Media Study Buffalo Celebrates 35 Years

May 1-3, 2009 (Friday - Sunday), 112 Center for the Arts, University at Buffalo.

During a period when there was not yet any university which was explicitly devoted to media art, at the same time as making its theoretical analysis a component of the curriculum, Gerald O'Grady founded the Department of Media Study at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1973. The entire spectrum of media art—ranging from photographic images to slide installations, from music to film and video performances, from film to film installations, from videotape to video environments, and from computer graphics to interactive installations—was investigated, made a reality, and taught about in the 1970s and 80s, by the structuralist avant-garde film makers Hollis Frampton, Tony Conrad, and Paul Sharits; the documentary film maker James Blue; and the legendary video artists Steina and Woody Vasulka, as well as Peter Weibel—all of whom have subsequently been canonized. In the course of this process, media's role in society [especially that of television] and their participatory possibilities were recognized and used for artistic, and also partly politically democratic, projects. All Buffalo faculty members were not only practicing artists, but also capable of theoretically accompanying the development of and issues around their media, in lectures, essays, and publications. The Department of Media Study's significance for the media era is therefore comparable to that of other historical art schools such as the Bauhaus, WChUTEMAS in Moscow, and Black Mountain College in North Carolina. The title MindFrames indicates that during this time [the 1970s and 80s] and in this place [Buffalo], a frame of reference for media art was established. During that period, masterpieces were produced—from perceptual issues to machine aesthetics, from word games to mathematical structures—which provided the horizon and set the standards for media discourse's visual codes.

Excerpt from text accompanying MindFrames: Media Study at Buffalo 1973-1990, a 2006-07 exhibition showcasing the department. For a complete schedule click here.

This Week at Squeaky Wheel (Art-Improv)

5/1--Get Wired!: Circuit Bending Extravaganza feat Matt Kordrupel and his interactive multimedia installation Thunder Drums.

Get ready for a lively night of experimental noise, rhythmically glitching video signals and an array of squealing, screeching circuit bent toys. The event will be an informal concert/demonstration/jam session featuring circuit-bent instruments and devices developed during Squeaky Wheel's circuit bending workshop. If you have a bent instrument you'd like to show, bring it along! Also on view will be Thunder Drums, a new interactive multimedia installation by Medaille Visual Digital Arts student, Matt Kordupel, and installation art from "Can't Work Like This," featuring University at Buffalo Artists: Kyle Butler, Jake Cassel, Frederick Wright Jones, and Dayana Fernandez.

Peter Saville's Erotic House of Pop

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

legendary Joy Division album artist, designer, and photographer Peter Saville is currently shooting some [porn] in real time, which you can stream live on the internet even as I write this. The explanation? "As backdrop to an editorial story for July 2009 Wallpaper* magazine, Peter Saville's febrile imagination constructs an imaginary 'Erotic House' of Pop perversity, sexualising an entire post-modern environment and fetishising furniture, fashion and flesh alike." Right. At the moment, a women in a full bodysuit of silver lame is draping herself over what appears to be an extremely futuristic chair--it looks not unlike some combination of different Star Wars helmets.

Joy Division bassist Peter Hook played a memorable 2 hour "New Order/Joy Division" DJ set at Soundlab on 10/01/05 with DJs Mark Webb, Thee Donnie Shaft andSnackboy. Click here to check out the shoot.

Rare Harold Arlen/Truman Capote Recording - Listen to "Madame Tango's Particular Tango"

By Colin Dobrowski for the Buffalo News Artsbeat:

This just in (thanks to Ed Cardoni of Hallwalls): Kritzerland, a small record and book publishing company, is reissuing a 1968 recording of "House of Flowers," the ill-fated musical by Truman Capote and Harold Arlen. While the original Broadway cast recording from 1958 is available on iTunes and elsewhere, Capote and Arlen thought this particular revival of the show far superior to the original.

