New Islands - "No You Don't"

Via Stereogum:

At the end of September, Nick Diamonds & his shape-shifting Islands are following up 2008's Arm's Way with their third studio album, Vapours. The 12-song collection includes the drum machines and sequencers of Jamie Thompson, who left the band after the 2006 debut, Return To The Sea. As a result of the shift in the arrangements (or vice versa), the songs are less epic and more insular than last time out with Diamonds jamming more hooks and less prog excursions into Vapours' 42 minutes. Which doesn't mean the title track won't give you a triumphant horn arrangement, that you won't find orchestral martial drumming in closer "Everything Is Under Control," that "On Foreigner" doesn't meander by like a slightly cooled tropical breeze, "Tender Torture" doesn't take off with careening and swoony hooks, or that the appropriately titled "Hearbeat" won't use a little auto-tune. Get a sample of the collection via the poppy, defiant (and clattering, highly synthesized) second track, "No You Don't."

Islands performed at Soundlab on 04/16/08.

"This is The Awesome Generation..." (Handsome Furs Show Review)

by John Massier, Prolonged Hacking and Gnawing blog:

"This is The Awesome Generation..."

That's what Dai Skuse of FASTWÜRMS turned and uttered to me halfway through the Handsome Furs show at Soundlab last Saturday. He was gently mocking the fact that "awesome" was the word most regularly hurled from the crowd toward the dynamic Montreal duo: "You guys are AWESOME!" "That song was AWESOME!" Thesaurasly-challenged maybe, but it was pretty freakin' awesome.

It's a crapshoot what happens when you catch a band at the end of a long tour. Worst case scenario is that the band hates itself and each other and plays out the clock with total apathy. Or, as was the case with the Furs, you get a performance that couldn't be any tighter. I love this band and would have been satisfied with any kind of show from them, but they far exceeded even my exalted expectations. This is not a case where the guy leads and the gal throws in some slight support. Dan Boeckner's stupendous guitar work and singing was equally met by Alexei Perry's tight drum machine and keyboard fills. A fine example of a young married couple in complete sync, firing on all cylinders. Boecker has a halfway-epileptic vibe that rachets up his performance, while Perry is almost inexplicably in complete movement all the time, between full-body head-banging and swinging her legs wildly up in the air at every opportunity. They would often just lunge their upper bodies toward each other in time to the music or being a song with foreheads touching, a brief huddle before the snap of the ball. Clearly, these two are crazy in love and they are channeling their mojo with complete ferocity.

Opening act The Cinnamon Band, a splendid duo of guitar/drums from Stanton, VA, were tight and good humored, so I think it was apparent to both bands that the crowd was stoked, which put all the musicians in a great headspace. The combustible result is still humming inside me a week later. Really something.Wow. Thanks to SOUNDLAB for bringing them to town. (photo: Dai Skuse)

About Last Night...Handsome Furs

Click here for pics of the show, which took place 07/18/09.

This Weekend at Soundlab... Infringement Fest Electronic Showcase

Sunday, July 26, 10pm--The INFRINGEMENT FESTIVAL SOUNDLAB ELECTRONIC SHOWCASE feat. N3wT, This is the Sun, Dudley Ghost, shapes of states

This Weekend at Soundlab... Communist Party feat. Felix Cartal

Friday, July 24, 11pm
THE COMMUNISTY PARTY feat. FELIX CARTAL

Animal Collective License First Legal Grateful Dead Sample Ever

By Amy Phillips for Pitchfork:

Animal Collective's status as avant-indie's premiere jam band has now officially been solidified. According to a Tweet from their management company, the band has cleared the first ever officially licensed Grateful Dead sample. (Via Gorilla Vs. Bear.)

The currently unreleased track "What Would I Want Sky" contains a sample of the Dead song "Unbroken Chain". According to Leg Up! Management, Dead bassist Phil Lesh himself professed his love for the song.

Read more here. Animal Collective hit Soundlab on 04/14/05 with Ariel Pink.

Nate Wooley Interview

By Dan Warburton for Paris Transatlantic magazine:

Do you recall any memorable childhood musical experiences, early sound memories that marked you in some way?

There are two different kinds of sound experiences that shaped me growing up. The first was all the jazz I heard. Portland was a big jazz town – and still is to a certain degree – with a heavy emphasis on the hard bop tradition. For better or worse, all that bebop and hard bop and swing made its way into my trumpet playing. Listening to my dad play blues and jump R&B style stuff definitely had a huge impact on me early on, that feeling of the ecstatic. The other experience was all the silence that I grew up in. My hometown, Clatskanie, Oregon, had a population of 2000, but we weren't clumped together in any sort of organized manner. My family lived "in town" but there were no cars driving revving their engines at all hours, no cellphone conversations or loud televisions, no background noise whatsoever, except the wind or the rain. I've always been pretty obsessive about recording small details in my mind, things that I see or hear; I would concentrate on small sounds for hours when I was trying to fall asleep, trying to figure out how to recreate them or what their composition was. Listening to my grandmother hum tunelessly was something that affected me somehow, although I'd have a tough time pointing to its musical example. Those two types of sound experiences seem really disparate, but I think they are both pretty well represented in what I do now. At least to me they seem that way.

Read the rest here. Nate Wooley performed at Soundlab on 10/17/04 with Blue Collar; on 04/09/05 in duo format with Chris Forsythe; and again on 05/13/06 in a trio with Cor Fuhler, Nate Wooley and Newtown Armstrong.

New Fruit Bats - "The Ruminant Band"

By Amrit for Stereogum:

Being the newest full-time member of the Shins is enough to keep anyone's hands full, but Eric D. Johnson has no intention of pausing the Fruit Bats project, his Sub Pop band that will release its fourth full-length this summer. The collection's title track "The Ruminant Band" strums along with Bats' familiar major chords and AM golden lope, settling into a section of the '70s that matches Fleetwood Mac vocal harmonies with Dickey Betts-styled guitar lines straight from an Allman Bros jam (before the mushrooms kick in). It's a far cry from the new wave and chunky rhythms Mercer has him dabbling in, more on the Blitzen Trapper side of the present Sub Pop spectrum.

