Crippled Symmetry (What Would Morton Feldman Do?)

Fall Like a White Dwarf from Outer Space with "Slow-mo Electro-funk Schizoid" Com Truise at Soundlab Friday

2012-01-27T07:42:00.000-05:00

Friday, January 27, 9:30, $12--COM TRUISE w/ special guests Ay Fast (live). Perceptor & tba.

"His podcasts sound like the score of a 1980s Jackie Chan flick. His albums sound like the music you’d hear inside of a nightclub, inside of a computer…in the future. Most know him as Com Truise, but that’s just one of many personalities of slow-mo electro-funk schizoid Seth Haley. A product of the thriving upstate New York electro scene, Haley has been writing music for nearly a decade, starting as a DJ and more recently puttering in the trending territories of chill-wave, electro-dub, and synth-fi. His Cyanide Sisters EP dropped in early 2011 like a white dwarf falling from deep space, and packed twice as much heat. It’s the type of EP that makes you quit you’re day job and dedicate your life to finding new ways of dancing. Followed shortly after Cyanide Sisters, in the same year, Haley released Galactic Melt, sending the solar system into a proverbial panic…in a good way. Critics praised Haley’s revitalization of time-warped drum beats and laser-fire synth leads on the album, which spawned viral hits like “VHS Sex,” and “Cathode Girls.” Com Truise makes his return to Buffalo this Friday (Jan 27) at Soundlab after a brief opening set for the Glitch Mob in early fall of 2011. This time however, Truise has the headline spot to himself. Soundlab, prepare for launch sequence."

--by Brett Perla for Artvoice

Tickets available here.

Read "New Mount Eerie in the K Shop!"

2012-01-27T04:37:00.003-05:00

From K Records:

The new Mount Eerie single, from his Dub Narcotic Disco Plate Release “Distorted Cymbals” (DBN122) is the first we’ve heard from Phil Elverum in nearly three years, but it is a song that was certainly worth the wait. Calvin calls this track one of Phil’s most cogent projects in years—its a beautiful song, in both renditions, and a great collaboration of two friends and outstanding artists.

Get the new MOUNT EERIE disco plate at the K SHOP before anywhere else (like, right now) on vinyl or digital download.

Phil Elverum played Soundlab on 10/31/07 with Privacy and Al Larsen.

Lose Your Mind and Play as "Wooden Cities performs John Zorn's Cobra & more...." at Hallwalls Friday

2012-01-26T04:33:00.003-05:00

Friday, January 27, 8pm, $10 general, $8 students/seniors, $5 members--

Brendan Fitzgerald (prompter)  Dan Bassin (trumpet)  Nathan Heidelberger (horn)  Zane Merritt (guitar)  Tyler Borden (electric cello)  Michelle Purdy (percussion)  Aaron Staebell (drumset)  Evan Courtin (electric violin)  Ethan Hayden (vocals)  Michael McNeill (piano, keyboard)  Steve Baczkowski (saxophone)  .

With processed vocals, brass, winds, strings and percussion, Wooden Cities pushes its audiences with new interpretations of influential works of the 20th century and today. Born in Buffalo, New York, Wooden Cities is a collective of performers dedicated to presenting ensemble pieces for open instrumentation. In its latest incarnation, Director Brendan Fitzgerald will lead the ten-piece band in a performance of John Zorn's Cobra. The famous game piece features players jockeying for musical control by playing tactical maneuvers through sound events. The result of the struggle within the band can display itself in violent events, collective consonance, and nuanced interpersonal relationships that play out in front of its audience. This very special concert will also feature compositions for various instrumentation by John Cage, Elliot Carter, Daniel Bassin and Nathan Heidelberger.

Buy Tickets for: Blockhead, Emancipator, Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra & The Rusko Afterparty feat. Luvstep

2012-01-19T13:14:00.000-05:00

Available now!!!

Click here.

Go Goofy at the Playhouse Ugly Sweater Party This Friday

2012-01-19T13:05:00.002-05:00

Featuring... 23, Huxley, Peter Bonk and Natural Ingredients. $5/$10.

Read "A space uniquely designed for art"

2012-01-19T13:02:00.000-05:00

By Mark Sommer for the Buffalo News: Seymour H. Knox Jr. converged with the late John J. Albright 50 years ago today, hurtling the art museum bearing both of their names into a new era.

Buffalo native Gordon Bunshaft's glass-and-marble modernist addition to E.B. Green's 1905 Greek Revival structure was dedicated Jan. 19, 1962, which also led to the name changing from the Albright Art Gallery to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

Knox, the museum's longtime president, benefactor and visionary art buyer, along with gallery director Gordon M. Smith and the Knox Foundation, paid $1.4 million of the $1.7 million cost of the addition. The expansion heralded a huge step forward for a Buffalo museum recognized as holding one of the great collections of modern and contemporary art in the world. Read the rest here.

Check Out K-Holes Tonight at Soundlab

2011-08-08T16:26:00.000-04:00

By Eric Kendal for Artvoice: It’s been a while since a band has come along with a name that so rightly suits their sound. Brooklyn’s K-Holes push a brand of art-infused swampy garage-rock that is just as capable of making you achieve an out-of-body hallucinatory dirge as their namesake suggests. Cramps-style drumming, guttural male/female vocals and scrappy overdriven surf-punk riffs create a cacophonous scene involving the most terrifying party music you’ll likely hear for some time. What sends them over the top is the inclusion of a saxophone which can drive a song from haunting to almost celebratory in a matter of seconds without sacrificing an ounce of depravity, you know, to keep things filthy. It’s that same kind of lights-out sexed up swagger that made bands like the Gun Club so memorable. Fellow Brooklynites Call of the Wild are along for the ride with the promise of more high-octane rock n’ roll than a trio should be allowed to handle. Soundlab’s doors open at 8pm, so don’t be late. The off-kilter dance punk antics of Utah Jazz will put a smile on your face right before the punk and roll of Fatal Figures slap it right back off. 8pm. Soundlab, 110 Pearl St. (440-5907/www.bigorbitgallery.org/soundlab). $6.

Read "Cults Following : An 'accidental band' can barely keep up with its own success"

2011-08-02T10:43:00.001-04:00

By Eric Swedlund for Tucson Weekly:

For an accidental band, Cults found an incredibly quick path to success.

A chance meeting, a quick romance, some at-home music playing, three songs posted online and boom—the band winds up on Columbia Records with one of the most buzzed-about debut albums of the year.

"I don't think we ever thought about having a band," says Brian Oblivion, the guitarist half of the duo. "We'd just both liked making music around the house, just goofing around, and it started turning into songs. We went up to her parents' house upstate and recorded them in a weekend and put them online. We'd never played a live show, didn't plan on playing a live show. We just recorded some songs to show our friends we can.

"We've tried to put our finger on that moment when we decided to be in a band together and neither of us can remember."

Read the rest here. Cults visited Soundlab on 4/5/11.

Read "Gatekeepers #4: DJ Soma Talks About Infringement"

2011-07-29T14:01:00.000-04:00

By Cory Perla for Artvoice: DJ Soma is a true vetran of the local DJ scene, keeping bodies moving and music pumping since the early 1990′s. This week I talked to this staple Buffalo DJ, real name Curt Kuczkowski about the music he likes to spin, the 2011 Infringement Festival and his experiences on the fringe. This year DJ Soma will perform at a variety of Infringement events including Electronic Night at Soundlab on Friday, August 5th.

Read the full interview here.

Download the Complete Infringement Festival Schedule

2011-07-28T14:07:00.002-04:00

Here.

Read "2011 Infringement: a Sampling of Buffalo's 11-Day Festival of Art on the Edge"

2011-07-28T14:04:00.010-04:00

From Artvoice: Infringement Festival 2011 is upon us, which means that marginalized artists of every shape, size and genre will come out of the woodwork to showcase the off-beat, unexpected, unheard-of art that has made this festival a focal point of the summer since 2005. For 11 days, Allentown and the surrounding area becomes ground-zero for musicians, poets, dance troupes, media artists, theatre groups, street performers, and anyone else that falls between the cracks of conventionality to put themselves, and their art, on display. This year’s festival lineup boasts 1,200 performances in 52 venues across Buffalo, with group events running the gamut from the College Street Block Party, Broadway Market Extravaganza, Squeaky Wheel Film Fest, and Bike-In Movie Night at the Elmwood Co-op. The mayhem starts Thursday (July 28), as unofficial BIF headquarters, Nietzsche’s, hosts the opening ceremonies in Olympic-style fashion with a jam-packed night featuring performances by MC Vendetta, Pam Swarts, Ginger James, Scantron, Harold Black and the Entire Planet, DJ Medison, the Zombettes, Reverend Soapbox and the Rabble Rousers, and many more on both the front and back stages from 7pm until deep into the night. It’s festivals like this that prove Buffalo is a hotbed for under-the-radar art, and that there’s no shortage of artists who are willing to push the envelope to experiment, be controversial, and above all, make art on their own terms. —jon wheelock. Read the rest here.

Attend: "Zach Boehler: There Has to be Another Way Out of This F. Scott " at Big Orbit Gallery

2011-07-23T04:59:00.010-04:00

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 23, 8-11pm. Free and open to the public.
Big Orbit Gallery, 30D Essex Street, Buffalo, New York, 14213. 560.1968

It is Big Orbit Gallery's pleasure to announce, There Has to be Another Way Out of This F. Scott, an exhibition of paintings by artist Zack Boehler. Zach Beohler is a native of Buffalo, NY and a graduate of Buffalo State College. He is currently pursuing a MA in Art Education at the college. While Zach has displayed his work in numerous group exhibitions around Western New York, this will be his first gallery solo exhibition. Boehler is also a respected teaching artist who works extensively with children from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Buffalo through the Essex Street Arts Center's Simon Griffis Studio for Youth.

Artist Statement: When creating my work I often think of the Oscar Wilde quote "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." I feel my work often examines the condition the individual faces in the built environment. People constructed the urban environment to house and move large groups. The singular individual often is left to feel isolated by the constructed system and though surrounded by others at all times and continuously visually stimulated, one finds a stunning lack of meaning.

The title of this show is derived from this lack of meaning. Looking at the great literary minds of the Lost Generation and comparing their thirst for life's meaning and also their feeling of imminent collapse many lines of similarity can be drawn to the experience I have witnessed of those today. While the Hemingways and Fitzgeralds of the 1920's were disillusioned by World War I, we are not so much disillusioned as we are over-illusioned. The constant stimulus of our society has left many of the digital natives to become numb to any stimulus at all, and left voided in meaningless. Coupled with the loss of meaning is a fear of anonymity. We are left to feel that notoriety in any respect is a necessity of success, of happiness, and will cure our voids. Notoriety can only force us to delve further into the culture that has left us numb.

When we are forced to confront these feelings, and the realization that we experience them together, we find a sense of exploration. By embracing the idea of self-manifested destiny one can shake free of the over stimulation to once again perceive humanly, through curiosity and discovery. My imagery depicts these moments, where we discover meaning and feel possibility. The white flags depicted in this show are not a symbol of being beaten, they are instead a call to take action and surrender ourselves from the society that has forced unfounded mediocrity onto our shoulders. We can be pioneers; we can own these nights, manifest our histories, raise our flags and find that our anonymity is our greatest virtue while we live the legends we were born to chase.

See Oriental Rugs & More at Soundlab Tonight

2011-07-22T16:53:00.001-04:00

WHAT: Little Red Booking Presents ORIENTAL RUGS / MMCIII / D.U.G.O.U.T.C.A.N.O.E. / DJ Jake Gittes

WHEN: Friday, July 22 - 8:00pm Doors + DJ, 9pm Show

COST: $7, all proceeds go towards touring artists and art space.

ORIENTAL RUGS is a Chicago three piece that utilizes analog synthesizers, cassette tapes and a VHS mixer to convey a synesthetic collage. Members consist of John Shin, Mark Lee, and Ron Ewert.

http://www.facebook.com/Or ientalRugsMusic

http://soundcloud.com/orie ntal-rugs

MMCIII is fantasy electronic music hailing from Denver, Colorado. Milton Melvin Croissant does video projections of 3D animations while playing homemade (as well as pre-made) instruments with light, color, and motions sensors, and magic wands. Sounds like Terminator 2 meets Beyond the Mind Eye.

http://www.mmciii.com/

http://www.foxydigitalis.c om/foxyd/?p=11408

D.U.G.O.U.T.C.A.N.O.E. uses a deep wealth of field recordings as well as dense layers of guitar and vocals to do positive mind poems. Reminds MMCIII of Nobukazu Takemura.

http://dugoutcanoe.bandcam p.com/

Local DJ Jake Gittes (real name: Jake Mikler) will be sharing his comprehensive music library with you all, sprinkling it like gold dust in between sets, in between universes: early outer space, post-atomic punk, minimal electronik, past and current kraut, art-punk, etc. Listen and levitate!

Read ParisTransAtlantic's Review of the Nate Wooley Quintet (Put Your) Hands Together

2011-07-16T04:13:00.002-04:00

Nate Wooley has a compound identity as a trumpeter. On one hand, he's created a body of work in free improvisation (as a soloist and in duos with Paul Lytton, Chris Forsyth and Peter Evans) preoccupied with exploring the trumpet's sonic possibilities and issues of space, duration and free interaction. Conversely, he's also a sideman in some highly creative but more traditional jazz groups, like the Daniel Levin Quartet and Harris Eisenstadt's Canada Day. Wooley's own quintet dates from 2008, and it clearly represents a coming-together of those interests, an attentiveness to both the minutiae of sound and the exploration of group relations within loose forms, the combination creating profoundly nuanced work.

