's career crosses genres but has focused on hip-hop, funk and jazz, where he's played the role of both drummer and producer. Inspired by hip-hop at an early age – in particular, by Public Enemy and Eric B and Rakim – Adam began his production career by making loops on a tape deck in his bedroom. He's gone on to produce tracks for some of today's top emcees, including 50-Cent, Redman, Talib Kweli, Snoop Dogg, KRS-One, MF Doom, J-Live, Jurassic 5 and Immortal Technic.
Adam has done major session work on drums for artists including Justin Timberlake, Daniel Bedingfield, Anthony Hamilton, DJ Quik and Wycleff, Black Rob and Afu-Ru and the Fugees. Recently Adam has made live appearances with The Game (The Tonight Show), Slick Rick, Lauryn Hill, Pras of the Fugees, GZA of Wu-Tang Clan, Mr. Lif, Akrobatik, Dead Prez, the Ying Yang Twins, John Medeski, Meshell Ndegeocello and his own Fyre Dept as well as being a regular part of Wyclef Jean's band. Adam is constantly creating and continues to play with new groups all the time, insuring his positive contribution to the music of the future and beyond…..
Shout out out out out = two drummers + four bass players + two samplers + five synthesizers+ two vocoders. This is volatile dance music.http://www.shoutoutoutoutout.com/
Having grown up playing in a variety of punk/rock bands, over the course of time the six members wound up becoming obsessed with electro, tech-house, and computer disco. It’s because of this background that Shout Out Out Out Out are so comfortable straddling the fence between the energy and live-performance of being in a rock band, and the exciting bump of filling a dancefloor with slamming sequenced beat. To them the energy is the same, and the end result is the same, which is probably why their live shows are creating so much buzz. And it is quite a spectacle: two drummers pounding away in unison with a skillfully sequenced sampler, while the other four members alternate chaotically between hammering on their respective bass guitars and adjusting enough analog synthesizers and gadgets to make any gear nerd sweat. Overtop of it all a robotic vocoder voice is juxtaposed with tragically human lyrics about insurmountable debt and self loathing.
Formed in May 2004, all six members of Shout out out out out are established and prominent figures in the exceptionally strong and breaking Edmonton music community, having put in their time as touring machines, producers, artists, DJs, promoters and label bosses. Included in the band are Nik Kozub, Clint Frazier, Jason Troock, Will Zimmerman, Lyle Bell and Gravy.
The &Now Conference of Innovative Writing & the Literary Arts was founded in 2004 at Notre Dame, hosted by Lake Forest College in 2006 and Chapman University in 2008, and will be hosted in Oct. 2009 by UB, with literally dozens of readings, multimedia performances, lectures, and panels taking place over 4 days and nights at the downtown Hyatt and at Hallwalls. &Now is a unique conference dedicated to the practice and study of innovative, hard to categorize writing, whether experimental, avant-garde, hybrid, or cross-genre, and whether it is called surfiction, avant-pop, or postmodern. The full program of events is listed at www.english.buffalo.edu/andnow
At first thought, the obtuse band name "Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt!" seems typically hipster absurdist, a funtime linguistic throwaway, but the spectacle it describes is not so much a band as an interactive dance party, although not just any dance party: it's like a nursery school class gone awry, except everyone is in their twenties. The room is filled with random toys, balloons and strung up lights, and the performers are more likely to pass out baked goods, or help you select random costumes or props, than perform rehearsed songs from a fixed point on the stage. What you get is 5 performers led by founder Neil Fridd chanting simplistically subversive sing-along ditties against a backdrop of indie-electronic beats, but what really makes it all work is the way that audience and performer dissolve into each another. If your idea of fun involves a grown man in stuffed animal-covered jumpsuit, get your slice of pizza-costumed self down to Soundlab this Wednesday. Also on the bill is Buffalo's queen of cheeky adorability Bev Beverly and DJs NY Sexy Beast and NSFW.
Larry Ochs (tenor/sopranino saxophone)
Natsuki Tamura (trumpet)
Satoko Fujii (piano, synthesizer)
Don Robinson (drums)
Scott Amendola (drums)
Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core was formed in June 2000 for a special - invitation performance in San Francisco. The Core’s music is a meditation on and a 21st-century distillation of the songs of American and eastern European blues-shouters, and of traditional chant-singers from Asia and Africa. This is the space that this band was inspired by – at first. But then, after all, the end result is modern. Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core consists of both Scott Amendola and Donald Robinson on drums and is led by Larry Ochs on tenor and sopranino saxophones. As of November 2007, the trio expanded to a quintet, now including Satoko Fujii on synthesizers and piano, and Natsuki Tamura on trumpet.