Check it out here. Fruit Bats play Soundlab on Wednesday, September 16 with Iran and Kevin Barker.

Book Review: "Who Owns Music?" by William Parker

Posted by Christian Carey to the Signal To Noise blog:

William Parker
Who Owns Music?
150 pages, ISBN: 978-3-00-020141-7
Published by Buddy’s Knife

Bassist, composer, arts organizer, and educator William Parker has had a distinguished musical career. One of the premier exponents of avant jazz on the New York scene, he’s recorded prolifically as a sideman and as a leader of small groups and large ensembles.

For over forty years, Parker has also been active as a writer. Who Owns Music? is a collection of his poetry, reminiscences, and writings about the philosophy of music. Parker is an eloquent advocate of the intrinsic connection between art and the spiritual. He frequently likens advocacy for experimental music to a spiritual struggle. His words will no doubt be heartening news to artists who long for an elevated discussion about the religious impulse in music, sans positivist scoffing or, alternately, dogma and judgmental proselytizing.

For Parker, societal woes and artistic concerns are also linked. Thus his discussion of the ideals of improvised music and composition are interwoven with advocacy for civil rights, free speech, environmentalism, and arts education. The perils of music criticism, particularly the danger of poison pen tirades, are also taken up. Parker occasionally paints with too broad a brush here, giving a sense that he is indicting the majority of music critics. This is perhaps understandable in context; much unfair and ill-informed criticism has been levied at avant jazz in general and Parker in particular. But, even here, he doesn’t stray long from the positive, providing a manifesto that writers should take to heart. He writes, “The role of the critic is to become the poet. (S)he must find a plant and water it and care for it without crushing one blade of grass or one weed along the way.”

William Parker is a frequent visitor to Buffalo, usually at the behest of Hallwalls, who placed him at Big Orbit/Soundlab thrice. First, on 11/02/00, he played a duo with Jameel Moondoc at Big Orbit Gallery. On 06/08/02 he visited the original Soundlab as part f the Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet (which in addition to Brotzmann also included: Mats Gustafsson, Mars Williams, Toshinori Kondo, Hamid Drake, Joe McPhee, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Michael Zerang, Kent Kessler, Jeb Bishop and Ken Vandermark). On 09/09/05 he hit the new Soundlab with Fire into Music, a quarter that also involved Hamid Drake, Jameel Moondoc and Steve Swell.

This Week at Soundlab... an Evening of Perfect Discordance & Controlled Abandon

TONIGHT! July 21, 9pm--FREE (pay what you can)

An evening of perfect discordance & controlled abandon feat.
***NORMAL LOVE***
with RED TAG RUMMAGE SALE, THE VOIDOLOGISTS

Formed in 2006, Normal Love is a Philadelphia-based instrumental quintet comprised of amplified violin, two electric guitars, electric bass, and drums. Normal Love's music generally has a loud and brutal aesthetic, with compositional influences ranging from African minimalism to serialism and death metal, but rarely within the same piece. Members of the band have performed and/or recorded with RUINS, Man Man, Dr. Dog, Pauline Oliveros, Kayo Dot, Dynamite Club, SATANIZED, Make a Rising, Illuminea, Mat Maneri, Jamie Saft, Andrew D'Angelo, and Mike Pride. The band has shared the stage with Make a Rising, Dysrhythmia, Daughters, Zs, Chinese Stars, Ocrilim (Mick Barr), Ex-Models, Cheer-Accident, Aa, James Plotkin, Weasel Walter, and Genghis Tron.

"Lisa and Phil, an adorable married couple who play together in Red Tag Rummage Sale. Lisa’s smooth cello sound meshes with Phil’s carefully complex guitar playing almost too perfectly. With the aid of a delay pedal, Phil creates a web of intricate sounds which are often very mesmerizing. It’s hard not to fall in love with Red Tag Rummage Sale as you watch them playing beautiful music while they look into each others eyes and sing songs about love to each other."--Derek Neuland, rapidtransitradio.com

The Voidologists perform abstract and improvisational harsh noise. A continuous exploration to discover the hidden beauty in layers of distortion.

http://www.myspace.com/normallove
http://www.myspace.com/redtagrummagesale
http://www.myspace.com/thevoidologists

Grizzly Bear on Letterman

by Amy Phillips for Pitchfork:

After being bumped from "Letterman" in May, Grizzly Bear finally hit the "Late Show" stage last night. They delivered a lovely version of Veckatimest's "Ready, Able", complete with a string section.

Check it out here. Grizzly Bear played Soundlab on 11/06/05 with Lichens & Soft Circle

Hear the Atlas Sound/Panda Bear Collaboration "Walkabout"

Posted by Amy Phillips for Pitchfork:

Hungry for more sun-dappled soundscapes to bathe in during the peak of summer? Here's the latest: Atlas Sound's "Walkabout", from the forthcoming album Logos, due out October 20 on Kranky. (That's the cover up there, via the Fader.) Bradford Cox collaborated with Animal Collective's Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) on the track, which would have fit right in with the blissed-out Brian Wilsonisms of Panda Bear's Person Pitch.

Read more and listen here. Animal Collective performed with Ariel Pink at Soundlab on 04/14/05. Bradford Cox hit Soundlab on 05/06/08 with Deerhunter.