Wooley has played Soundlab many times: 10/17/04 Blue Collar (Nate Wooley/Steve Swell trombone/Tatsuya Nakatani), Padhermlardbacz Horn Trio + Drums (Ravi Padmanahba/Mike Hermanson/Mike Allard/Steve Baczkowski); 04/09/05 Nate Wooley/Chris Forsythe, Open Music Foundation; 05/13/06 Cor Fuhler, Nate Wooley, Newtown Armstrong; 09/30/06 SILO: Nate Wooley, Audrey Chen.

Check Out the Communist Party Tonight at Soundlab

2011-07-15T04:01:00.001-04:00

Friday, July 15, 11pm--COMMUNIST PARTY featuring ROBOROC & HXLY! with commie residents Flava Braun & Sir Richard Rector. $5 over 21, $10 under 21

Read "Interview with Charlie Looker of Seaven Teares"

2011-07-14T00:25:00.004-04:00

From the roulette blog:

With roots in metal, modern composition, jazz, indie pop and Early Music, Charlie Looker’s music has always been an intuitive synthesis of diverse influences. A core member of the notorious Brooklyn “brutal chamber” group Zs, Looker formed his own band Extra Life in 2007 to explore more fully his vocal writing, folk-based forms and synthetic instrument sounds. Other notable projects and credits include work with Dirty Projectors, John Zorn, William Parker, Tyondai Braxton, Daniel Carter, Elliott Sharp, Christian Wolff, Seductive Sprigs and Time of Orchids.

Charlie Looker played the old Soundlab with his group Lavender on 08/10/02 (also on the bill: John Long, Tassels from a Day Sale live original soundtrack to Dziga Vertov's Three Songs of Lenin). On 08/23/06 he played the new Soundlab with Seductive Sprigs, Nat Baldwin.

Watch Skeletons Big Band on Roulette TV

2011-07-13T00:22:00.001-04:00

Skeletons and the Kings of All Cities Played Soundlab on 03/30/07

Stream New Battles MP3s

2011-07-12T00:19:00.002-04:00

Courtesy of the Wire, listen to a rundown of Battles tracks, from both their previous studio releases and forthcoming album, Gloss Drop. Battles visited Soundlab on 04/02/07.

Read "Marilyn Nonken Talks About Feldman Festival"

2011-07-11T00:17:00.001-04:00

From the Signal to Noise blog:

Pianist Marilyn Nonken is performing Triadic Memories on June 4 in Philadelphia as part of “American Sublime,” a festival devoted to the works of Morton Feldman. Marilyn was kind enough to tell us a bit about working on Feldman’s music, as well as some of her other upcoming projects.

Read ParisTransAtlantic Reviews of Recent Michel Doneda Releases

2011-07-10T12:03:00.000-04:00

In the early 2000s, saxophonist Michel Doneda was putting out an astonishing number of recordings (about 25 between 1999 and 2005 by my count), but since then, he's been relatively quiet. So it's good to see this strong batch of recent work hit. Doneda's 2004 collaboration with Tatsuya Nakatani and Jack Wright on soseditions was a stunner, so it's great to see Nakatani inaugurate his new label with a duo he and Doneda recorded in New York in September 2007.

On 01/18/04, Soundlab hosted the Jack Wright/Tatsuya Nakatani/Michel Doneda trio along with the trio of Blaise Siwula/ Adam Lane/Toshi Makihara. Nakatani and Wright have visited several times since.

Listen to a "History of Electronic/ Electroacoustic Music (1937-2001)" (but Take It With a Grain of Salt)

2011-07-09T03:59:00.001-04:00

From ubuweb:

This massive selection is from a 62 CD set called "The History of Electroacoustic Music" that was floating around as a torrent, reputedly curated by a Brazilian student. It's sketchy. The torrent vanished and the collection has long been unavailable. It's a clearly flawed selection: there's few women and almost no one working outside of the Western tradition (where are the Japanese? Chinese? etc.). However, as an effort, it's admirable and contains a ton of great stuff. Take it with a grain of salt, or perhaps use it as a provocation to curate a more intelligent, inclusive, and comprehensive selection.

Check Out Communist Party Pics

2011-07-07T10:43:00.004-04:00

Hit up the Commie Party facebook page here.

See The Vacant Lots at Soundlab Saturday, Watch The Video for "Cadillac" Now

2011-07-07T03:57:00.000-04:00

By Cory Perla for Artvoice:

In their first year, Burlington, Vermont’s the Vacant Lots did what most indie rock bands strive to do over the span of an entire career. That is, self release three full-length albums. Tapping into the dark side of the pop spectrum, the duo of Jared Artaud and Frank Zammiello recently signed to New York City’s Mexican Summer record label to release their singles “Confusion” and “Cadillac,” two psychedelic, yet black and white garage rock burners. Its not out of the ordinary to find the Vacant Lots compared to bands like the Black Angels, Spacemen 3, the Stooges or Bo Diddley, but their sound still remains their own, combining retro-rock with grunge and indie. The Vacant Lots will bring their retro-psychedelic rock to Soundlab on Saturday (July 9). Local garage rock band the Auras and indie-pop band the Bird Day open the show.

Read "Evolving Expert," an Interview with Erik Friedlander

2011-06-05T03:40:00.002-04:00

By Marc Masters and Grayson Currin for Pitchfork (The Out Door #14):

If you need cello on a record, Erik Friedlander might be a decent person to call. He's the musician summoning those dark storms on the Mountain Goats' "Dilaudid", and he's one of two cellists on Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite. He's played with John Zorn, Mike Patton, Wynton Marsalis, Ricky Martin, and Alanis Morissette. What's more, he's several albums into a solo career that keeps getting better.

Read the rest here. Erik performed selections from his Maldoror record at Soundlab on 04/19/04

Read "Beyond Fahey"

2011-06-04T03:33:00.002-04:00

By Marc Masters and Grayson Currin for Pitchfork (The Out Door #14):

A few months ago, music writer Ned Raggett followed up an interview with Six Organs of Admittance's Ben Chasny by jokingly offering to let Chasny interview him. Chasny took him seriously. And among his many interesting questions was this thought-provoking charge:

"What do you think about every music writer comparing every acoustic guitar player to John Fahey as if he had the greatest influence on everyone? Isn't this the same sort of critical reductionism that would not be allowed in any sort of serious art journal? Wouldn't that be the equivalent of... comparing every single music writer to Lester Bangs?"

Raggett gave a typically thoughtful answer, but I later joked with him that he should've told Chasny that acoustic guitarists who want to stop being compared to Fahey should stop sounding like him. I was being facetious, but I do think there's more happening here than reductionism. It's true that no guitarist is a Fahey clone-- that would be impossible, since Fahey's own career was too wide and contradictory to be captured by one style. Chasny himself has proven that with his work as Six Organs of Admittance; while he has echoed Fahey and many other acoustic masters, those echoes often take a back seat to his own creative voice.

Read the rest here.

Attend Jooklo Duo & Bill Nace/Steve Baczkowski Live at Soundlab Record Release Tonight

2011-06-03T03:05:00.004-04:00

Tonight, June 3, 9pm, $10 general, $8 members/students/seniors--JOOKLO DUO (Virgina Genta (tenor saxophone); David Vanzan (drums, percussion). And celebrating their record release Live in Buffalo on 8mm Records recorded live at Soundlab in Buffalo N.Y. in July 2009: BILL NACE (electric guitar); STEVE BACZKOWSKI (baritone/bass/tenor saxophones).

"Coming at free jazz from psych rock, Jooklo Duo hones in on the mystical sound of Coltrane and Ayler, and plays its own enthusiastic, lo-fi version." - East Bay Express

Hallwalls and Soundlab presents the Buffalo debut of Jooklo Duo, a saxophone and drum duo featuring Italian musicians Virginia Genta and David Vanzan. Motivated by the furious playing of free jazz pioneers like Albert Ayler, Rashied Ali, Sunny Murray and Arthur Doyle, Jooklo Duo is one of the loudest, most high-energy avant-garde jazz projects making music today.

Italian tenor saxophonist Virginia Genta and drummer David Vanzan formed Jooklo Duo in 2004, and released their first album, Free Serpents, two years later. They have since toured extensively in Europe and the US in duo, and also in various configurations under the names Neokarma Jooklo Octet, Neokarma Jooklo Trio, Golden Jooklo Age, Jooklo Fire Quartet, and Jooklo Finnish Quartet, and with musicians such as Sonny Simmons, Maurizio Abate, Makoto Kawabata, Tero Kemppainen, Andrew Barker, Chris Corsano, Peaking Lights, Bill Nace, Paul Flaherty, Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, John Blum, John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), Takehisa Kosugi (Taj Mahal Travellers), Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Thurston Moore and Lee Ronaldo of Sonic Youth, Hartmut Geerken, Famodou Don Moye, Makoto Kawabata, Muruga Booker, Raymond Strid, and Giorgio Pacorig. In 2010, they released High on Genta's Troglosound imprint and The Warrior 7" on Northern Spy. This will be their first concert in Buffalo.

Jooklo Duo partnered with guitar wizard, Bill Nace, and will descend upon the East Coast and Midwest for 20+ dates from May 19th through June 17th. Touring in support of their 7" release The Warrior on Northern-Spy Records, released last November, and Where Has the Jazz Gone on the duo's own Italian imprint Troglosound, released in March, the group will play shows in Philadelphia, Washington DC, Baltimore, Jersey City, New York City, New Haven, Providence, Boston, Northampton, Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Chicago, Lafayette, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. Upon completion of their tour the band will record their first state-side full-length LP in Brooklyn for Northern-Spy which will be released in early 2012.

jooklo.altervista.org

Steve Baczkowski and Bill Nace Steve Baczkowski & Bill Nace – Live in Buffalo, 8mm Records:

"…LP that documents a furious duo exchange between US power saxophonist Steve Baczkowski (best loved for his work with Flaherty/Corsano and his duo with Ravi Padmanabha) and Northeast guitar mangler Bill Nace (Northampton Wools, Vampire Belt, Blood Stereo et al). Recorded live in Buffalo this is a wild side, with more in common with the sense-destroying attack of Borbetomagus circa Zurich than anything coming out of the post-Ayler tradition. Baczkowski balances huge sheet metal waves on the tip of his tongue while Nace takes a grinder to the table-top guitar ala Donald Miller. There are some eerie passages of high-tension silence populated by non-specific electronics, slithering drones, vocals and high lonesome feedback but they don't last long and it's the molten peaks that keep you coming back again and again. Industrial strength free jazz from a duo who know." – Volcanic Tongue

Read "A Media Blitz for Cory Arcangel"

2011-05-27T07:18:00.004-04:00

By Colin Dabkowski for the Buffalo News: Cory Arcangel, the Western New York native and Nichols School grad who has a high-profile show opening this week at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, has been all over the arts press lately. He was the subject of a long profile in this week's issue of The New Yorker, a profile and a (rather middling) review in The New York Times, another long profile in New York Magazine. Seldom has an artist "arrived" with such fanfare. And if you read all these pieces, you'll begin to see what all the fuss is about.

Locally, Arcangel's work will be on view starting on July 1 as a major part of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's boundary-pushing exhibition "Videosphere: A New Generation," in which the gallery will showcase its small but potent collection of new media art. The show also serves as a sort of declaration by the museum of its committment to collecting new media art much more going forward.

Look for more coverage of that show -- and other interesting developments at the gallery -- as its opening approaches."

Cory Arcangel's Beige Records performed an "art battle" with Paper Rad at Soundlab on Novemember 9, 2002.

Watch Jonathan VanDyke Do Nothing for 5 Days

2011-05-27T06:14:00.003-04:00

From the AKAG press release: Starting on May 28, the artist Jonathan VanDyke will perform The Long Glance, a work in which he will stand and contemplate Jackson Pollock's Convergence, 1952, for forty hours over five days. VanDyke will remain in the same spot each day from 10 am to 5 pm, with only slight movements and just one twenty-minute break. Visitors are welcome to watch the artist's silent performance or view the painting alongside him. The performance will also be broadcast on the Gallery's website.

On Friday, June 3, as part of M&T FIRST FRIDAYS @ THE GALLERY, VanDyke will reprise his performance from 1:30 to 5 pm, and give a talk about his experience at 7 pm.

Listen to Junior Boys' new nine-minute track "Banana Ripple"

2011-05-03T04:26:00.001-04:00

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

It's All True, the new album from the Canadian synthpop smoothies Junior Boys, is due June 14 around the world and June 20 in the UK, via Domino. Here, the nine-minute, album-closing soul odyssey "Banana Ripple" is streaming. Before the album drops, the group will release "Banana Ripple" as a 12" single on May 30 in the UK, with remixes by the Field and disco edit pioneer Tom Moulton.

Junior Boys hit Soundlab on 11/03/09 with Wooden Hand.

Read "Q&A With Rusko: 'I Don't Think I've Ever Made A Deep Or Serious Track In My Life.'"

2011-05-02T07:05:00.003-04:00

By Puja Patel for the Village Voice's Sound of the City blog:

Dubstep is the first thing that comes to mind when people mention Rusko, and that's almost become a disservice to the young UK-born DJ. While Chris Mercer is certainly credited as an innovator of the wobbly, bass-thwarting, and often numbingly gloomy genre of electronic music, he left the darkness behind a long time ago. Growing up in a Leeds, the young producer was immersed in local reggae and dub scenes; eventually he adopted those sounds and pushed out his experimental electronic tracks alongside co-conspirators Caspa and Skream. The sound caught on quickly among dub fiends, drum-n-bass heads, and even jungle lovers because of the way it gave the masses a more relaxed groove to soundtrack their dimly lit warehouse raves. But slow and steady is not what Rusko is about. Not too long after the genre's inception Mercer veered away from its sticky basslines in search of uptempo beats and melodies, then took the hybridized results to audiences outside of the underground. And so far, it's been working.