“Unlike the sleek, chrome-plated sheen of Lipp's usual style of electronica, Dark Party offers a doper, more bumpin' ride; with Lipp laying down the bleeps and textures as Leo punches out labyrinths of
twisting rhythms that owe more than a little to the pop-locking 808 beats of oldskool hip-hop and electro-funk pioneers like Mantronix and
Newcleus.” - Gapers Block
“Anything with Eliot Lipp's name on it seems likely to bubble over with Moogs and disco-pulsing sheen — and that's not a bad thing. Leo123 and Lipp wear the Dark Party moniker like a slick silvery space suit, moon-raking over Daedelus's earthy, Latin-based percussion throwdown with chopped vocals and alien, purring analogues. Lengthy, too; it's less of a dark party and more like a dark electrofunk odyssey.“ - Miami New Times
Minnesota native, now Brooklyn based, Mux Mool has been blowing away a growing fanbase throughout 2009. Mux Mool’s eclectic & fun dance/ hip hop sound has been compared to great acts like Daft Punk, Dabrye, Lindstrom, Eliot Lipp, Nosaj Thing, Free The Robots, etc. He puts on a vibrant & energetic Live PA performance that gets concertgoers dancing & having fun. He has shared the stage with acts like Matt & Kim, Eliot Lipp, Nosaj Thing, Machinedrum and much more.
Sad word has reached us today of the death in San Diego Tuesday of one of Buffalo's most beloved cultural figures--novelist, poet and critic Raymond Federman, long a fixture of the State University at Buffalo French and English faculties.
He retired and left Buffalo in 1997 but until then Federman was close to a ubiquitous presence at cultural events in Buffalo--jazz concerts, literary readings, art openings. He was the subject of many Buffalo tributes, in particular an all-day Federman@80 last year which concluded with a packed house reading at Medaille College by Federman, along with friends and colleagues (including Ted Pelton, Christina Milletti, Charles Bernstein and Federman's daughter Simone.)
The singularity of Federman, both as a writer and a cultural presence, is that he was about as paradoxically delightful a man as you could encounter. He was both a forbidding avant-gardiist and a writer of raucous humor. He was, at the same time, a man friendly with Samuel Beckett and Michel Foucault and a completely compassionate and democratic professor to his students at UB.
In 1999, he told an audience at the Jewish Community Center in Getzville about the formative event in his life, at the age of 14 in his family's Paris apartment.
"The German Gestapo was coming upstairs to arrest us. My mother pushed me into a closet. I listened to my mother and father and sisters go down the stairs to their extinction....I believe I've spent the last 40 years writing and trying to understand my mother's decision to push me into the closet."
At the same time as he's capable of writing from such stark and somber remembrance of horror, if you go to his blog, the first thing you see from the writer, who was dying of cancer is this: "Federman's Blog (the laugh that laughs at the laugh.)
"Laugh: yes because when some guy weeps somewhere in the world, there is always some other guy who laughs somewhere else: happy balance!....Laugh or cry it all comes out the same in the end."
He loved golf. And he loved gambling. And you could always count on him, as a writer, to double down on oblivion. Seldom will you ever encounter a committed literary experimentalist as funny as Federman.
He was a singular-looking man with a nose so prominent Ghirlandio would have loved it. (Said Federman once of his essay into performing "I played Cyrano with my own nose.")
His writings could be titled. "The Voice in the Closet" but also "Double or Nothing," "Take It or Leave it" or "More Loose Shoes and Smelly Socks" (a miscellany).
You'll also find on his blog an "Obituary" written in Federman style by his daughter Simone including this inarguable proposition "Raymond Federman means many things to many people. Hundred, if not thousands of people, love him very much, will mourn his passing with profound sorrow."
A personal reminiscence by one of his students, R. D. Pohl, will be posted on this site very soon.
As previously reported, The Long Count is a multimedia piece by the National guitarists Aaron and Bryce Dessner and visual artist Matthew Ritchie, featuring vocals from the Breeders' Kim and Kelley Deal, My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden, and the National's own Matt Berninger. The mind-bending project hits the Brooklyn Academy of Music October 28, 30, and 31.The National performed at Big Orbit Gallery on 5/30/01 with Mia Doi Todd and Clogs. My Brightest Diamond visited Soundlab on 11/02/08.