Mattin Interview

By Dan Warburton for Paris Transatlantic magazine:

In time-honoured boring PT style, I'll start with the usual question about your origins and background, so –

I don't think things should be boring for routine reasons, so let's try something out: I'm interested in extending the exploratory aspect of improvisation to other areas that might seem to be at the periphery of music production such as interviews and the way I present myself in the context of music. I think that our knowledge about a certain player influences our appreciation of her or his music. So I don't make a clear distinction between the production of sounds and the way one presents oneself. A musician giving an interview should be honest: you should be the same person you are at home and the same when you're playing. One coherent subject. But I can see from the way you've asked me certain questions and the way you've edited my answers you want to portray me in a certain way, as someone I don't think I am. Then again, I'm not a singular coherent subject and even if I might have done things to feed steoreotypes of this persona called Mattin, that doesn't mean I agree with all of them. So I'll try at times to follow your game, and at other times to disrupt it understanding that we might fail miserably but at least we'll have countered the normative qualities of the interview. I'll try to go against the stereotypical persona that I and others have created against the mediation of my self-presentation. Against the idea of neutrality in this interview, probably in order to feed another stereotype.. will this ever end? That's the beauty of improvisation, it never ends. When I say neutrality I'm thinking of the way people used to record improvisation sessions trying to achieve as much fidelity to the event, creating the feeling that by listening to the recordings you're almost there with the players. We all know that this is absolutely impossible, that there are always decisions that mediate your relationship with the recording. For example, Dan gives the impression that this interview took place in a cafe in Paris in April, which it originally did, but we are now typing at our computers and it's early July.

Read the rest of this fascinating interview here.

Mattin performed in trio format with Tim Barnes and Tony Conrad on 4/30/05. The session was recorded and released as Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. Check out some reviews of the record here.

Catching Up With the National's Bryce Dessner About His Million Projects

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

This Saturday night, July 18, the National will headline something called the Pitchfork Music Festival. But before that show, guitarist and songwriter Bryce Dessner will play a role in another big outdoor concert. Tomorrow night, July 16, the avant-garde classical legends Kronos Quartet will play Brooklyn's Prospect Park bandshell as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn! festival. At that show, they'll debut a piece called "Aheym" that Dessner wrote specifically for them.

That's just one more notable in what's turning out to be an incredible year for Dessner. With twin brother and fellow National member Aaron, he produced the Dark Was the Night benefit compilation and the landmark concert that followed. In October, he and Aaron will present The Long Count, a multimedia piece they collaborated on with visual artist Matthew Ritchie, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House; the Breeders' Kim and Kelley Deal, My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden, and the National's own Matt Berninger will all assist. Bryce also curated the Music Now festival in Cincinnati and played an important role in Sufjan Stevens' forthcoming Enjoy Your Rabbit album reboot, Run Rabbit Run. And he's hard at work on a new National album. This guy does not sleep.

Bryce took some time out of a ridiculously busy schedule to talk to Pitchfork about everything he's got going on. Read the interview here.

The National played Big Orbit Gallery with Mia Doi Todd and Clogs on 05/30/01.

New Black Moth Super Rainbow Video - "Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise"

Via Stereogum. The clip comes with this description:

Directed by Team Tobaxxxo, the video captures a day in the life of a besuited fellow whose big thrills in life are practicing good dental hygiene and toasting hot dogs.

With a big day ahead, he's recruited the friendly girls from next door to give him a hand. Lucky for him, the girls know just what it takes to put smile on a man's face.

Check it out here.

Black Moth Super Rainbow performed ata Soundlab with Octopus Project and Besnyo on 06/18/06.

Talk to the Blog: Five Questions for Mutant Sounds, Home of Doinky Synth-Pop, Beef-Heartian Art Damage, and Symphonic-Prog MP3s

By Jeremy Krinsley for the Village Voice Sounds of the City blog:

In any given week, Mutant Sounds will unceremoniously dump a pile of posts containing scanned or photographed album art, breezily-written descriptions, and full-album downloads into its expanding archive of musical rarities from the past four decades. One such occurrence in early June included a Swedish fusion LP from the 70s, "psych-as-psych-qua-psych" Japanese singles, and sub-underground post-industrial comps from mid-80s America. While the material might seem bound together only by its dusty obscurity, it's also united in its indebtedness to a handful of collectors who've united under the Mutant Sound banner.

Eric Lumbleau is perhaps the most systematic of this small group. As a member of the loose Texas-based music collective, Vas Deferens Organization, Lumbleau was already a legend in the Mutant Sounds realm, having been responsible for both a stream of mid-'90 to early-'00 releases (that's range was nearly as wide as what appears on Mutant Sounds), and a lavish stab at underground taste-making following in the tradition of experimental forefathers Nurse With Wounds, whose infamous "list" VDO one-upped (in quantity, at least), in 1996. With Lumbleau's assistance, the blog has become a go-to for outsider traditions in music. He recently answered five questions for us over e-mail.

Read the rest here.

Premiere: WHY?: "This Blackest Purse"

Posted by Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

Talking to Pitchfork back in May, WHY? mastermind Yoni Wolf called his forthcoming album Eskimo Snow "really the least hip-hop out of anything I've ever been involved with." He added, "[The songs] feel like song-songs with-- I don't want to say a typical verse-chorus structure, but they're song-songs." Eskimo Snow is due September 22 in the U.S. from Anticon and October 5 in the UK from Tomlab. And judging from the track "This Blackest Purse", which you can hear below, he wasn't exaggerating.

Musically, there's not even a hint of WHY?'s art-rap past in "This Blackest Purse". The Bay Area band recorded Eskimo Snow at the same sessions that produced their last album, 2008's Alopecia. But "This Blackest Purse" is warmer and slower than anything on that record; the piano is positively Ben Folds-ian. Nevertheless, Wolf still turns in some of the twisty wordplay that he's always pulled off: "I wanna speak at an intimate decibel/ With the precision of an infinite decimal." Check it out here.

Why? Performed with the Dirty Projectors at Soundlab on 04/18/06.

This Weekend at Soundlab... Handsome Furs!

Saturday, July 18, 9pm--HANDSOME FURS with THE CINNAMON BAND & DJ Bryce, $10/12.

Handsome Furs are not a message band and they are not political, but Handsome Furs are a message band and they are political.