We caught up with the DJ while he was rehearsing for his tour--which arrives in New York tonight--to talk about his newest dub finds, "bro-step," and his work in pop music.

Read the interview here. Rusko played Soundlab on 12/05/09 with RX & Chae Hawk, Big Basha and Steve Kream.

Read "Oneida Complete Trilogy With New Album"

2011-05-01T08:53:00.002-04:00

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

On June 7, Jagjaguwar will release Absolute II, the new album from Brooklyn experimental rock scene elders Oneida. Absolute II is the third and final album in the band's Thank Your Parents triptych, which also includes 2008's Preteen Weaponry and 2009's Rated O.

Oneida's Bandcamp page includes an overview of the entire Thank Your Parents project, which the band calls "an aesthetic object, a historical meditation, and a narrative experience." A buzzing excerpt of the track "Horizon" is up above, for your listening pleasure.

Even though Oneida has an absolute beast of a drummer in Kid Millions, a press release promises that the four-track Absolute II includes no audible drums. It also lacks any "identifiable 'rock' music." That's the album's cover art above Listen to an excerpt here.

Oneida performed at Soundlab on 08/03/06 with From Monuments to Masses and Sleeping Kings of Iona

Attend the Opening of "Sex * Time * Decay * Shasti" at Big Orbit Tonight

2011-04-30T16:35:00.001-04:00

Saturday, April 30, 7:30pm, Big Orbit Gallery, 30d Essex St--Shasti O'Leary Soudant MFA Thesis Exhibition. Sculpture, photographs, performance. Opening reception 7:30, one-time performance at 9pm.

• some material may be disturbing to sensitive viewers • PLEASE BE AWARE OF THE INSCRIPTIVE NATURE OF THE ARTWORKS ON DISPLAY DURING THE RECEPTION.

THE ARTIST AND BIG ORBIT GALLERY ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE INCURRED TO THE CLOTHING OR INDELIBLE MARKS MADE ON THE SKIN OF ATTENDEES.

Thank you,
The Management

Read "Yip Yip Stripped: Orlando Costumed Duo Gets Real"

2011-04-30T04:21:00.003-04:00

By Justin Strout for Orlando Weekly:

It's Tuesday evening in the Florida Hospital Orlando cafeteria. It's not the peaceful lakeside café strategically positioned to greet visitors coming in from the Kubrickian tunnel that connects the hospital to its parking garage, the one with baguettes and a spiral staircase and the promise of hope.

This cafe-teria is further down a ways and offers booths, fluorescents and ice cream by the pound. And silence, occasionally interrupted by the excited chatter of two unspeakably geeky suburban kids from Longwood lacking friends enough to start a proper band with actual instruments. There's Brian Esser, an artsy type with a jagged deadpan wit, jacked up on behavioral meds and prone to playing high-wire on the parking garage roof or hosting banana-eating contests that end, progressively and alarmingly sooner and sooner, with him vomiting blood. With him is his high-school lifeline, Jason Temple, angular, confidently withdrawn and still buzzing from hours spent with Esser at Rocky's Replay arcade, which they drove many miles out of their way to get to. This is their home base, complete with cheap burritos and empty late-night hours. It's where they wrote their first album within a month.

Only that was 10 years ago, almost exactly. Today, the cafeteria has smoothie machines, and you get there via the Walt Disney Hall of Inspiration. The table that Esser and Temple made music on is lorded over by an imposing antique clock and surrounded by TVs, all blaring Gwyneth Paltrow singing Adele. Esser, at least, doesn't mind.

"This is kind of weird," he says, interrupting a thought to take a long look around his old haunt's new trappings. "I like the TVs. It was so quiet in here before, I'd be really terrified to talk. But now there's TVs in people's faces. It was creepy quiet. It's like I've forgotten that we used to do this. Now it feels so far away."

Read the rest here. Yip Yip played Soundlab on 11/12/06 with Mon Petite Chou Chou and Power Pill Fist. On 10/04/07, they returned with Yip Yip, Z Mann Zilla and the World's Largest Trio & DJ MJB Corp.

Experience Digital Buddha: Jin Hi Kim at Hallwalls Tonight

2011-04-29T10:46:00.004-04:00

Friday, April 29, 8pm, $15-20--DIGITAL BUDDHA: JIN HI KIM, Asbury Hall, 341 Delaware Ave.

Hallwalls is pleased to present master musician and composer Jin Hi Kim in a rare Buffalo appearance performing her extraordinary solo multimedia work Digital Buddha and more live in Asbury Hall. Jin Hi Kim is an internationally acclaimed innovative komungo virtuoso and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow in Composition. Kim is currently the Music Alive Composer-in-Residence with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (2009-2011).

Check Out the Communist Party Tonight at Soundlab

2011-04-29T10:40:00.001-04:00

Tonight, April 29, 11pm, $5--the COMMUNIST PARTY! feat. DJ DSTAR, Mario Bee w/Mareo Speedwagon, Flava Braun & Sir Richard Rector.

Check Out the "Ineffably Urban" Symposium On/In Buffalo Saturday at Hallwalls

2011-04-29T04:51:00.002-04:00

Saturday, April 30, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., FREE--

UB Arts Management Program, UB Humanities Institute, & Hallwalls present INEFFABLY URBAN SYMPOSIUM. Ineffably Urban is a one-day event on Buffalo, its conflicting identities and diverse creative representations, as cases of the urban image today. What is the status of the urban, of the image, of its expressions and discourses in diverse disciplines?

ineffable |inˈefəbəl| adjective
too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words • not to be uttered

This city often defines itself in terms of past glory or else its current struggles; its dysfunctional political culture, troubling social segregation, or its strong and persistent grass-roots base in the fields of culture, education and social justice. These disjoined identities find expression in common narratives of Buffalo, from Mark Goldman’s City on the Edge to Lauren Belfer’s City of Light. Likewise, strategies of fragmentation and of reconstruction – literal and mental – crop up, as they do in other post-industrial cities, in fields ranging from architecture to art and the humanities and social sciences. Between capitulation, nostalgia, demise and reconstruction, the urban image is left decidedly unutterable, undecided, ineffable: both sublime and unspeakable.

This symposium finds inspiration in this situation for a vigorous discussion of the urban image itself between critical discourses today. Beyond a local or regional discourse, Ineffably Urban aims at addressing questions one step removed from the actual city: how can we talk about the city’s “unspokens”? How can we render a picture of Buffalo without destroying that image immediately as we articulate observations and strategies explicitly? What is the “imaginaire” between the faded glory of Buffalo and its contemporary reality?

More specifically, the event aims at contextualizing findings within the broader context of other “formerly urban” cities in the rust belt and elsewhere, by investigating the theoretical narratives, the semiotics of texts and images (writing, photographs, films, video) and the driving social, political, and cultural forces around Buffalo and its urban image.

Much more information on the event, including program and participants, is available at its website.

Read "Alan Licht On The Emergence Of Experimental DJ Culture" (2009)

2011-04-29T04:30:00.005-04:00

Previously unpublished essay by Alan Licht for The Wire Issue #300 (Feb 09):

Ah, 1982: the year that Christian Marclay, who would soon be known for bringing turntables to the world of free improvisation, using fast cuts, layering and loops for a live translation of tape music, first performed with his decks at the Kitchen; the year that Brian Eno released On Land, his second ambient album - largely ignored back then, its deep bass sound and glacial movement would become a major influence on the Ambient club movement a decade later; and lastly, as Steve Barrow says in Simon Reynolds’s Generation Ecstasy, “By 1982, dub had run its course in Jamaica, it had become a formula.” Reynolds himself then notes, “But this was just the moment at which dub techniques were being used by New York electro-funk and disco producers in remixes, and vocal-free B-side instrumental versions.”

These unrelated occurrences in The Wire’s year zero all helped set in motion the idea of DJ culture, which reached its pinnacle in the mid- to late 90s. The DJ, not the guitarist, was the instrumental pop hero of the decade. In the disco era, DJs like Larry Levan and Nicky Siano attracted a cult following for their weekly all-night flights, crafting an endless groove from different extended-mix 12” singles, but never took center stage. Only the late Arthur Russell seems to have made the connection at the time between these marathon disco DJ sets and the rhythmic trance element of the minimalist Riley/Reich/Glass axis. Russell was a cellist, not a DJ, but a consideration of his output of disco singles, classical compositions, and pop songs and instrumentals invites comparison to the connect-the-dots aesthetic of a good DJ, and his activities are in some ways a harbinger of the rapport between the avant and electronica worlds to come not long after his death in 1992.

Read the rest here. DJ Olive played the old Soundlab as part of a DJ trio organized by Christian Marclay (who could not make it), that also included Marina Rosenfeld and Toshio Kajiwara. DJ Spooky played Soundlab twice, on 04/05/02 with DJ Marcos/DJ Del Mar and Christ Sinister/God Morgen; and on 04/20/05 as part of a benefit for the Critical Art Ensemble which also included Polmo Popo (DJ set), Mark Kloud and Cort Lippe/Jonathan Golove. On 04/14/05, Animal Collective visited Soundlab with Ariel Pink.

Catch the Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film & Video Festival Presented by Siew-wai Kok This Saturday at Squeaky Wheel

2011-04-28T16:19:00.008-04:00

Saturday, April 30, 7pm, $5-$7, Squeaky Wheel, 712 Main St:

Siew-wai Kok, co-director of the 1st Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film & Video Festival (KLEX), returns to Buffalo to present selections from KLEX alongside some of her newest explorations merging cinema and sound. KLEX new international film festival developed as an innovative platform to introduce both historical and contemporary experimental cinema to the Malaysian audience, nurture the experimental film and video makers in the region, and develop experimental cinema communities in Malaysia. KLEX currently serves as a venue for discourse on critical issues related to the edge of cinema art and will encourage the interaction and exchange between experimental filmmakers and video artists in Asia, especially in South East Asia. For the 2010 program, KLEX invited guest curators from Indonesia, Taiwan and the Philippines to curate a screening program of works from their countries. The festival received over 180 works from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, China, Canada, USA and Europe. This will be the first time the program will be screened in the United States. Siew-wai will also present a series of her own works after the KLEX screening and an artist/curator talk regarding of her involvement with organizing artists in Malaysia at various capacities.

Seiw-wai has participated in several Big Orbit Gallery/Soundlab events, including: on 06/28/01 she was featured as part of the Parenthesis series at Rust Belt Books along with Knox Harrington; on 03/22/03 she performed at the Out of Nowhere CD (which featured her soundwork) Release Party, featuring live performances by Cort Lippe/Jonathan Golove, Andrew Deutsch/Peer Bode, JT Rinker/Leah Muir, Pamela Susan Hawkins/Dean Thornton/Sei-Wai Kok; and on 05/14/05 Soundlab hosted Siew-wai Kok: Breathe, which featured guest artists and performers: Vincenzo Mistretta, Jax Deluca, Patrick Cain, Paul Kozlowski and Koji Tambata

Read "Charles Gayle: Freedom Cry" (1994)

2011-04-27T04:26:00.003-04:00

By Howard Mandel for The Wire Issue #121 (Mar 94):

On the streets and in the subways of New York, the spirit of black free jazz lives on in the music of a few true believers – musicians like Charles Gayle; homeless, neglected but still burning with the passion to be free. By Howard Mandel.

“Let’s do the interview at your place,” suggests Charles Gayle, reigning king of New York City’s black free jazz players. “Because the heat at my place is not really happening.” The January weather has been severe in NYC and Gayle, aged 54 but still tall, lean and muscular, lives as he has for four years in an unrenovated East Village squat.

It seems that free jazz in New York is nearly homeless, certainly at the culture’s farthest fringe. Though physically vigorous, the nominally non-commercial, sometimes politically engaged, sometimes rhetorically self-righteous, sometimes fatally self-absorbed music that erupted from Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra and their many associates three decades ago has just a few devotees who earn about as much money and respect as street people. Nonetheless, tenor saxophonists such as Gayle, David S Ware and Zane Massey, pianist Matt Shipp, bassist William Parker, drummer William Hooker, and a score or two of others persevere.

Free jazz is shunned and/or scorned by music mags, record labels, the latest wave of so-called mainstream players, influential critics, academics and presenting institutions. It is characteristically loud, dissonant, anarchic and confrontational, though free jazz players claim, as they always have, spiritual catharsis if not transcendence as their aim. The style’s superficial chaos, its apparent lack of differentiation, resembles, more than anything, the helter-skelter interactions of urban life. Well, what grows in the City takes on protective colouration. Most New Yorkers probably see and hear no more in free jazz than they do in weeds.

Read the rest about the great Buffalo-bred saxophonist here.

Attend Sugar City's 2-Part 2-Year Anniversary Celebration

2011-04-22T15:57:00.000-04:00

Tonight, Friday April 22, 7pm & 10:30pm--SUGAR CITY'S 2 YEAR 2 PIECE FEST. Part 1, 7-10:30pm, 523 Main St Buffalo, NY UVB-76 | MARTIN & LAWRENCE | PACING |A HOTEL NOURISHING | EROTIC ECONOMIES | Part 2: CHRONOLOGICAL DANCE PARTY 10:00-2am, Soundlab. $8 donation pre-sale, $10 donation at the door for both parts OR $5 donation for just Part 2. Two-Toned attire encouraged.

Last year’s party was really something special wasn’t it? We wanted this year to do justice but also be a little unexpected. In the Sugar City spirit of doing it together and celebrating our grassroots community we have planned a really amazing night combining several local avant-garde artists, phenomenal out of town guests and entrance into a brand new space on the “forgotten block” of Main St! Conveniently located near Mohawk Place for our buds going to the Crappy Dracula show!

▶ ▷ ◀ ◁PART 1 ▶ ▷ ◀ ◁

Two-Piece Fest (all duos!)