As an appetizer, check out a live version of the Long Count song "Bull Run", which features vocals from Kelley Deal. It was recorded at the University of Illinois' Krannert Center last month. A teaser trailer for the show can be viewed on Ritchie's site. We've also got photos from the preview performance, more of which can be seen below.
Haunted spoken-word-type artiness beckons here.
Change is good, but sometimes the subtlest changes yield the most satisfying results. Consider Asobi Seksu’s most recent album, Hush. It hardly represents a drastic paradigm shift for the Brooklyn duo, which remains based around Yuki Chikudate’s charmingly ethereal voice and James Hanna’s tastefully textured guitar-playing (and occasional singing). The collection, the group’s third long-player, is nonetheless the product of a fresh approach by Asobi Seksu, as Chikudate tells the Straight.Read the rest of the article here. Asobi Seksu played Soundlab on 09/16/06 with Besnyo opening.
“We went in with the idea that we wanted to open up the sound a little bit more and not dirty the songs up too much with 20 distorted guitars, you know?” she says.
If DEVO actually devolved, and turned into the mongoloids they sang about, and then those mongoloids formed a band, that band would be called Exusamwa. For those wondering how to pronounce that, feel your frustration rise when told it’s simply the phonetic way of spelling the French phrase for excuse me, “excusez-moi.” That’s right, the answer was just staring you in the face the whole time. Now look at the picture of a bunch of grown adults dressed in full body tan suits with funny pink hats and fashionable shoes, and imagine music that is exactly as weird as that image. Most of it really is a warped DEVO—rhythm obsessed, damaged pop helmed by a completely undistinguishable voice—and when the group takes its bizarre approach to a slower, folk oriented style, there’s still an unsettling strangeness spiked in the lilting prettiness. So if you’re feeling tired of the rock cliché of a bunch of guys trying really hard to be cool, and want to see a band that will make you question your grasp on sanity, this one’s for you. They’ll play at Soundlab on Wednesday (Oct. 7), with local oddities Lulldozer 2 and the Price/Trump Duo.
While working at a photo lab, Frampton found that the waste at both ends of the rolls of processed film-where chemicals worked on the emulsion through clips used to attach the film to the machine-produced images far too interesting to be discarded. For Palindrome, Frampton selected images which he described as "tending towards the biomorphic," resembling abstract surrealist painting. However, the rigid palindromic structure that Frampton imposes on the images-a motorized sequence based on "twelve variations on each of forty congruent phrases"-deviates from the subjective aesthetic of the expressive, demonstrating Frampton's interest in the "generative power" of films composed by rules and principles. (Harvard Film Archive)."Hollis Frampton (1936-1984) was an American avant-garde filmmaker, photographer, writer/theoretician, and a pioneer of digital art. The last few years of his life, Frampton taught at SUNY Buffalo, writing, working on Magellan, an ongoing photographic projects with fellow artist and wife Marion Faller, and investigating the relationship between computers and art. Alongside Stan Brakhage, Hollis Frampton was a leading pioneer of abstract expression in American film, akin perhaps to John Cage and Morton Feldman in contributions to their art."--more or less from wikepedia.
There’s not much that’s cuter than a Brooklynite indie pop duo…except that the breed does seem to be proliferating like kittens. And, just like with kittens in the springtime, there can be too much of a good thing. You can’t take the whole litter home with you, so how do you decide which ones to keep? Are some cuter than the others? In the case of Matt & Kim, the answer is yes: They are cuter. The video for their single “Lessons Learned” is already a classic, winning the MTV breakthrough video award for this year (it features the couple stripping their way through Manhattan, arriving naked in Times Square, in February, with keyboardist Matt Johson getting beaten by the cops and drummer/vocalist Kim Schifino being mowed down by a speeding truck). Another single, “Daylight,” is featured in a Bacardi commercial depicting a guy sipping through parties in every era—fitting in its perfect, timeless pop. This duo’s retro-techno, jump-around dance music encourages crowd-surfing and audience over-enthusiasm. Matt & Kim play at Soundlab on Friday (Oct. 2). It’s really cute, it’s really fun, it’s really popular, and, unfortunately, it is SOLD OUT.