The juxtaposition of cold, metronomic, electronic beats, courtesy of Alexei Perry, with the jagged, dissonant and frail, broken or breaking, guitars of Dan Boeckner portray what it is to be a human being at the bottom of the 21st century. It underlines the confusion you feel as your best friends are conveyed to you via a series of ones and zeros passing through lines and cables and microwaves; the same confusion felt witnessing the pure, wholesome thrill of a band of musicians pouring their hearts out on stage, through someone’s cell phone as pixelated streaming video; the profound and bitter frustration of your long-distance relationship with the world up against a burning, alcohol-soaked sunrise as you admit some things you never thought you would; your constant feelings of inadequacy intertwined with the omnipotence modern technology grants us all. You are there, yet somehow you never are. As we all are and are not [...] We have built and taken up residence in our own Foucauldian Panopticon. Put in the context of a Soviet surveillance state of total control, modern western life becomes outright eerie.

Of course, there is always hope, and this is perhaps the point. The songs on FACE CONTROL often cast us as the young lovers in the shadow of the system, plotting their escape, revelling in their freedom as the shackles tighten around them. In the past, freedom may have meant jumping a barbed wire fence, or crossing a treacherous ocean or burning desert. On FACE CONTROL Handsome Furs show us that in our modern age escaping these constraints has simultaneously become easier and more complicated. While it once meant hanging on, it now means letting go, and drifting off, refusing to participate in the structure that shapes and dominates so many lives, eschewing traditional values, opting instead to make up their own ways.

-Haukur S Magnússon

A Day In the Life of Early 80s New York

By Brian Turner for WMFU blog:

I didn't move to the Big Apple until 1995, but as a kid growing up watched all the city's TV channels that got exported to Pennsylvania, and formulated a distinct picture of what living there was like. In my mind everybody there made their own independent swinger ads on Al Goldstein's show, had kids who competed for Dynamite magazine and Lenders' Bagelettes on Wonderama, had weird telephone numbers that started with "Murray Hill", and lived in apartments like Felix Unger and Oscar Madison. This 25 minute Jools Holland/Leslie Ash-hosted special for The Tube is a nice drift of early 80's NYC sights and sounds, focused on the Danceteria scene, Arthur Baker, Paradise Garage etc. Check it out (via Skratchworx).

This Weekend at Soundlab... Soundlab BBQ!

Saturday, July 11, 1pm, $10--2nd Annual SOUNDLAB BBQ! 20 Bands, Shock & Awe, Hot Dogs and More! All proceeds go to benefit the after school program at the Hope Refugee Center. Bands include Johnny Nobody-Besnyo-Bearhunter-Mark Nosowicz-Wooden Waves-Cages-Chylde-The Thermidors-Bygon Halcyon-Peanut Brittle Satellite-Monkey & Boy-Beard FIght-Bernice Marie-Brian Wheat-Shapes of State-Nodic- McCrackin-Worrywort-Ersing-Ashley England. Shock & Awe later in the night!

New High Places: "Late Bloomer"

By Zach Baron for the Village Voice's Sounds of the City blog:

Los Angeles certainly seems to have made a mellower band out of New York exile duo High Places, who return to the city for the It Came From Brooklyn series at the Guggenheim on August 14. "Late Bloomer," destined for a Post Present Medium split 12" with Soft Circle, is a vaguely choral and languid dip in the High Places id: lots of echo, chirping birds, tinny wrist-bracelet cymbals, dripping water, slithering electronics, floating bits of stray melody, and a brief but convincing Mary Pearson incantation. It's lovely and we envy them their out-of-town ease. Stream it at Pitchfork.

High Places played Soundlab with Soft Circle on 02/11/08

Deerhunter's Bradford Cox Announces New Atlas Sound Album

From Pitchfork:

Sometimes it seems like Deerhunter frontman/Atlas Sound mastermind Bradford Cox is friends with everyone in indie rock. This is a good thing. It leads to cool onstage collaborations and crazy interviews. And now, his affability has enticed Animal Collective's Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) and Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier to chip in with guest shots on the upcoming Atlas Sound LP, dubbed Logos and due out October 20 via Kranky.

Cox promises a less introverted and more spontaneous and far-reaching experience than on last year's Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel. "The lyrics are not autobiographical...I became bored with introspection," he writes in a note accompanying the record's press release.

In that same note, Cox also addresses the incident almost a year ago, when an early, unfinished version of Logos leaked to the internet, generating a passionate response. "I considered abandoning the project," he writes. Thankfully, he didn't.

Read more here.

Deerhunter performed at Soundlab on 05/06/08.

This Week at Soundlab... Structural Chaos and Improvised Fragmentation

Tuesday, July 7, 9pm, $8--free folk stalwarts CASTANETS

Wednesday, July 8, 9pm, $8--a night of structural chaos and improvised fragmentation feat. METALUX (M.V. Carbon & Jenny Gräf) with
BILL NACE (electric guitar)/ STEVE BACZKOWSKI (saxophones, turntables) duo

Castanets were one of the more prominent proponents of the so-called freak folk movement (also known as psychedelic folk and New Weird America) that took place in the U.S. music scene in 2003-04. While Raymond Raposa is the only constant member of the band, his records and live performances often feature a rotating cast of musicians, the line-up often changing from night to night in a single tour.

Bill Nace you may know from his killer duo throwdowns with Chris Corsano as Vampire Belt as well as the more recent weirdness with Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Lollypop as Ceylon Mange and in duo with Thurston Moore as Northampton Wools. This will be his first duo encounter with Buffalo's Steve Baczkowski after having played together in 2005 with Moore's Dream Aktion Unit at the Festival Musique Actuelle in Quebec.

M.V. Carbon is a Brooklyn based musician and composer who sometimes incorporates film into live performances. She uses fragmented field recordings, analog synthesizers, samplers, tape manipulations, and photosensitive oscillators to assimilate structural chaos and decomposition. She creates eerie and unsettling compositions using her voice as an instrument and processing it through tape machines. She plays cello through tape loops and guitar pedals and uses 16mm film imagery as a backdrop for her performances. She is interested in the structural decomposition and fragmentation that occurs within architecture, landscape, human physiology, and perception.