523 Main St downtown near Mohawk St by WNY Book Arts Center. Doors at 7 start at 7:30 End at 10:30.

Performances include: |▲ Martin & Lawrence ▲| Ric Royer and Lexie Mountain are flying in on a golden aeroplane straight from the glittering East Coast. We are psyched to bring these two comedic characters together as our MC's for the night.

|▼ UVB-76 ▼| Mario Fanone and Sherri Miller melt your mind with experimental electronic music and added performance. What tricks will they have up their sleeves this time?

|▲ A Hotel Nourishing ▲|Sonny Baker and Cameron Rogers play their first show in awhile. We are so pumped for these two to lay down some tough beats and harsh licks!

|▼ PACING ▼| Matt and Moezes bring the drudge, bring the harsh noise, and may bring down the walls with their sonic vibrations.

|▲ Erotic Economies ▲| Liz Flyntz and Anna Scime produced a beautiful free art journal that catalogs an assortment of international artists and writers. On this night they will feature experimental films curated for the journal and get you excited about volume 2 being released soon!

WHAT TO EXPECT: |:|RAFFLES|:|ART|:|PHOTOS|:|TACOS|:|LIGHTS|:|MAGIC|:|FUN|:|FAMILY|:|

THEN at 10:30 the 12/8 Path band will suit-up and everyone will gather to dance, blast, and march to the above ground subway and ride with the band to Soundlab for PART 2 of the party!

LIKE THIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6s3k9fxga8 or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0m8E7DJWT0&feature=related

▶ ▷ ◀ ◁PART II ▶ ▷ ◀ ◁

Soundlab 110 Pearl St Buffalo, NY

Chronological Dance Party. Doors at 10PM

Sequentially travel through music history as our pals play you some tunes from the 50’s thru the 90’s. See you on the dance floor. THERE WILL BE A MIXTAPE EXCHANGE IN EFFECT. Bring a mixtape or cd and swap it for someone else’s mixtape or cd. Free with your stamp from part 1 or just $5 if you wanna swing on by late.

Featuring: Frankie Rainbows (1950’s), Jill Apex Hunter (1960’s), Handsome Dan (1970’s), Blake Ellman (1980’s), Dan-O (1990’s)

PRESALE TICKETS @ sugar city, from sugar citizens, and both record theaters, spiral scratch, and at http://sugarcity.bigcartel.com/

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

The funds raised will go towards compensating our great out of town guests and supporting Sugar City’s future!

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

www.buffalosugarcity.org

Listen to New Handsome Furs - "What About Us"

2011-04-21T08:53:00.000-04:00

By Brandon for Stereogum:

“What About Us” is the first public sample of Handsome Furs’ forthcoming Sound Kapital. As you likely noticed, Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry are still using their promo photos to remind us they’re happily married (though here, oddly, they aren’t touching). Before you dive in, it’s also worth noting Sound is the first Handsome Furs album written entirely on keyboards.

Handsome Furs played Soundlab on 07/18/09 with The Cinnamon Band.

Watch Girl Talk Teach English

2011-04-20T10:59:00.000-04:00

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork: E

nglish, baby! is a website devoted to teaching the English language, sometimes via celebrity video interviews. The site's latest video interview features Gregg Gillis, otherwise known as Girl Talk, who helps explain the terms "out of the blue" and "sample." The videos are part lesson and part regular interview, and they're refreshingly devoid of "Yo, Teach!"-worthy self-conscious coolness. (Well, except for the high-fives at the end.) Watch two clips here, via English, baby!

Girl Talk first performed at the old Soundlab on 07/06/02 as part of Circuits of Steel tour featuring 7 artists from Pittsburgh's emerging electronic/experimental scene: Clockworm, Girl Talk, Manherringbone, Colongib, My Boyfriend the Pilot, Powder French, Xanoptiocon. He visited the new Soundlab on 4/13/07.

Read the FLUX String Quartet Discuss Performing Six Hour Feldman Piece

2011-04-19T09:39:00.001-04:00

By Jim Ducibella for William & Mary college blog:

The FLUX String Quartet, William & Mary’s Artist-in-Residence for 2010-11, will close out its academic-year concerts by performing Morton Feldman’s six-hour-long test of endurance and style, the String Quartet #2.

The concert, free and open to the public, will take place on Thursday, April 21, at 5 p.m. at the Sadler Center Chesapeake Room A. The FLUX String Quartet will take no breaks during the concert; audience members, on the other hand, are encouraged to walk in and out of the theatre. While it is the seventh time the group has performed Number 2, it will be the first time in four years that the group will undertake the composition.

Download: Mountains' Bubbly "Thousand Square"

2011-04-18T11:05:00.001-04:00

By Christopher Weingarten for the Village Voice's Sound of the City:

Meditative blisscrafters Mountains are Brooklyn's finest young purveyors of pillowy drifts, true masters of the airy drone. Over six fantastically fluffy years, Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp have explored different combinations of otherworldy hum and fluttery post-Fahey acoustic pluckage, but Air Museum (out May 10 via Thrill Jockey) launches the pair straight into the space-rock cosmos. Though the two claim Air Museum is simply bursting with acoustic instruments, their surely enviable pedal boards make everything ooze in liquid ecstasy like the gushiest, synthiest, most future-shocked, run-from-Big-Brother, robo-fucked Tangerine Dream records. One track even sounds like Vangelis' "Chariots Of Fire" score if it were remixed into a Growing-style charred blast.

"Thousand Square," in which the duo explores rhythm more than on past releases, has the sunny synthetic bubbles of krautrock cosmonauts like Harmonia, panning speakers, and getting into polyrhythmic chit-chat--all tethered to this planet by a field recording of people walking around inside a church in Jerusalem.

Q&A: Mountains' Koen Holtkamp on "Thousand Square"

What is "Thousand Square" about? What does the title mean?
It's meant to be fairly open-ended to let the listener come up with their own interpretations. A specific description of nothing in particular.

How was it created?
It's very much a studio production versus a live track. We set up a few shifting analog synth sequences that were slightly out of sync with one another and then both played guitar and electronics over that. Most of our recordings in the past have been pretty much live so this was a different approach for us. The whole piece was composed, recorded and edited in a day.

What equipment did you you use to make it?
I put together a small modular synth setup in the last year, which involves a lot of patching together different modules that communicate via control voltages. Given the hands-on approach of patching things together the line between hiccups and intention gets kinda blurred, which is part of what makes the process so enjoyable.

Do you have to be in a particular mindstate when you record? Does the studio have to look and feel a certain way?
Well there's always the ideal situation of being in the middle of nowhere but I think living in a place as hectic as NYC just being able to have a space where you can get away step back and focus on listening versus whatever else is going on in your life helps quite a bit. Low lighting, very little distraction and wine seem to work for us a well.

What's the most memorable show you've played in New York?
I sorta miss the Tonic days. There was a real sense of community around that place.

What's your favorite place to eat in New York?
I really enjoy cooking, so I'd say "home." But aside from that... New Malaysia Restaurant in Chinatown or the Indian diner under the 59th Street bridge in Queens.

Mountains played Soundlab with Skull Defekts on 1/27/10 and again on 4/2/11.

Get Tickets to See Prof. Noam Chomsky Speak in Buffalo

2011-04-17T11:20:00.001-04:00

Thursday, May 12 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm, Montante Center, Canisius College, Buffalo NY. Get your tickets here.

Get Your Post-Runway Dance On with Shock & Awe Tonight!

2011-04-15T07:24:00.002-04:00

Saturday, April 16, 11pm--SHOCK & AWE feat. the fabulous Kisabella & J. Zenger. Arrive before midnight and enjoy a COMPLIMENTARY GLASS OF CHAMPAGNE ... S&A wants to glitter you all over!

Catch Floor with Doomriders Saturday at Soundlab (Early Show)

2011-04-15T06:14:00.000-04:00

SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 7pm (show starts at 8pm sharp), $12/$14--FLOOR, DOOMRIDERS.

Read "Elephant 6 Rocked Buffalo"

2011-04-14T06:30:00.006-04:00

By Elizabeth Raphaelson for SUNY Potsdam's The Racquette:

The Elephant Six has been a name rattling around since early 2008 when it was announced that a collective of members from the bands Neutral Milk Hotel, of Montreal, Elf Power, The Olivia Tremor Control, The Music Tapes and several other bands would be going on an expansive tour across the nation. This collection of stray band members comprised of 14 musicians who worked together to put on the incredible three-hour show at the small venue "The Sound Lab" last Saturday, March 19, in Buffalo. The show, filled with audience-participation games, fictional stories, and original songs (or the most original interpretation of songs) made the three hours seem more like a circus than a rock show.

The show consisted of the band members helping one another bring songs they had written in their formal bands to life with new twists. Filled with constant surprises (fitting, considering the name is in fact "The Holiday Surprise Tour") the members of the band displayed their musicianship by constantly trading their instruments, very rarely sticking to a single sound. Julian Koster, the musical saw player of Neutral Milk Hotel and The Music Tapes, was the only exception who, in addition to his talent displayed on drums, guitar, bass and banjo, had the monopoly over playing the musical saw. The band was able to mold themselves to whatever feel they wanted by simply switching singers or exchanging instruments.

Halfway through the show Julian Koster inched his way sheepishly to the microphone. He told a story about how in order for spring to come to Buffalo, five people would have to try to "puncture the moon" (a giant tissue paper ring a band member was holding in the audience) with the arm of the giant paper snowman that had appeared during the band's intermission. The fourth volunteer was able to "puncture the moon" and was awarded with the privilege to pick any song (outside their family of bands) for them to learn in the next five minutes. The band worked wonders in the five minutes by learning a Defiance, Ohio song and sounding as if they had practiced it for years.

The line-up of Elephant Six is truly something special. Sporting four electric guitars (one of them a twelve string), a bass, banjo, drums, keyboard, horns, musical saw, violin, tuba and clarinet, the band creates a wall of sound that perfectly blends to fuel the listener with adrenaline while sinking them into a hypnotic trance of contentment. Elephant Six is a concert and an experience that puts the listener into the world of the band members vibrant imaginations and after three hours keeps everyone asking for more. You can check out Elephant 6 and their Holiday Surprise Tour on Pitchfork.com.

See Future Rock & The Polish Ambassador at Soundlab Thursday

2011-04-13T11:42:00.000-04:00

Thursday, April 14, 10pm, $12--FUTURE ROCK, THE POLISH AMBASSADOR w/ special guest DJ Bacon! Advance Tickets Here

FUTURE ROCK

Chicago’s own Future Rock have carved out a category largely their own, adding drifting elements of Krautrock and space rock to rhythmic textures that reference Motorik, funk and four-on-the-floor disco. Outside of hometown Chicago, they may be best known for high profile and excellent remixes of Daft Punk, Neon Indian, Black Moth Super Rainbow and DFA 1979. Back home they are justly celebrated for legendary performances such as their set at last summer’s Wicker Park Fest that turned the entire neighborhood into a vast and energized dance floor, forcing even the palest and most resolutely hard-to-impress hipsters to call up their inner dance masters. Live performances combine loops, samples and Mickey Kellerman’s keyboards with Darren Heitz’s drums plus Felix Moreno’s Larry Graham-style bass slapping to create an enormously powerful groove. Their light show is as good as their music, and their set have been known to inspire dance frenzies.

THE POLISH AMBASSADOR (1320 Records)

The Polish Ambassador is a beat machine from the future. Hailing simultaneously from the far reaches of other dimensional Universes and... Oakland, California, this dude drops his own unique blend of electro-funked, glitch-tweaked, wobble-freaked breakbeats that will have you dropping that bottom like it was 92.....3092, that is.

The Ambassador builds all of his live sets from a monstrous stash of original drums, bass, synth, and vox lines. "No Genre Left Behind," Sugalski jokes as he blends elements of funk, glitch, idm, hip hop, 80s music, jungle, and dub into a beat soup that will instigate healthy doses of booty shake and fist pump.

Claiming to be Poland's ambassador to the Universe, Sugalski has released 5 studio albums, all independently. Diplomatic Immunity in 2007, The Phantasmal Farm in 2008, I Found Him. Now I Must Kill Him in 2009, Mating Season (released under the Ample Mammal alias) and First Words in 2010. All 5 albums have obtained favorable press and achieved regular rotation on college, independent, and internet radio.

Synthesizers and a pure spirit are his primary weapons. Join his army and help Polish annihilate bad beats marring the earth with shame and disgrace.

Check Out Teenage Mutant GNAR Shred Bringing More Romp and Spazz than a Melmackian Mating Call Tonight at Soundlab

2011-04-12T20:17:00.004-04:00

Tuesday, April 12, 9pm--WHITE FANG, GULL, MALLWALKERS:

On Tuesday April 12th Little Red Booking is excited to present:
*** WHITE FANG *** (Marriage Records) teenage mutant GNAR shred from Portland Oregon, bringing more romp and spazz than a Melmackian mating call. Official Website: http://www.whtfng.com/. Look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH2_eyVe6_o

*** GULL *** If you missed him the first time, this is your second chance. A member of bands Ultra Dolphins and Snack Truck, Nathaniel Rappole also performs as a one-man band known as Gull. He sings, he plays guitar, he plays drums: A multi-tasking monster to the max. Look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vVZi3Xwjug&feature=r

Relatedand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJ_146xOWo&NR=1

*** MALLWALKERS *** (Buffalo's own!) Short songs reminding you of what you hate about post-, surf-, garage- and hardcore-punk. Previously described as 'Minutemen with horns'.

Show posters (designed by Anne Muntges of SUPER GIANT) will be avail for sale!

Doors at 8, First act on at 8:30. 7 bux and all the pocket lint you've got!