Jenny Gräf is a sound and visual artist. Several of her works are long-term collaborations with individuals and groups, including several long-term collaborations with people with memory loss. One such project was The Guitars Project, in which 6 women with Alzheimer’s developed strategies for playing electric guitar that challenged notions of memory, identity and age. She is currently working with Chiara Giovando on Proud Flesh, a Western shot in the Badlands of South Dakota that features two older female protagonists as well as many Baltimore artists and musicians. Release date is set for early 2008.

Vision Festival XIV, a Review

Each year, Bruce Lee Gallanter of Manhattan's Downtown Music Gallery posts his take on the Vision Festival, which collects together the creme de la creme of the avant-garde jazz community. Buffalo improv fans will recognize many of the names as regular guests of Hallwalls. Check out the lengthy and detailed treatment here.

Marina Rosenfeld Interview Download

By Anne Hilde Nesset on Adventures In Modern Music/Wire Radio, June 25, 2009, with downloadable playlist by Marina Rosenfeld: www.thewire.co.uk. Marina Rosenfeld performed a solo turntable set at Big Orbit Gallery on 11/16/01. She returned to Buffalo to play the old Soundlab as part of a DJ trio organized by Christian Marclay (who could not make it), that also included DJ Olive and Toshio Kajiwara.

Battles' John Stanier Talks New Album

By Ryan Dombal for Pitchfork:

It's been more than two years since Battles dropped Mirrored, one of the most satisfyingly inscrutable and flat-out ballsy records in recent memory. Since then, the band has toured all over the world-- China, New York, Australia-- putting the "rock" in post-rock and spreading little-green-men-esque vocals to the masses. And now they're starting work on the follow-up.

Last week, we spoke with drummer John Stanier, whose sky-high crash cymbal theatrics and snare-thrashing intensity often make him the star of Battles' live assault. On the phone from his home in Cologne, Germany, he talked about what we can expect from the new Battles LP and why he sweats so damn much onstage.

Read the interview here. Battles performed at Soundlab on 4/02/07. Guitarist Tyondai Braxton performed, with Parts & Labor, at the second Soundlab's soft opening on 10/26/03.

Holy Fuck: Lovely Allen Video (No Age Remix) [Young Turk]

Holy Fuck performed with Mark Webb and Fourem/Rainbowmaker at Soundlab on 06/15/06. Check out this new video, posted at Pitchfork, here.

New Octopus Project on the Way

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

On July 14, Peek-A-Boo will release Golden Beds, the new EP from Austin-based instrumental rock quartet the Octopus Project. The enhanced EP includes seven music videos, including one live track from last year's Austin City Limits fest. The band is touring the American South right now.

Octopus Project visited Soundlab on 06/18/06, where they shared a bill with Black Moth Super Rainbow and Besnyo. They returned on 10/23/07.

Dirty Projectors in Auto Accident: Everybody's OK but Toronto Show Cancelled

Official Statement:

"Dirty Projectors' van flipped outside of Detroit, MI on their way up to Toronto. Although the crash was serious, we're happy to report that all members of the band have been safely discharged from the hospital. The band will be flying home to New York in the morning to regroup and rest. Unfortunately, the band will have to cancel Toronto and Montreal. Thank you for understanding and sending your well wishes."

Dirty Projectors have performed at Soundlab 3 times: on 06/29/05 with Wind Up Bird and Nat Baldwin; on 04/18/06 with Why? (and "The Getty Address," an animated film by James Sumner); and on 08/27/07 with Yacht and Vampire Weekend.

Everyone Likes Music But Is Anyone Willing to Pay for it Anymore? Daedelus' Friends of Friends

From Daedelus Embraces a Quiet, Close-Listening Approach, by Martin Turenne for Straight.com:

Everyone likes music, but is anyone willing to pay for it anymore? A few Los Angeles-based producers seem to think not, which is why they’ve started giving their releases away for nothing—sort of. The concept behind the beatmakers’ new record label, Friends of Friends, runs like this: two musicians record three songs apiece for a digital EP, which consumers can download for free when they buy a limited-edition T-shirt designed by one of the company’s graphic artists. There’s probably no money in this venture for anyone, but according to Daedelus—whose tracks lead off the recent Friends of Friends Volume 1 —that’s not really the point.

“The sale of the shirts might eventually make a small profit,” says the dance-music producer, reached at a tour stop in Baltimore, “but if nothing else, giving away music digitally assuages the terrible guilt about some of these physical products. I mean, vinyl is a petroleum product, and CDs have poisonous chemicals in them. Eventually, all these things are going to end up in landfills.”

Read more here.

Daedelus performed at Soundlab first on 11/14/07 with Busdriver, Anti-MC, FourEm & Mark Kloud. He returned on 06/12/09 headlining a bill that also included Ghislain Poirier and DJ Steve Kream.

Interview with Matana Roberts

On June 18, Matana Roberts presents Illumination, a collection of sound paintings, at the Roulette space in New York City. In this interview, conducted for the Roulette blog, Roberts discusses the work, and some of the things that inspire her.

Roberts performed at Soundlab on 7/15/04 with Josh Abrams and Chad Taylor in the band Sticks and Stones.

This Week at Soundlab... Masters of Soundlab

Wednesday, June 24, 9pm--
"MASTERS OF SOUNDLAB" feat. CHAE HAWK, BIRD DAY, SPEAKERFIRE, DJ DSTAR

Friday, June 26, 11pm--
COMMUNIST PARTY presents OH SNAP! featuring Mareo Speedwagon, Flava Braun & Sir Richard Rector

Saturday, June 27, 10pm--
BIG DIGITS, BEV BEVERLY, ABCDJ
Big Digits is a two man party attack formed from the ashes of crashed computers dusted over dented dancefloors. From Cambridge.

This Week at Soundlab... Cotton Jones

Tuesday, June 23, 9pm, $8--
COTTON JONES, featuring ex-members of Page France.

"Bucolic, sun-dappled psychedelia made for a summer afternoon of lying face-up in a field and watching the clouds drift by. On their debut Paranoid Cocoon, Nau and McGraw’s misty vocal blend evokes Mazzy Star and Vetiver melting marshmallows together around a campfire, while Nau’s guitar lines drip down like slow-poured honey, and McGraw’s trilling organ makes you wonder why every year can’t be 1967."--Rolling Stone.com

Check out them out on myspace.

This Week at Hallwalls... Sabir Mateen's Omni-Sound

Thursday, 6/25/09, 8pm--SABIR MATEEN'S OMNI-SOUND.

"Tenor/alto saxophonist, Bb/Eb alto clarinetist, flutist and composer Sabir Mateen (born in Philadelphia) has been a musician most of his life. Starting in the Philadelphia area as a percussionist, he began playing flute as a teenager. Gradually evolving from alto to tenor saxophone, he has been through a number of musical transformations. He started out playing rhythm and blues in the early 70's—which led him to the tenor saxophone chair of the Horace Tapscott Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. From there he has performed with Cecil Taylor, Sunny Murray, William Parker, Alan Silva, Butch & Wilber Morris, Raphe Malik, Steve Swell, Mark Whitecage, Roy Campbell, Matthew Shipp, Marc Edwards, Jemeel Moondoc, William Hooker, Henry Grimes, Rashid Bakr, Kali Fasteau and numerous others. He also is a member of the cooperative band TEST. Sabir also performs with Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, William Parker's Inside The Music Of Curtis Mayfield, Earth People, the Downtown Horns and The East 3rd Street Ensemble. He is the leader of The Sabir Mateen Quintet, Shapes Textures & Sound Ensemble, The Omni-Sound, and other bands."

This Weekend at Soundlab... Shock & Awe feat. Teen Heat!

SHOCK & AWE feat. TEEN HEAT!
Friday, June 19, 11pm. Where two (or more) become one….

Islands Announce Third Album

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

On September 22, Anti- will release Vapours, the third full-length from Islands, the fractured pop project from former Unicorn and current Human Highway man Nick Thorburn, aka Nick Diamonds.

In news that is sure to delight Unicorns fans, fellow former Unicorn Jamie Thompson, otherwise known as J'aime Tambeur, has rejoined the group. Thompson recorded Islands' 2006 debut Return to the Sea with Thorburn but left the band for 2007's Arm's Way. And now he's back!

Islands played Soundlab on 04/16/08.

Telegram from Beckett to Joyce Among Treasures of UB Collection

R.D. Pohl, for the Buffalo News, writes:

At first glance, it's so yellowed and ephemeral, you might overlook it--a tiny wisp of postcard size paper locked into a display case of Finnegans Wake miscellany in the "Discovering James Joyce: The University at Buffalo Collection" currently on exhibit through September 13th at the UB Anderson Gallery.

It's a 1929 telegram from a then 23 year old Samuel Beckett to James Joyce clarifying the difference between the infinitive and substantive forms of a Greek phrase that would later find its way into Finnegans Wake. When it caught my eye at the opening reception for the exhibit on Saturday, you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Like many Joyce fans, I knew that the young Beckett had acted as something of a research assistant (see his Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress) to the then 47 year old Joyce, whose Ulysses (1922) was already recognized as the most ambitious, most praised and reviled, most controversial and censored English language novel of the 20th century, a position from which it would not be dislodged in subsequent decades. Seeing evidence of how Beckett's dark, cryptic intellectualism (he once said that wrote most of his later work in French--his second language--to avoid the pitfalls of "style") would come to supplant Joyce's lyricism in the postwar, post Holocaust, postmodern era right in front of you in a display case, however, is enough to take your breath away.

Read the rest here.

Battles' Tyondai Braxton Preps Solo LP

By Ryan Dombal, for Pitchfork:

While we all wait to see what kind of mutant urchin fight music Battles will come up with next, the group's big-haired, chipmunk-on-speed vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Tyondai Braxton is readying a solo album. The LP, Central Market, is out September 15 in the U.S. (Sept. 14 in the UK) courtesy of your friends at Warp.

The record is a follow-up to 2002's History That Has No Effect (Braxton has been peddling his distinct brand of real-time, loop-based weirdness for about a decade) and is set to feature the same mix of electronics, guitar pedals, and polyrhythm percussion that has made him something of a godhead to prog dudes too cool to love Yes. The Wordless Music Orchestra-- who brought Johnny Greenwood's modern classical piece "Popcorn Superhet Receiver" to life last year-- help Braxton realize his skewed vision on the album.

Modern composition grad students, get ready for some ace study music.

Tyondai Braxton performed, with Parts & Labor, at the second Soundlab's soft opening on 10/26/03 (before the stage was installed!). He returned with Battles on 4/02/07

This Week at the Burchfield-Penney... Monsters of Nature and Design

Friday, June 26, 8pm--Big Orbit Gallery presents MONSTERS OF NATURE AND DESIGN 111, a performance by CRAIG SMITH (London, UK) and COLIN BEATTY (Boston, MA) with GARY NICKARD, REINHARD REITZENSTEIN and THE VORES. MND III, which takes place on the grounds of the Bruchfield-Penney Art Center, coincides with the closing of Craig Smith's exhibition, Training Manual for Relational Art, currently on display at Big Orbit Gallery (through June 28).

Craig Smith is a London-based media artist whose art practice and research focuses on the process, aesthetics, and ethics of human-to-human interactivity in contemporary art. Smith’s practice includes the production of photography, performance art, video, writing and lectures. He has been featured at an international range of venues including the PS1MOMA Contemporary Art Institute, The Tate Modern, The George Eastman House, The Hudson River Museum and galleries including Galerie Schuster Photo (Berlin), RARE Art (New York), The Kent Gallery and White Columns (New York).

Colin Beatty is an artist and healthcare consultant—currently, as the US Healthcare Provider Practice for PricewaterhouseCoopers’ and is based in Boston. Colin obtained his M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, additionally holds a Maters degree in Fine Arts from Stanford University, an EMT certification from UCLA medical, was a studio participant of the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York, and has been an exhibiting artist of a range of media including painting, sculpture, installation, ongoing participation in works organized by Craig Smith, and more recently, self production of parafictional performance work in such venues as banking institutions, government healthcare agencies, and national regulatory groups. Colin's hobbies include doing well on standardized tests, thinking, drawing with pencils, and watching Craig find lost keys.