Reserve Tickets for Harmone Korine's Trash Humpers Screening at Squeaky Wheel

2010-09-02T05:26:00.000-04:00

Two Screenings: Sat. & Sun 9/4 & 9/5, 9:00pm, Squeaky Wheel (712 Main Street). Seating is limited, tickets are silk-screened editions of sixty for each night (Sept. 4 & 5, 9pm show time). $8 members, $10 non-members. Tickets may be purchased & picked up in-person during open hours, or over the phone (716-884-7172) or via email - office@squeaky.org.

Squeaky Wheel presents: TRASH HUMPERS, a new film by Harmony Korine.

“Leaves the residue of an authentic nightmare. You’ll want to shower afterward.” – David Ansen, Newsweek

‘TRASH HUMPERS is the cinematic equivalent of listening to black metal.’ Guardian

When Harmony Korine (KIDS, GUMMO, JULIEN DONKEY-BOY and MISTER LONELY) was asked about the violent characters in the film, he said, "It's kind of like an ode to vandalism. There can be a creative beauty in their mayhem and destruction. You could say these characters are poets or mystics of mayhem and murder, bubbling up to the surface. They do horrible things, but I never viewed them as sad characters. They're comedic, with a vaudevillian horror element to what they do. They dance as they smash things and set them on fire. They're having a great time."

Married with a kid, and now residing in his native Nashville, cinematic provocateur Harmony Korine shows no signs of settling down. Hailed as “the future of American cinema” by Werner Herzog, writer/ director Korine has blazed a trail with his consistently idiosyncratic output. TRASH HUMPERS sees him return to the big screen with an excoriating attack on the American Dream. A lo-fi production of white-heat intensity, Korine calls it, “a new type of horror; palpable and raw.”

TRASH HUMPERS follows a small gang of sinister ‘elderly’ peeping toms through the shadows of a nightmarishly familiar suburban landscape. Their shocking and sociopathic behavior makes for unbearably compelling viewing that scorches itself onto the mind’s eye.

WE RECOMMEND ARRIVING EARLY TO GET A GOOD SEAT. (EVEN IF YOU HAVE RESERVED A TICKET).

Catch Tortoise Thursday at Soundlab

2010-09-01T04:25:00.003-04:00

Thursday, September 2, 9pm--TORTOISE, FOUREM.

By Cory Perla for Artvoice:

Not many bands can say they invented their own genre. Tortoise can. Post-rock didn’t exist before 1994, the year that Tortoise released their first, self titled album. What they’ve created since then are songs, using traditional rock instruments, that transcend rock music. Their guitar strings expel textures and atmospheres rather than hooks and riffs. Their percussion acts as an anchor, but it’s usually impossible to tell just how many hands are actually crashing on each noise-producing drum head as all of the members are multi-instrumentalists. When they perform live there are two dueling drum kits set up facing each other, as percussionist John McEntire (also of the band the Sea and Cake) sits adjacent to musicians John Herndon and Dan Bitney, while they intermittently switch between guitar and drums. Between their massive ambient dream-scape tracks and their driving, jazz based epics the band has a catalog of music as emotionally variant as any classical music composer of the last century and are just as influential. Their latest album, Beacons of Ancestorship is a bit more worldly sounding than their previous five albums, but it still moves at an unrelenting pace. Last time Tortoise came to town they played the Tralf, (and the performance was recorded in it’s entirety for Artvoice TV) but this time it will be a much more personal experience when the band takes the stage of Soundlab next Thursday (Sept 2), with local support from Fourem.

Tortoise's John McEntire visited Soundlab as part of the Red Krayola on 08/06/06. Also on the bill was The Vores and DJ Dave G.

See The Art Department & Black Umbrella Tonight at Soundlab

2010-08-31T05:08:00.001-04:00

Tonight, August 31, 10pm, $5--THE ART DEPARTMENT, BLACK UMBRELLA.

Tuesday August 31st marks a return to chiming guitars and pop melodies at Soundlab with THE ART DEPARTMENT (Baltimore) and BLACK UMBRELLA (Buffalo/LA). May the seed of these sounds be fruitful in the belly of the night!

THE ART DEPARTMENT: "When Ernest Hemingway wrote his famous six-word micro-fiction—“For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”—it’s likely he didn’t anticipate that his bar-bet brevity would transfer so perfectly to music. The Art Department, a three-man band from Baltimore, is the postcard literature of house-party punk. Each song is insistently short with a clear message: It’s not necessary to blather on to tell a good story. The group’s high-speed fingerpicking and polyrhythmic drumbeats establish a steady momentum, while the almost-harmonized vocals of drummer Mike Meno and guitarist Jon Ehrens float above the smoke-long songs. Dusted with tambourine and condensed, flash-fiction nerditry, The Art Department’s sets kick into gear suddenly and end just as fast. The boys grab your attention with the first note, slide you into the chorus, and, before you realize it’s happening, drop you off at the music’s inevitable, eccentric conclusion." -Emily Wagner (DC CityPaper)

http://www.myspace.com/theartdepartment

BLACK UMBRELLA: "If you like psychedelic pop like early Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett at the helm or the latest from Of Montreal, or glam rock a la David Bowie and Jobriath, or synthpop akin to The Cure at their sunniest, or a hybrid of C86 bands and early American alternative college rock, or a mixture of all of these, then you’ll love Black Umbrella. James’s vocals remind me of a cross between Billy Corgan and Kevin Barnes with a melancholy pout and flourishes of glam panache. The lyrics are a wonderful blend of deep sadness and fanciful imagery.."

http://www.myspace.com/kin

Listen to Fourtet Remix Eluvium

2010-08-31T04:58:00.002-04:00

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

Earlier this year, ambient lifer Eluvium released his latest album Similes. On September 14, he'll follow it up with a new limited-edition CDEP, Leaves Eclipse the Light, out on Temporary Residence. In addition to the title track, it features the nearly eight-minute Four Tet remix of the Similes track "The Motion Makes Me Last" and new song "A Life in Tides Less Current". You can stream that Four Tet remix here.

The CD also features a video for "The Motion Makes Me Last" from director Matt McCormick. It's limited to 2000 copies, and it comes in a custom die-cut cover.

Eluvium visited Soundlab on 04/02/05 with Mono and Sleeping Kings of Iona opening.

Catch Jason Ajemian and Steve Baczkowski solo sets tonight at Big Orbit Gallery

2010-08-30T05:30:00.006-04:00

8pm, Big Orbit Gallery, 30D Essex St. $5 suggested donation or PWYC--"Jason Ajemian snuck in a solo bass set. His brief performance felt like a prayer, meekness turning to fervor, hitting the strings with a mallet and bowing with levity. He framed the three-song set around a country song, about the rain, that his uncle wrote. In Ajemian's hands, it sounded like a beautiful tune from Arthur Russell's World of Echo."--Lars Gotrich, www.npr.org/.

"With only a double bass and no amplification to speak of, Jason coaxed the audience to the floor below the stage, politely asked for their attention, and then received it in full. While his request was polite, his music demanded it. For an instrument that is normally relegated to providing accompaniment for a melody, he made the beast sing, eliciting sounds far outside its usual range. The result was something between beat poetry and the Velvet Underground's 'The Black Angel's Death Song' had it been composed with bass instead of violin. In other words, intoxicating, impressive and innovative."--by Jack Diablo, EU Jacksonville

Multi-instrumentalist Steve Baczkowski is a Buffalo stand-out in the local “free improv” scene. He’s also very brave; at age 12 he decided to tackle the unwieldy and difficult baritone saxophone as his signature instrument and, by all outward appearances at his raucous and startlingly physical performances, he is well on his way to breaking the wild beast. Baczkowski has produced over 100 jazz/improvisational concerts in countless band lineups and has performed at fringe festivals, CBGB’s, in classrooms and international residencies. For him, rehearsed scores are secondary to that moment of “now” that free improv affords in live performance. His understanding of the lineage of experimental sax players, including such innovators as Peter Brötzmann and Odeon Pope, has helped him “engage the moment, where it sparks. It’s the real deal.”--Lauren N. Maynard, Artvoice

www.jasonajemian.com

www.myspace.com/stevebaczk owski

Sample Fennesz/ Daniell/ Buck - Knoxville

2010-08-30T04:35:00.003-04:00

Listen.

Buy:
CD

MP3

By MC for Other Music:

At this point, Christian Fennesz's reputation should precede him. A modern laptop pioneer, his solo records have balanced thoughtful electronics with guitar manipulations to become events that transcend the usual narrow audience for those types of experiments. In between albums, though, Fennesz maintains a healthy career as a collaborator and improviser, having worked with the likes of Jim O'Rourke and Peter Rehberg, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Polwechsel (to name but a handful) on records that often manage to rival the greatness and intensity of the man's more noted solo works. Knoxville, a trio recording cut with David Daniell and Tony Buck at the Big Ears Festival in 2009, is yet another entry into that category of great collaborative works.

Though Fennesz may have the biggest name recognition in this group, his partners are far from slouches. David Daniell has released a clutch of great records (solo, as a member of San Agustin, and in concert with folks like Douglas McCombs) that trace his noisier figures across guitar and electronics. And Tony Buck has been active as a member of Australian group the Necks for the past two decades, providing drums and percussion for that band's steady improvisations. Here, the three spread themselves across four tracks, gradually working themselves into an easy conversation on "Heat for Light" that builds from a slow rumble to a more all-encompassing buzz and hum. Elsewhere, tracks like "Antonia" achieve a subtle beauty, with aching waves of guitar contrasting neatly with prickly static and Buck's cymbal work. While fairly brief, Knoxville more than manages to take the listener quite a distance in its short runtime, all while allowing each participant to make their own voice heard while still achieving a singular identity.

David Daniell visited Soundlab several times: on 07/22/04 with Tim Barnes, Jeph Jerman and Sean Meehan; on 09/20/05 with Greg Davis and Mersault; on 05/17/08 with Josh Abrams Solo & Duo sets, Tentet/Octet opening; and as part of Rhys Chatham's groups on 09/15/06 and 02/01/07.

Sample James Blackshaw - All Is Falling

2010-08-29T04:09:00.003-04:00

Listen:
Part 1
Part 5

Buy:
CD
LP+MP3
MP3

By AG for Other Music:

An ambitious, challenging album from the British 12-string virtuoso, All Is Falling continues James Blackshaw's movement away from the spiraling acoustic guitar opuses that defined his early work. Not a 12-string guitar can be found here, in fact. Picking up where Blackshaw's piano-derived tracks from Litany of Echoes (2008) and The Glass Bead Game (2009) left off, All Is Falling -- unsurprisingly given its ominous title -- is characterized by a brooding, cosmic quality.

Longtime fans will notice Blackshaw is playing the electric guitar for the first time on one of his own records, a move perhaps inspired by his recent work with Current 93. When at the piano, Blackshaw often recalls Florian Fricke's playing in Popol Vuh, particularly on "Part 1" and "Part 4," and comparisons could be made to minimalist composer/pianist Lubomyr Melnyk as well. Throughout, this haunting album can recall a diverse set of influences, ranging from John Renbourne's The Lady and the Unicorn to the brooding '90s work of Louisville chamber group Rachel's, and makes nods to Steve Reich and Philip Glass as well. Only "Part 8" deviates from piano, finger-picked electric guitar and classical string palette; harmonium, e-bowed guitar and swirls of feedback lift off before settling on an enigmatic, uncertain note. Appropriately enough.

James Blackshaw visited Soundlab on 01/29/10.

Hit Up Shock & Awe: Back to Cool Saturday at Soundlab

2010-08-27T05:00:00.002-04:00

Saturday, August 28, 11pm--SHOCK & AWE feat. DJs J.Zenger & Kisabella.

Back to cool kiddies. Classes are starting and you need one more rage of the summer. Get your leather on on on on on.

Sample Bear in Heaven - Beast Rest Forth Mouth

2010-08-27T04:56:00.000-04:00

Listen & buy.

From Other Music:

Hometapes re-releases Bear in Heaven's great sophomore full-length from last year, this time with a host of remixes by Studio, Twin Shadow, the Hundred in the Hands, High Places, the Field, Pink Skull, and more. Delivering an exciting blend of psychedelic, prog, and '80s-tinged pop, the group has perfected the art of layering, resulting in a dense-yet-wholly-listenable mix of driving, tribal cuts.

Bear in Heaven visited Soundlab on 6/26/10.

Check Out Fang Island Tonight at Soundlab

2010-08-27T04:04:00.000-04:00

FRIDAY, August 27, 8pm--FANG ISLAND. $10/$12.

By Donny Kutzbach for Artvoice:

Imagine putting together the pop savant quality of Broken Social Scene with the inexorable party jams and bro on bro high fiving of Andrew WK. Got it? If you do, you are just beginning to get at the exuberant magic of the Brooklyn via Providence, Rhode Island quintet Fang Island. Vocals? Who really needs them!? Fang Island manages to get the good times done without really having a singer though the occasional “la-la-la” harmony slips in the mix on a song like “Davey Crockett”. Their 2010 self-titled debut on Sargent House Records is loaded with hook-heavy hymns played at high speeds and built for happy high kicking. Fang Island made a recent drop by in Western New York over the summer warming up for the mesmerizing Flaming Lips at Artpark. Their unbridled and energetic live show held it’s own even up against to the eye-popping extremes of the headliner. That’s no small feat! This Friday (August 27) they will bounce, jump, and blissfully rock out with extreme joy on a stage all to themselves... well, almost. Joining Fang Island on stage at Soundlab is Buffalo’s own All Of The Witches, fittingly bringing their uniquely psychedelically twisted post-rock to perfectly fill out the bill.

See Nobody Beats the Drum Tonight at Soundlab

2010-07-08T04:27:00.000-04:00

Thursday, July 8, 10pm--NOBODY BEATS THE DRUM, C-MON, KYPSKI.