Oneida Live at Primavera Sound Festival, May 30th 2009 (mp3s)

From the WFMU blog:

WFMU dropped anchor on the shores of the Mediterranean last month at the invitation of Barcelona's stunning Primavera Sound Festival, where we joined 80,000 of our new best friends in an ecstatic celebration of music, good livin', good eatin', and futball victory ....

This was Oneida in a beautiful and psychotic dream: surrounded by gigantic weird paranoia-inducing ads for sunglasses, with the skyline of Barcelona behind the band and the Mediterranean Sea behind the audience, plus a killer light show. This was a one-off edition of the band, as core member Fat Bobby couldn't make it. In his temporary stead was founding member Papa Crazee, who some years back amicably departed Oneida to form the equally excellent Oakley Hall. A truly glorious evening.

Spanish Jam/ Each One Teach One. All Arounder. Sheets of Easter. Oneida played Soundlab on 08/03/06 with From Monuments to masses and Sleeping Kings of Iona

Final Call for 200 Guitarists to Perform with Rhys Chatham at Lincoln Center Out of Doors This Summer

"Those interested in being considered for one of the guitar slots for A Crimson Grail should go to Lincoln Center's website to complete an application form: www.lincolncenter.org/wordlessmusic. Returning musicians from 2008 who complete the application process will be guaranteed participation-they will be able to indicate that they participated last summer on the form. The deadline for 2009 applications is June 15; all guitarists will be notified by July 1."

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 perform his seminal no wave-minimalist piece Guitar Trio. Read Chatham's account of the show here.

Erik Fiedlander MP3 "May It Please Heaven"

Erik Friedlander is an American cellist and composer based in New York City. A veteran of NYC's experimental downtown scene, Friedlander has worked in many contexts, but is perhaps best known for his frequent collaborations with saxophonist/composer John Zorn. The LA Times wrote, "Friedlander's performance clearly positions him as the first potential star performer on his instrument." (from Wikipedia). He performed selections from his Maldoror record at Soundlab on 04/19/04. Check out May It Please Heaven here.

Red Sparowes Get New Guitarist

By Black Bubblegum for Brooklyn Vegan:

Red Sparowes have announced a new axe-wielder to their ranks, replacing the departed Josh Graham. The band comments:
I think it's safe to announce our new guitar player is Emma Ruth Rundle. She's an unbelievable guitar prodigy. A better guitarist than any of us. And, she works building and repairing guitars. Pretty awesome.
What role Rundle will play on the bands upcoming full-length is not known, but the band have completed seven demos to be recorded in August for release on an upcoming LP due in 2010. Look for some of those tracks to surface while the band plays a few dates "in Oct/Nov" including a date at the Fun Fun Fun Fest with the previously announced Jesus Lizard. More details about FFF Fest and the Red Sparowes tour are forthcoming. The band plans a full US tour, followed by a European tour in spring 2010.

Red Sparowes next release isn't that LP follow up to Every Heart... though, it's the Toshi Kasai co-produced (with the band) Aphorisms DVD+12" which is due this fall. That EP along with the entire Red Sparowes catalog is now available for download as "pay what you want" (over $2.50 that is) from the band. Check that out here.

Red Sparrowes hit Soundlab with Daughters and Versoma on 08/20/06.

Grizzly Bear Debut at No. 8 With Veckatimest

Posted by Ryan Dombal for Pitchfork:

With the space between major and indie continuing to dwindle, a top 10 indie rock showing on Billboard's Top 200 album chart isn't the kind of seismic event it once was. But still, this week's no. 8 triumph for Grizzly Bear's BNM'd third album, Veckatimest, is kinda like a big deal.
According to Billboard, the record sold 33,000 copies-- 40 percent via downloads and 24 percent via indie stores-- which was good enough to beat Taylor Swift, Rascal Flatts, and almost every other band/artist selling music on this earth. Kudos.

Grizzly Bear opened for Lichens and Soft Circle at Soundlab on 11/06/05.

The National, Breeders, My Brightest Diamond Team Up for Multimedia Piece

Posted by Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

Aaron and Bryce Dessner, the guitarist twins from the National, are not content to rest easy after jointly producing the twin triumphs of the Dark Was the Night album and concert. Come October, they'll present a brand-new multimedia piece called The Long Count at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
The piece, done in collaboration with visual artist Matthew Ritchie, will include guest vocals from the Breeders' Kim and Kelley Deal (also twins!), My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden, and the National's own Matt Berninger. The Dessners will perform it with a 12-piece chamber orchestra. And it sounds really cool.
BAM commissioned the piece as part of its Next Wave art festival, and the Dessners will perform it on October 28, 30, and 31. The Long Count somehow involves both a Mayan creation myth and the 1976 World Series. Here's how the Next Wave press kit describes it:

"Jointly conceived by the collaborators as a one-hour immersive multimedia experience exploring ideas of symmetry and creation, The Long Count weaves together disparate themes ranging from the hero twins of the Popul Vuh (a Mayan creation myth) to the epic 1976 World Series victory of the Cincinnati Reds over the New York Yankees (which occurred in the year of the Cincinnati-born Dessners' birth).

"Ritchie's large-scale sculptural environment frames a one-hour animated film made from the artist's intricate, biomorphic drawings. An evocative, complex score and song cycle composed and performed by the Dessners and a twelve-member chamber orchestra will be illuminated and sung by guest artists."

Ritchie's website doesn't offer much more in the way of details, but it does include this image, which is like whoa.

So, uh, yeah. Sign us up.

The National performed at Big Orbit Gallery on 5/30/01 with Mia Doi Todd and Clogs. My Brightest Diamond visited Soundlab on 11/02/08.