ALL THE WAY FROM AMSTERDAM - 2ND NORTH AMERICAN PERFORMANCE EVER -

NOBODY BEATS THE DRUM
Resistance is futile - Nobody. Beats. The Drum.
http://www.nobodybeatsthedrum.com/
http://www.myspace.com/nobodybeatsthedrum

To fully appreciate Nobody Beats The Drum’s fusion of breaks, electro, hip hop and every other form of music that whips a crowd up into a sweaty, writhing heap of body parts, it’s best to see them live. At a NBTD show the pounding music created by Sjam’s decks and Jori’s keys are enhanced by Rogier’s visuals to create a sensual assault that’s impossible to withstand.

SELECT VIDEOS
"Grindin" (released 2/26/10): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntc4l-poovo&nfp=18

Purple Cactus" (great LIVE footage): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8L2tbI2KjY

"Quit Your Job" (selected for the short film category at Cannes Film Festival): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWWrOKqget4

"The Drum" (blogged about by Kanye West): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrk_cEmNnPc

ALSO FROM NETHERLANDS - 1ST NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

C-MON & KYPSKI
http://www.c-monandkypski.nl/
http://www.myspace.com/cmonandkypski

Check Out Mock Syringa, 28 Degrees Taurus & More Friday at Soundlab

2010-07-02T04:35:00.001-04:00

Friday, July 2, 9pm--

Mock Syringa http://www.myspace.com/mocksyringa
Paul's Grandfather http://www.myspace.com/paulsgrandfathermusic
28 Degrees Taurus http://www.myspace.com/28degreestaurus
Here Come the Comets http://www.myspace.com/herecomethecomets

It's 28 degrees taurus' first time back through Buffalo since March 2007! Come out and show them a warm buffalo welcome!

Hear New Thermals - "I Don't Believe You"

2010-06-30T07:49:00.004-04:00

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

On September 7, Kill Rock Stars will release Personal Life, the new album from inveterate Portland punk bashers the Thermals. And on August 10, KRS will release the album's first single, the characteristically catchy pummel "I Don't Believe You", as both a 7" single and a digital download. (It's backed by the B-side "There's Nothing You Can't Learn".) You can download the track simply by clicking here. If you needed a reason to pogo frantically on a Tuesday morning, you now have one.

The Thermals visited Soundlab on 05/02/09 with Shaky Hands and Point Juncture, WA.

Andrew Bird Brings Sound Sculpture Installation to Guggenheim (NYC)

2010-06-30T07:44:00.003-04:00

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

Whistling indie star Andrew Bird has teamed up with sculptor and inventor Ian Schneller on a sound sculpture called "Sonic Arboretum", which will come to New York's Guggenheim Museum on August 5. Schneller, formerly of the 80s experimental indie band Shrimp Boat, has built an army of various-sized horn speakers shaped like old-fashioned Victrolas, which will be arranged into an "ecosystem" on the Guggenheim's rotunda floor.

If you've seen Andrew Bird play live, you've probably seen Schneller's work in action, as Bird usually performs using his horns. You can see a few images of Bird and Schneller among the horns on this website.

On August 5, Bird will perform in the sound sculpture, using the forest of horns to project his music. It's part of the Guggenheim's Dark Sounds Concert Series, which also includes a show from Beirut on July 15 and one from Cinematic Orchestra on September 3. Dark Sounds is in conjunction with the exhibition "Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance", which runs at the famed museum until September 6.

In a press release, Bird explains "Sonic Arboretum" as sounding like "The din of many voices. When the mind focuses on a single voice, it is forced to track its trajectory. When there are too many to process it submits, but never fully relaxes. Echolocation is always engaged. Dozens of horns, a sonic field of poppies, an experiment of sound and sculpture."

On 11/03/04 Andrew Bird played Soundlab with The Stay Lows, John Long/Amber Long.

See The Friction Brothers at Hallwalls

2010-06-21T16:15:00.000-04:00

Monday, Jun 21, 8pm, $15 general, $10 members/students/seniors, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center--THE FRICTION BROTHERS

Michael Colligan (dry ice, implements)
Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello, implements)
Michael Zerang (percussion, piano insides)

The Friction Brothers are perhaps the only dry-ice/cello/percussion trio in the visible world. Begun in 2005 to perform improvised works that explore their love of scraping, rubbing, hitting and freezing various objects to the point of vibration, they have appeared at a number of questionable venues in Chicago. While often sounding like electronic music, they make all their sounds mechanically. To produce these sounds each member has developed an expansive vocabulary of extended techniques. Zerang has raised the back scratcher to an essential component of the modern drummer's stick collection. Colligan warms up metal objects and the super cools them on a block of dry ice making them vibrate in the audible range. Lonberg-Holm's grind tone remains an unexplainable phenomena by acousticians ... Although the trio is a relatively new group, the members have worked together extensively for over 15 years in a wide variety of settings from the seminal lowercase quartet Pillow to the internationally known free improvised jazz powerhouse Peter Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet.

Read: Hire-Wire Act to Tout Art Exhibit

2010-06-18T04:24:00.000-04:00

By Colin Dabkowski for the Buffalo News:

In downtown Buffalo, where the skyline has held its shape for more than 30 years, visitors usually keep their eyes trained at ground level.

But on a Thursday in September, anyone within viewing distance will have a good reason to look up.

On Sept. 23, French performance artist Didier Pasquette plans to attempt a tightrope walk across a steel cable strung between the two towers of the 23-story Liberty Building.

Read the rest here.

Attend Screwed Anthologies with Dave Dove & Lucas Gorham at Hallwalls

2010-06-16T16:12:00.000-04:00

Wed., Jun. 16, 2010, 8pm, $12 general, $8 members/students/seniors, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center--SCREWED ANTHOLOGIES WITH DAVE DOVE & LUCAS GORHAM.

Dave Dove (amplified trombone with effects, screw tracks) Lucas Gorham (guitar, lap steel guitar, effects, loops)

Read "Reich's Adventurous Music Propels Festival's Start"

2010-06-02T08:05:00.001-04:00

By Geraud MacTaggart for the Buffalo News:

June in Buffalo is always interesting, and this year’s version of the venerable festival of modern classical music promises to be more of the same.

Young composers get their works performed by world-class musicians and critiqued by master composers. For a solid week, all kinds of sounds come from the auditoriums and classrooms at the University at Buffalo’s Amherst campus, and people come from across the continent to sample them.

Steve Reich’s scores have had a prominent place at June in Buffalo recitals during the last decade, and Monday night’s performance of “Sextet” and his 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Double Sextet” was an early highlight of the season.

Read the rest here.

See Arrington De Dionyso Malaikat Dan Singa Tonight at Soundlab

2010-05-29T11:06:00.004-04:00

Tonight, 8pm--ARRINGTON DE DIONYSO MALAIKAT DAN SINGA, MALARIA CONTROL, STEVE BACZKOWSKI.

By Santo Peligro for Tiny Mix Tapes:

In the Dungeons and Dragons game of life, we all know Arrington de Dionyso, the bearded lion frontman of Old Time Relijun. We've been incanted by his swamptastic booty-beats before, but Arrington as angelic philosopher-alchemist is an understated secret weapon. No party may expect to surmount dragons on the brute force of barbarians and broadswords alone. I See Beyond the Black Sun, as well as his contributions to Melted Mailbox (The True Folk Sound of Arrington de Dionyso) are both good introductions to this side of his work. Within this, one might see Arrington the alchemist, spinning the very golden hair of his lion's beard from straw, as a shaman might don a mask to transform from contemplative village elder into exorcist or oracle.

On Malaikat dan Singa ("Angels and Lions" in Indonesian), Mr. de Dionyso effectively presents both his lion and angel within as equals. Fusing together the kraut-rocking, beastly beats he is known for with his apothecary of extended techniques (Tuvan throat singing, anyone?) creates an assault of psychedelic rock that is unparalleled in brains, brawn, and sentience. Arrington's strengths as a dynamic performer have never been captured so well on record as they are here. His voice is commanding and uninhibited. He puts his whole body behind his roarings, as would a lion, but retains a sensitive command to resonance and vibration. The entire release is sung in Indonesian, which alone takes brains and brawn. That being said, the music is not 'world music' but rather other-world music. It is evocative of indigenous music, but it is as if he aims to recreate that feeling of discovery rather than mastering the discovered.

Check Out UNITE Music Festival: VIP Nick Catchdubs After Party Tonight at Soundlab

2010-05-29T04:40:00.003-04:00

Sunday, May 30, midnight--This party is FREE, but only UNITE Fest VIP pass holders will be admitted. Get your pass here: unitebuffalo.eventbrite.com

Starting at midnight after the Nick Catchdubs party at Fontana's, head to soundlab to hear the likes of.. Loki, Huxley, Tweeknasty
..and a special, secret guest!!!

18+ if room allows, otherwise VIP pass holders only!

Listen to Sharing a Sonority feat Charlemagne Palestine, Tony Conrad & Rhys Chatham

2010-05-24T04:19:00.000-04:00

Listen & Buy.

By Marc Moeller for Other Music:

This fourth volume of Alga Marghen's "Golden" series of archival material by Charlemagne Palestine presents rare documentation of the pianist in collaboration with fellow travelers. The opening piece, "Short and Sweet," is descriptively titled, and Palestine's sparse, melodic piano playing is like a precursor to the style best exemplified by Harold Budd. The track is the only recorded evidence of a series of regular meetings Palestine had with saxophonist Terry Jennings while at CalArts in the seventies. "Electronic and Flute" feels like an exercise in withholding; the pace is sluggish, with Palestine and flautist Robert Feldman coming across as intent on merely laying out a sound palette, which consists of sparse flute punctuated by electronic squiggles. It would be great if a future volume unearths a long form piece by the duo, as this feels more like a sketch. The real gem of this set, however, is the 32-minute "Db," the only recorded section of an all-afternoon concert from 1974 by Palestine, Tony Conrad and Rhys Chatham. Palestine is on vocals throughout much of the piece, wailing away in his inimitable devotional style, possibly fueled by an inhuman amount of Cognac. Having recently heard Conrad apply his violin drone to a number of situations involving contemporary underlings, it's refreshing to hear him matched with an equal talent. I'm not sure exactly what "The Rhyster" is up to here, but he's certainly not standing out in a negative sense. Palestine's notes in the CD version mention him playing flute and experimenting with the Buchla synthesizer some five years prior, though I can't particularly detect either sound here. These three are on the same wavelength, despite having never played as a trio before or since this date. This stunning track alone ensures that the set is worth obtaining. It's a good thing La Monte Young wasn't around that night, or we may have had to wait even longer to hear this unique piece of music history.

Tony Conrad has played Soundlab a zillion times. Click on the tag below to find out when. Chatham performed at Soundlab with his minimalist death metal project Essentialist on 09/15/06. On 02/01/07, he assembled a group of Buffalo musicians to realize his seminal no wave-minimalist piece Guitar Trio. Read Chatham's account of the show.

Listen to New Holy Fuck - Latin

2010-05-23T04:07:00.002-04:00

Listen & Buy.

MP3 "Stay Lit"
MP3 "Stilettos"

From Other Music:

Holy Fuck's third full-length finds this one-time duo now drafting their touring rhythm section as full-time members and recording their first album as a quartet. This new version of the band is indeed new and improved, with the live drums and bass ensuring that the group's noisy and often spastic fusion of synths and dance beats is all the more heavy and heady. (CD includes Ghost EP.)

Holy Fuck performed with Mark Webb and Fourem/Rainbowmaker at Soundlab on 06/15/06.

Experience Seizure-Inducing Free Jazz, Bass-tastic Noisepunk & Dronescapes of Dark Matter Tonight at Soundlab

2010-05-22T04:14:00.003-04:00

Saturday, March 22, 9pm, $3--TIGER HATCHERY, LECHUGUILLAS, KIER NEURINGER'S THE LOVE STORY, PRICE/TRUMP DUO.

Tiger Hatchery: Life, imitating art, imitating running barefoot from an avalanche. Long-form, seizure inducing free jazz. http://virb.com/tigerhatchery

Lechuguillas: Remembering what happened after you punched the cop. Bass-tastic noisepunk, amphetamines required. http://www.lechuguillas.com/music.html

Kier Neuringer's The Love Story: Casiotone for the painfully wounded. Dronescapes of darkmatter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aty3JNqdKKc

Price/Trump Duo: Awkward sounds forming street gangs in common territory. Guitar/drums/electronics/freedom. www.myspace.com/tentetoctet

Listen to New Phosphorescent - Here's to Taking It Easy, See Them Live at Soundlab July 12

2010-05-21T04:56:00.002-04:00

Listen & Buy.

MP3 "It's Hard to Be Humble (When You're from Alabama)"
MP3 "Tell Me Baby"

By JM for Other Music:

If you've been paying attention to Matthew Houck and his Phosphorescent releases over the past few years, enjoying the hazy, lazy Pride, essentially a solo album from 2007 that won Houck praise and comparisons to folk-Americana artists of all eras and stripes, or the much-heralded 2009 album of outlaw-period Willie Nelson covers that Houck recorded with his touring band in tow, you probably have been aware of the temperature rising and expectations flying around the release of the group's new record. Sometimes there is just a feeling in the air that an artist's time is coming, and Here's to Taking It Easy, despite the title, marks the arrival of a musician who has been knocking around for closing in on a decade, but is clearly launching a new, and much higher-profile, stage of his career. Debut single and album-opener "It's Hard to Be Humble (When You're from Alabama)" warms up with the gentle atmospherics of a pedal-steel and electric piano reminiscent of the musings of Houck's albums past, but within moments a crashing hi-hat count brings in the punch of a tight honky-tonk horn section, and it's clear this Phosphorescent is something new.