Mount Eerie Preps "Black Metal" Album

Pitchfork reports:

The music Phil Elverum has made over the years hasn't been that far removed from that of, say, Xasthur. The man behind the Microphones and Mount Eerie shares a few predilections with underground black metal: creeped-out lo-fi atmospherics, otherworldly despair, the sense that we're dealing with a fragile loner desperate to keep the rest of the world out. Doesn't hurt that the man's last name sounds like some Lord of the Rings sub-species, either.

Last year, Elverum made the connection a little more concrete with his Black Wooden Ceiling Opening EP, the first release where he explicitly experimented with black metal dynamics. The result, especially the bottomlessly sad opener "Appetite", made for some one of the most hypnotically wracked music of Elverum's career.

On August 18, Elverum will blow that experiment out to album length when P.W. Elverum & Sun releases Mount Eerie's Wind's Poem, which is being touted as his "black metal album." Elverum recorded the album himself in various locations around his hometown of Anacortes, Washington. Nick Krgovich of No Kids dropped by to add some harmonies, but as with most Microphones/Mount Eerie releases, this is basically all Elverum here.
The album will be available on CD, digital download, or a clear vinyl double LP in "a gatefold jacket with bronze foil stamping and a pull out lyric poster". One of those options sounds slightly cooler than the others.

When Mount Eerie tours this autumn, Elverum will bring a full band with him, including two drummers. A press release promises gongs and walls of amps. This is going to rule.

Mt Eerie played Soundlab on 10/31/07, with Privacy and Al Larsen.

Book Review: "Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen," by David Stubbs

From the Signal to Noise blog:

David Stubbs is a wide-ranging cultural commentator; he writes about sports, film, and literature as well as music. Stubbs' book Fear of Music discusses the perception gap between modern art and modern music. Why is it that collectors will shell out millions of dollars for avant-garde visual art while avante-garde music is still so widely derided?

The old saw regarding the issue of art vs. music appreciation is that time is the deciding factor. Stubbs acknowledges the potency of this argument; as he points out, one can look at the Rothko Room for five minutes and then head off to a café, but many Stockhausen works requires hours of a listener's time. But the author also crafts a persuasive case for consumer consumption of art objects as increasing their palatability with the public. With no easy way to create coveted musical artifacts in this era of file-sharing and digital distribution, it's easy to see music being increasingly thought by the masses of as free, disposable, and even 'unnecessary.” All the while, visual artists are able to monetize their wares with, in some cases, alarming audacity. Stubbs is able to negotiate the delicate issues of the duality between visual and performing arts with deft, knowledgeable, and subtle commentary.

Fear of Music also serves as an excellent primer on music outside the mainstream. At 135 pages, the appearance of this slender volume is deceiving. Stubbs covers a tremendous amount of musical terrain, eloquently expounding on such varied subjects as post-punk, futurism, Dada, Sun Ra, free jazz, Derek Bailey, and Webern. Indeed, the book is an excellent primer for anyone looking to take a subscription to avant-garde music journal The Wire, a periodical to which Stubbs frequently contributes. Indeed, Fear of Music is apt to bring more than a few music lovers further outside the mainstream in their listening habits.

This Week at Sugar City: Put Your Record On

Tuesday June 16 9-11pm @ Sugar City 19 Wadsworth.

Put your records on. A monthly community listening party. Bring your favorite records and play us all a song! We will be making a mix of the music we play. Bring a CD or cassette if you’d like a copy. There will be refreshments too! Donations welcome to keep Sugar City sweet.

Paul Sharits Video Interview with Gerard O'Grady (1976)

1976 Interview with Gerard O'Grady
28 minutes.
From the series Film-Makers, WNED Buffalo.
Via Ubuweb.

This Week at Soundlab... Disco Bisquits Afterparty

June 4, 9pm--The Official Disco Bisquits Thurs in the Square Afterparty feat. Pnuma Trio, Fourem (live electro-glitch-pop), Big Basha (dubstep). Discounted advance tickets available at the Biscuits merch booth at The Square!

Dynamic, scene-setting electronica youngsters The Pnuma Trio have been known for their forward-thinking compositions and moving, powerful improvisations since their explosion onto the scene in 2004. Not so young anymore, Ben Hazelgrove, Alex Botwin, and Lane Shaw are proud to call STS9's very hot 1320 Records their new home as they release their debut studio album, 'Character'. With a defined, glitch-informed electro/hip-hop feel and all the dynamic energy of their DJ-killing live show, this new album represents a significantly evolved version of Pnuma's futuristic sound; tighter, more focused, and higher resolution. The long synth solos have been replaced by careful layering; instead of building each song to it's climax the band percolates on hot remixed urban ideas, letting the production create the spacious atmosphere. Self-produced by the band and sporting a special bonus track that features Crown City Rockers MC Rashaan Ahmad, 'Character' is ready to take the scene by storm with it's vast, open feel and deep 808-driven grooves. The rest of the world can only watch and listen as these talented artists come of age and discover the depth of their 'Character'. Download the new album now from 1320records.com and hear the future as it happens!

http://www.myspace.com/pnumatrio
http://www.pnumatrio.com

This Week at Soundlab... DJ Sniff & Keir Neuringer

Tuesday, June 2, 9pm--DJ Sniff & Keir Neuringer Turntablist/Sax Duo with short opening sets by Novelist and the Voidologists

DJ Sniff & Keir Neuringer share a passion for expanding their instruments beyond cultural preconceptions & musical conventions. In their duo they access, examine, cross-reference & play with complimentary & contrasting techniques & artefacts from their musical histories. Their performances move sometimes capriciously, other times unnoticeably between elements of free jazz, hip hop, & ambient plunderphonics, placing turntable & saxophone virtuosity amidst vinyl & cassette tape playback, looping & scratching in the context of custom hardware & software & old guitar pedals. As a duo, DJ Sniff & Keir Neuringer involve themselves in a new musical paradigm free from the constraints of genre, academia, or commerce.

http://keirneuringer.com/djsniff.html
http://djsniff.com
http://keirneuringer.com/