Houck's shaky, haunting whiskey-and-cigarettes voice is the same, but his songs have deepened and swelled with newfound emotion and pathos. He carries it with a confident strut and swagger that is nonetheless utterly embracing, and his band delivers a thrilling country/R&B swing that -- no exaggeration -- can hold its own with classic cuts from Jim Ford, the Stones and Neil Young. Many tracks rock and many have a lazy lope not too far removed from Phosphorescent's older sound, but with warmly layered piano, steel guitar, acoustic and whatever else fits over the gentle sway of the rhythm section, there is a lush and timeless sound here that is irresistible. Houck's subject matter is fairly standard pop fare -- love, lust and failed relationships are the norm, when 'Bama pride is on the backburner, but his imagery is as moving as is his raw voice and powerful band.

Forever stuck in my head is the broken marriage of "Mermaid Parade," as Houck tries to forget his failures in the annual bacchanalia on Coney Island. His simple story is as richly-layered as is his band's production -- in a few words he conveys the passion of love and commitment, and then two years of marriage simply slipping away, taking responsibility and not, reveling in the beautiful painted women in the parade, and wanting his ex there with him to see it all too. It is a complicated and convincing portrait of life that is too rare in pop.

"I know all about your new man, your new older, old man, and I heard that he's married. Oh, you be careful Amanda. // Yeah, I found a new friend too, and yeah she's pretty and small, goddamnit Amanda, oh god damn all. // I wound up walking, by the ocean today, there were naked women dancing, in the Mermaid Parade. Oh Amanda, did you see me today, watching those women dance, in the Mermaid Parade. And oh, Amanda, were you with me today, watching those women waltz by, in the Mermaid Parade."

Listen to New Phantogram - Eyelid Movies

2010-05-19T07:34:00.002-04:00

Listen & Buy.

By Jacob Kaplan for Other Music:

Here's the debut full-length from Phantogram, an often genre-dodging (yet consistently catchy) duo from Greenwhich, NY. Made up of Sarah Barthel and guitar man Josh Carter, this isn't your average boy-girl indie team. While they write incredibly sticky songs, and occasionally verge on a more conventional "rock" formula (see "All Dried Up," a pulsing pop ballad of the highest order), Phantogram also have a penchant for house beats and hazy, trip-hop-inspired atmospheres. "Turn It Off," for example, features a grinding, club-like pulse throughout, and "Bloody Palms" is a dark, neo-disco masterpiece, a song that is pretty, eerie, and danceable, all at once. Of course, Eyelid Movies will appeal to plenty of us who aren't beat connoisseurs; the group's love of electronic rhythms sets them apart from the indie pop set, sure, but Phantogram are by no means a one-trick pony. Arguably, some of strongest moments on the album are the hooks; the chorus to "Mouthful of Diamonds" is reason enough to add this one to your collection. And the combination of simple, driving bass and spare melody on "When I'm Small" is equally alluring. Fuzzed-out synth/guitar washes will inspire comparisons to that hazy, trebly Bailter Space/Swirlies sound but clearly, Phantogram aren't shoegazers either, as exampled by "Running from the Cops," an edgy dubstep-influenced gem. There's really no need to classify these guys, as they make great music. Can't wait for the next release.

Phantogram played Soundlab on 04/15/10.

Read "A Literary Lion Grapples with ‘Shhh’ that Saved Him": Shhh: The Story of a Childhood By Raymond Federman

2010-05-19T03:01:00.000-04:00

By Jeff Simon for the Buffalo News:

The story that haunted Raymond Federman’s life also, in a lesser way, haunted everyone who ever knew him. And that’s an enormous number of people, here and elsewhere, for this was one of the most revered and influential figures in the avant-garde of Buffalo because of his decades of teaching at the University at Buffalo.

He died of cancer in October, but his legacy is large and growing. Federman’s intellectual offspring— to his eternal credit and our luck—surround us, whether we’re talking about Hallwalls executive director Ed Cardoni or News literary blogger R. D. Pohl or Ted Pelton, whose Starcherone Press is the posthumous English language publisher of Federman’s final book, whose official publication day was Saturday, which would have been his 82nd birthday.

Federman remains a significant cultural force here.

Click to read the rest.

Attend Bflo Pnk 1.0: The Buffalo Punk Documentary Project at Squeaky Wheel

2010-05-15T03:27:00.002-04:00

Saturday, May 15, 7pm, Squeaky Wheel, 712 Main Street, $5--BFLO PNK 1.0: THE BUFFALO PUNK DOCUMENTARY PROJECT.

An oral and aural account, a living history, of the punk rock era – equal parts homage and collage to the Buffalo scene, circa 1977-85. In this film, Elmer Ploetz weaves together a series of interviews, archival footage, photos, posters and recent reunion footage to recapture the excitement and power of the era – a time whose influence echoes today throughout the local independent music scene.

The documentary is actually just the start of the Bflo Pnk Project. It’s a jumping off point for what is turning into a community history project using the facebook social networking service (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bflo-Pnk-10-The-Buffalo-Punk-Documentary-Project/366856159657).

Also, with the availability of digital editing, the film is expected to go through revision, re-editing and rewriting in coming years. In addition, footage and resources that don’t make it into the film will also be included online at buffalowave.com, where the audience will be able to search for clips and put them onto a timeline to create their own videos. The audience will also be encouraged to contribute to the knowledge base/resource base, creating a wiki multimedia history of the era. The website is currently in development.

For more information or for interviews, contact Elmer Ploetz at ploetz@fredonia.edu.

Attend Precious Cargo: An Evening of Film and Live Multimedia Performance Tonight at Hallwalls

2010-05-14T04:23:00.001-04:00

Friday, May. 14, 8pm, $8 general, $6 students/seniors, $5 members--PRECIOUS CARGO: An Evening of Film and Live Multimedia Performance.

In conjunction with UB Art Gallery's exhibition Precious Cargo, guest curator Paul Sargent presents Time Machine: a multi-media performance by Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat. Hacking a variety of interfaces and collapsing digital/analog signals, the artists will guide us through a parallel universe.

The evening will include a screening of Thomas Comerford's Land Marked/Marquette (2005, 23 min., 16mm), a study of monuments erected for the 17th century explorer and missionary Jacques Marquette.

Attend "A Sunday Afternoon, Visions of War and the Way We Hear It" at the BPAC Today

2010-05-09T04:21:00.000-04:00

Sunday, May 9, 2pm, Burchfield Penney Art Center, 1300 Elmwood Ave--A SUNDAY AFTERNOON, VISIONS OF WAR AND THE WAY WE HEAR IT.

Vintage film of WW2 and other conflicts accompanied by Poverty Hymns, VWLS and KG Price with video interludes from Brian Milbrand. Ambient sounds and recorded and manipulated samples from JFK, Winston Churchill and Buffalo's own, William Sylvester. Students $5, Adults $9 (there is a coupon for buy one, get one in the "Buffalo First" Books for the Burchfield!)

Attend Circuit Circus (Real Space Electronic Art Festival) at Soundlab Tonight

2010-05-04T08:40:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, May 4, 7pm, free--CIRCUIT CIRCUS (Real Space Electronic Art Festival)

Listen to New Daniel Higgs - "Hoofprints On The Ceiling of Your Mind"

2010-05-03T04:21:00.002-04:00

By Brandon for Stereogum:

I have much respect for Daniel Higgs. His music, his tattooing, his politics, his art … I’ve gone into it previously — Growing up, his minimal, transcendent raga-like Dischord post-hardcore group Lungfish was one of the essential bands in my core musical cosmology: The work’s incantatory, questing, spiritual, punk. (It offered such an essential, heady, muscular outlet for those of us who were sick of hardcore’s more dude-ish atmosphere.) Lungfish has never officially called it quits, but haven’t released anything since 2005’s Feral Hymns. Otherwise, Higgs has been pursuing excellent, eccentric solo work, using long-neck banjo, jew’s harp, crusty noise, organ drone, bird songs, art, alchemy, and that authoritative voice to bring us his personal Gospel/life philosophy (check out Ancestral Songs). After a few home-recorded (to cassette) collections, his new gathering of “song seeds,” the meditative, unruly Say God, was produced by Dave Sitek, who thankfully keeps things spare and spacious (though he does clean it up a bit). Higgs lays out some of Say’s major themes in the hypnotic opening sermon “Hoofprints On The Ceiling Of Your Mind.” Holy Bible time.

On 04/30/07 Daniel A.I.U. Belteshazzar-Higgs with Chiara Giovando performed with Brightblack Morninglight.

Listen to New Books - "Beautiful People"

2010-05-02T05:12:00.001-04:00

By Ryan Dombal for Pitchfork:

Found sound collage gurus the Books return with a new album this July on Temporary Residence. The album is called The Way Out and here's your first listen.

"Beautiful People" boasts backwards vox, calming singing about science and math, brass, and a (relatively) rigorous drum beat. Nobody else really makes music like this.

On 05/01/06 The Books played Soundlab with Todd Reynolds and The Sleeping Kings of Iona.

Attend Runway 3.0, then the Afterparty feat. Shock & Awe at Soundlab

2010-05-01T06:12:00.001-04:00

From Artvoice:

"I think people are going to freak out on Saturday!” enthuses Erin Habes, producer of Runway 3.0, this year’s installment of the annual fashion extravaganza showcasing original works by students of Buffalo State’s Fashion Technology Department as well as noted Western New York designers Holly Hue, Aella, Morgen Love, and Adam Lippes.

Her turn of phrase is especially appropriate considering this year’s installment, which promises even more spectacle than in years past, involves the transformation of 20,000 square feet of raw space in Elmwood Avenue’s historic Pierce Arrow Building. Once responsible for manufacturing the early 20th century’s most luxurious ride, the cavernous warehouse later provided rehearsal space for the original Superfreak, Buffalo punk-funk icon Rick James.

There are two shows on Saturday, May 1, at 4pm and 9pm, followed by the requisite afterparty, and of course, the after-afterparty featuring Shock & Awe at Soundlab at 11pm. All proceeds benefit a scholarship fund for the Fashion Technology program.

Read the rest of the feature here.

Attend Artists & Models: Stimulus Tonight at Rock Harbor Yard

2010-05-01T03:19:00.001-04:00

In the past 21 incarnations of Hallwalls' Artists & Models Affair, a multitude of Buffalo sites have served as the locus for temporary artistic expressions and controlled insanity: the Broadway Market, abandoned factories, warehouses, auto showrooms, roller rinks, deserted downtown malls and department stores, the Tri-Main Center, and the Buffalo Convention Center. This year's event—officially, the 22nd version of A&M—will take place at Rock Harbor Yard, conveniently located a few minutes from Buffalo State College and Elmwood Village. As always, our site for A&M represents a location, a state of being, a condition, an apparition, a temporary psychosis, an inevitably, a breeding ground for frivolity.

Read R.D. Pohl On the New York Times Book Review of Charles Bernstein's All the Whiskey in Heaven

2010-04-29T17:00:00.000-04:00

By R.D. Pohl for the Buffalo News Artsbeat:

If there remained any doubt that "Language writing"--once the scourge of the sclerotic "Official Verse Culture" and mainstream literary media in the United States that it sought to critique--is now the dominant linguistic frame through which literary innovation is parsed, last week's laudatory New York Times Book Review of Charles Bernstein's All The Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) convincingly puts it to rest.

If the occasion of the review is Bernstein's first volume of poems "not published by a university or independent press," what reviewer Daisy Fried writes about the former University at Buffalo professor and co-founder of the UB Poetics program ("famous as a poet and anti-poet") is a kind of performative utterance:

With “All the Whiskey in Heaven,” ...Bernstein takes his place in the mainstream of American poetry, the very “Official Verse Culture” he’s attacked entertainingly for years — a fate awaiting all our best outsiders. Bernstein is identified with the Language poets, who emerged in the 1970s. Interested in the materiality of language, they are politically left, theoretically grounded and deeply suspicious of the lyric “I” that speaks from the heart in traditional poems without examining its own existence in a sociopolitical power structure.

If the New York Times Book Review, ostensibly the house organ of the "Official Verse Culture" in the United States proclaims it, it must necessarily be a fait accompli. Never mind that All the Whiskey in Heaven is the first of Bernstein's sixteen full length collections of poetry and five books of essays over the past three decades ever to earn a New York Times review. Never before has the ascent from persona non grata to literary icon been accomplished with such selective hindsight.

In the current (Spring 2010) issue of BOMB Magazine Bernstein is interviewed by journalist Jay Sanders on the origins of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine (the title for which Bernstein attributes to co-founder Bruce Andrews), the various misconceptions that arose about language writing, and its influence on a broad range of 21st century poetics. In response to a question from Sanders about the perceived "militant aesthetic break" from prevailing poetic practice that the procedural and constraint-based techniques of language writing is thought to have represented, Bernstein avers:

When we started L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E we were trying to open up conversations across divides. As you say, rather than trying to narrow things down, the journal was about dialogue not just among poets of the same generation and the same perspective, but among poets of different generations, and also with those in the other arts. Still, the reaction in terms of the parochial world of poetry was that somehow something exclusive was being launched. We proposed an alternative to what then dominated as respectable poetry. Ours was a poetics of (some of) the excluded....

...We tried to trace a history of radical poetics, taking up the model presented in Jerome Rothenberg’s Revolution of the Word, and later by Rothenberg and Pierre Joris in Poems for the Millennium and Marjorie Perloff in The Futurist Moment. When you go back 30 years, you see that poetics that now are widely accepted as foundational for contemporary poetry were harshly rejected then. Poetry’s center of gravity has shifted to the poetic left, to call it that, though not everyone has heard the news. Even in the more mainstream poetry magazines now there’s a certain amount of work that is far looser and formally radical than you would have seen in the mid-’70s.

Asked about to what extent he and peers contributed to an "opening of the field" (Robert Duncan's phrase) for innovation, Bernstein points out that "...some recent poetry and poetics concertedly take out the contentiousness from formal invention." Discussing the 2009 Norton American Hybrid poetry anthology, he observes that "while the editors welcome a certain kind of elliptical, fragmented style, they also try to find a happy mean between extremes."

It's what he says next that speaks to the lasting influence of Language writing on 21st century poetics:

For me, it’s the extremity, the eccentricity, even the didacticism, that shakes things up. When poetry becomes normalized and more oriented toward craft, it loses the point. I’m not interested in any of the styles, per se, that were developed in the ’70s and ’80s—my own or anybody else’s. The issue was never stylistic technique as such. You have to read that era in the context of the intense resistance to nonlinear poetry, to algorithmic forms, to appropriated language, and non-“I”-centered poems—all of which are now accepted. Even the procedural is just one technique or form that emerges, sometimes zombie-like, to reveal hidden codes, or other times just as textile, as generator of texture.

In this sense, it's not the "mainstream" of American poetry that Bernstein and Armantrout have entered; it's the river itself that has changed its course.

Read "The Look of Music, on Show in Dublin": Morton Feldman & Abstract Painting

2010-04-29T08:51:00.000-04:00

By Mariana Schroeder for The Wall Street Journal:

Dublin: As a composer, Morton Feldman was part of an avant-garde movement called the New York school -- the abstract expressionists of music. In fact, he said his music was abstract painting, and demonstrated his devotion to the idea by dedicating pieces to friends whose art inspired him; artist friends, in turn, dedicated works to him. In 1967 Feldman even curated a show in Houston, Texas, called "Six Painters" (the six being Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko). It's a connection the Irish Museum of Modern Art celebrates with its exhibit "Vertical Thoughts."

Read the rest here.

Download "Acres of Skin," the Glittering, Skronking New Single From Zs, Read Q&A with Tenor Saxophonist Sam Hillmer

2010-04-29T07:05:00.000-04:00

By Christopher Weingarten for the Village Voice Sound of the City blog:

Brooklyn's Zs have always walked a jagged line between 21st Century composers and bratty art-punks; their voluminous, decade-strong output evokes everything from Schoenberg's jagged beep-boops to Glass's hypnotic minimalism to the headbanging abandon of crusty loft-party noiseniks. Despite having armloads of singles, EPs, and live albums, New Slaves (due May 11 on the Social Registry) is only their second proper record, and it moves the band fearlessly into more rhythmic, noisy, and downright terrifying waters. Anyone who's seen Zs recently knows they have abandoned their infamous music stands and sheet music. Instead, the band has transformed itself into a battering ram of brackish sound and befuddling rhythms--think of Steve Reich phasing experiments produced into a blackened soup by the Boredoms and you're getting close; think Black Dice performed by Sun Ra and you're getting closer. "Acres Of Skin" showcases the band's gnarly new feel, with saxophonist Sam Hillmer squonking out inhuman squeals, dual guitarists Annon Friedlin and Ben Greenberg (full disclosure, an old pal) creating a detuned, rhythmic ooze, and drummer Ian Antonio earnestly clapping and pounding along.

Read the rest here. Zs played Soundlab on 01/29/07 with Cages. They returned 04/22/08 to perform on a bill that also included Ecstatic Sunshine and Cex.

Watch Mary Halvorson on Roulette TV

2010-04-29T04:42:00.000-04:00

By plwn for the Roulette blog:

On March 18th, 2010 at Roulette, guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson premiered a set of new pieces for the Mary Halvorson Quintet as well as material from her upcoming release on Firehouse 12 Records. Halvorson has been active in New York since 2002, following jazz studies at Wesleyan University and the New School. In addition to her own band, The Mary Halvorson Trio, she co-leads a chamber music duo with violist Jessica Pavone and the avant-rock band, People, with drummer Kevin Shea.

Mary has played Soundlab in a handful of different incarnations, including MAP with Tatsuya Nakatani and most recently, the Halverson/Jessica Pavone Duo, which made a return visit on 2/15/10. Check it out here.

See Royal Bangs Tonight at Soundlab

2010-04-27T03:56:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, April 27, 9pm, $10-12--ROYAL BANGS. By Cory Perla for Artvoice:

Royal Bangs from Nashville, Tennessee, will bring their mixture of indie rock and electronic pulses to Soundlab on Tuesday (April 27). Formerly a five piece, the band has condensed down to three. Anchored by keyboardist/vocalist Ryan Schaefer, their music is a blend of familiar sounding indie rock and electronic synth laser tones. Percussionist Chris Rusk plays his style of fast and precise drumming while guitarist Sam Stratton leads the trio with fidgety overdriven guitar riffs. The music has a clear science fiction influence to it. The video for their latest single “War Bells” portrays a furry alien creature pulling human body parts from his gut and laying them on a psychedelic contraption which eventually brings the body parts to life. Of course, our alien friend is continuously shooting lasers from his finger tips in synchronization with the song. The track sounds like it could be a B-side to Beck’s Guerro or The Information, while others like “My Car Is Haunted” have a dance-punk sound similar to bands like Friendly Fires or White Denim. Both tracks belong to their recently released, and appropriately titled, full length album Let It Beep.

Read - Robert Dick Interview

2010-04-25T05:32:00.002-04:00

By plwn for the Roulette blog:

Robert Dick’s contributions to the development of the flute and its music are profound. With equally deep roots in classical music old and new, free improvisation and new jazz, he is known as the flute’s visionary. On April 18, at Roulette, Robert Dick teams up with visual improviser Joshue Ott and electronic musician Billy Gomberg for Dog or God – an immersive, improvised experience, unabashedly journeying from maelstrom to serenity via spontaneous emotional ports of call.

ROULETTE: Tell us as about the work you’ll be doing at Roulette.

ROBERT DICK: Dog or God “originated” when I saw Joshue Ott do his superDraw live video improvisations with the American Composers Orchestra a couple of years ago. The music on that program didn’t do to much for me, but I was blown away by Joshue’s work and thought that I’d have to make contact with him.

Read the rest here. Robert Dick performed with Steve Baczkowski and Ravi Padmanaba at Soundlab on 07/14/05.

Attend "Soundzilla" Sound Art Show Tonight at Soundlab

2010-04-25T05:00:00.002-04:00

Sunday, April 25, 7pm FREE--SOUNDZILLA.

SOUNDZILLA is a collection of final projects by students in Intermediate Sound Art, an undergraduate-level course taught by Jessica Thompson in the Department of Media Study, University at Buffalo. This exhibition is supported by the Department of Media Study and Soundlab. Many of the projects are interactive. Gallery visitors will be invited to participate in the projects over the course of the evening.

Featuring work by: Geoffrey Cook; Laura Diemer; Alec Erlebacher; Martin Freeman; Erica Grisanti; David Jamieson; Kirill Kolomyts; Ryan Mallette; Allen Mapenzauswa; Julia Norris; Michael Schmitz; Carl Smith; Will Stachnik; Alex Sunga; Jerry Theresanathan; EJ Vogel; Jesse Wekerle.

Listen to Junior Boys Remix Caribou

2010-04-24T10:19:00.002-04:00

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

Swim, the new Caribou album, just became the fourth Caribou LP to score Best New Music props (counting 2003's Up in Flames, released under the name Manitoba). We like us some Caribou over here, and here's even more: a remix of Swim's first single "Odessa", by Junior Boys. It's available as a bonus track if you buy Swim from iTunes or you can listen to it here.

Caribou played Soundlab in the summer of 2008. Junior Boys hit Soundlab on 11/03/09 with Wooden Hand.

Read - Nels Cline Interview

2010-04-24T05:46:00.001-04:00

By Tad Hendrickson for Spinner.com:

Nels Cline was been straddling the line between jazz and rock guitar since the late '70s. He got his start working with jazz musicians of the likes of Julius Hemphill, Charlie Haden and Tim Berne, while also doing more rock-oriented stuff with Mike Watt, the Geraldine Fibbers and others, though his major claim to fame these days is his gig as lead guitarist for Wilco. While that band is seemingly on a never-ending tour, Cline has found time to work with his main band, the Nels Cline Singers, as well as a side project with Yuka Honda called Fig, with other stuff coming down the pipe, as well. We caught up with Cline on the day his excellent new album, 'Initiate,' came out on Cryptogramophone. Read the interview here.

Nels Cline visited Mohawk Place on 10/01/01 as part of Gregg Bendian's Interzone featuring Gregg Bendian/Nels Cline/Kermit Driscol/Alex Cline. The show was a Hallwalls/Soundlab co-production.

Attend Big Night: Ecopoetics Season Finale Tonight at WNYBAC

2010-04-24T04:06:00.002-04:00

Saturday, April 24, Western New York Book Arts Center, 2nd Floor, 468 Washington St. @ Mohawk. Just Buffalo presents Big Night: Ecopoetics Season Finale. The program will feature poetry from JONATHAN SKINNER, art by JULIAN MONTAGUE, and sound and video installations by LEAH RICO. During her tenure as Big Orbit Gallery's Gallery Director, Leah was instrumental in helping launch the Soundlab program. Julian is an old friend who debuted his Shopping Cart Project installation in the gallery at the original Soundlab back in 2002.

Attend We Are, an Exhibition of New Drawings, Prints & Peformance by Hyeyoung Shin at Big Orbit Gallery Tonight

2010-04-23T18:24:00.003-04:00

Friday, April 23, 8-11 (opening reception--performance begins 8:30), Big Orbit Gallery, 30d Essex St.

The series “We are” explores the concept of creating memories in the present as the viewer moves along with images of human feet. “We are” consists of graphite drawings on individual sheets of paper and on clothing that I made out of Korean paper. I see the paper as an embodiment of culture with the ability to hold and communicate experiences and memories like human skin.   I am also fascinated with how the empty space on paper allows us to put ourselves directly into the space. I strive to create some sort of an ambiguous space where we are not able to define ourselves through the notion of race, language and culture. We can only realize ourselves as a human being without prejudice. The space is for pure empathy that people can understand each other not by their own cultural background but by their visual perception from a visual language that they see. I’m engaged with organic form and part of the human body to guide viewers to a space that I want to create among us.   In my “Feet Washing” performance, I want to expand the idea of space one step further for the viewers. I seek to create direct dialogue by providing access to myself as a host. I see myself as a creator of a theatrical situation that elevates one’s capacity for empathy. The representation of feet washing can be understood as an action of acceptance and caring of humanity. I choose the action of feet washing as a tool of empathy not only because I have a Catholic upbringing but also because this event suggests a global culture that different people can recognize as being a thoughtful communication method.

Listen to The xx Remix YACHT

2010-04-23T09:15:00.002-04:00

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

That freaky-looking image you see above is the cover art to YACHT's "The Afterlife" single. The single, now available digitally from DFA, includes a motley assortment of folks remixing the See Mystery Lights track: Andrew W.K., DAT Politics, Joy Electric, May Ling, and, most notably, the xx. You can stream the xx's dubsteppy take on the track over at the DFA website right now.

It's nice to see that YACHT and the xx didn't let their opposing stances on capitalization get in the way of working together.

YACHT played soundlab first on 08/27/07 with Dirty Projectors and Vampire Weekend. On 03/07/10, YACHT returned with MNDR, Bobby Birdman.

Watch New Dosh Video - "Airlift"

2010-04-23T07:25:00.000-04:00

By Jessica for Stereogum:

Martin Dosh still creates the complex electro-acoustic mash he’s known for here on his fifth LP, Tommy (named for a friend who passed, not the Who), but there’s more room in his song structures. Sometimes that room is for guest vocalists, like longtime collaborator Andrew Bird. Other times it just adds space to breathe. “Airlift” fits the latter. Even “Airlift’”s video, with its central character surrounded by books, records, and photographs, says something about letting go of stuff (objects or instruments) to introduce some calm. The video was directed by Shal Ngo.

Fog played Mohawk Place as part of a Soundlab Presents bill on 05/20/03 with Fog and the Murder Group. On 11/01/06 he returned to share a bill with Sleeping Kings of Iona and DJ MJB Corp.

Stream the National's High Violet Today

2010-04-23T05:38:00.002-04:00

By Rob Harvilla for the Village Voice's Sound of the City:

It ain't out until May 11, but it leaked, you see, and the band would rather you hear a high-quality version. From their MySpace:

Hi everyone!
As you may have heard, there is a low quality leak of our new album, High Violet, spreading across the Internet as we speak. We wanted to let you know the New York Times will be streaming the real thing starting Friday April 23rd. We hope you'll take the time to hear the album at its intended level of quality.

High Violet will be released by 4AD worldwide on May 10th/11th.

This would seem to be the Times' maiden voyage in terms of a streaming a record pre-release; we suspect they've picked a good record to start with.

The National first played Buffalo at Big Orbit Gallery on 05/30/01 with Mia Doi Todd and Clogs. They return to co-headline Rockin' at the Knox with Rufus Wainright on Friday, June 18, 2010.

Experience Funtime Costumed Goofballism with Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt!, Shock & Awe DJs & The Shakes Tonight at Soundlab

2010-04-22T09:30:00.000-04:00

Thursday, April 22, 9pm, $5--LAST MINUTE ***SURPRISE*** SHOW (spread the word): TERROR PIGEON DANCE REVOLT! with SHOCK & AWE DJS & THE SHAKES

Check out pictures from the last TPDR show at Soundlab here.

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 carefully rehearsed songs. What you get is 8 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 Thursday.

Attend Video Vs Film Tonight at Sugar City

2010-04-22T05:19:00.002-04:00

Thursday, April 22, 7-10--VIDEO VS FILM, Sugar City, 19 Wadsworth St, FREE.

The VIDEO VS FILM extravaganza will feature video installations and a screening comprised of individual and collaborative works by students from the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo. This exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the Department of Media Study, UB and Sugar City.