Buffalo-born Arlen, of course, is a beloved local figure responsible for some of the better known musical standards of the 20th century -- "The Wizard of Oz," for starters. A release from the company notes that the recording contains updated arrangements of the show's numbers by Joe Raposo which were "much funkier and much more in tune with the Caribbean flavor of the score."

Listen here.

Black Moth Super Rainbow Prepares New Album Produced by Dave Fridmann

By Mike Shanley for Pittsburgh City Paper:

Even as Black Moth Super Rainbow has emerged as a national touring act, a reputation for being press-shy and mysterious has clung to the local keyboard-based psychedelic sextet. It's finally time to set the record straight. "We never got interview requests, and over time, people have turned that into [the idea that we're] not granting interviews," says BMSR figurehead Tobacco (a.k.a. Tom Fec). "Critics can say we've cultivated a mystique and they've seen it all before, but our mystique was mostly cultivated for us by the disconnect in public perception and reality."

Nevertheless, he and his bandmates aren't about to take the meet-and-greets route either. Tobacco still conducts interviews via e-mail; face-to-face meetings could take the focus off the main reason for the interview -- the music. "I didn't get into music because I wanted to talk about myself or have my picture taken," he says. "There's too much emphasis on the personalities behind music. All I want is for people to listen to this stuff and have it mean whatever they want it to mean. I made it, but it's not about me."

BMSR performed at Soundlab with Octopus Project and Besnyo on June 18, 2006. Read more about their work with legendary Cassadaga Producer Dave Fridmann (Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, MGMT) here.

SoHo vs. Disco, 1975: Vince Aletti's The Disco Files 1973-78: New York's Underground, Week By Week

This book has nothing to do with Buffalo but as a collection of primary artifacts from a critical time in the development of dance culture, it sounds wildly interesting. By Zach Baron from the Village Voice's Sounds of the City blog:

Vince Aletti, recently a long-serving editor at this paper, was an early and avid chronicler of the rise of disco in New York City in the early, mid, and late 1970s. In articles like the one above, "SoHo vs. Disco," from the June 16, 1975 Village Voice, Aletti was one of the first to write about characters like David Mancuso and his now much-rhapsodized-about club, the Loft. He authored the supposed first piece ever on disco, in 1973, in Rolling Stone, and throughout the decade he'd supplement his reporting for the Voice with incredibly detailed, minutiae-filled pieces for Record World and other outlets. Now, Zoilus brings the news that DJhistory.com is bringing out a book, called The Disco Files 1973-78: New York's Underground, Week By Week, which reprints Aletti's dispatches from the era, including, apparently, reviews of over 2000 records. There are also replicas of what look to be drink tickets, flyers, invites, actual scans of 45s, and scores of playlists from contemporary DJs. One random one from Larry Levan, from some night at 84 King Street: "Blood and Honey," by Amanda Lear; "Bourgie Bourgie," by Ashford & Simpson; "Deeper" by New Birth; "I Got to Have Your Love," by Fantastic Four; "I'm Here Again," by Thelma Houston; "Locked in This Position," by Barbara Mason and Bunny Sigler; "Say You Will," by Eddie Henderson; "Speak Well," by Philly USA; and "Your Love Is So Good For Me," by Diana Ross. Find the book and a good handful of free PDFed pages at DJhistory.com.

Migrating Media: Upstate Preservation Network Project Launch

From the press release:

Buffalo, New York is the new home of a major media arts preservation initiative, Migrating Media: Upstate Preservation Network. This Friday, April 24th at 8pm, Squeaky Wheel/Buffalo Media Resources will host a public launch of this newly established digitization project that will rescue historic analog video collections. Thousands of fragile videotapes, currently in grave risk of complete decay, will not only be saved but made accessible to audiences for the first time in years. A screening of newly digitized works, which demonstrate the unique video art history of Upstate and Western New York, will follow a description of the project and an overview of the capabilities of newly donated digital migration equipment. The screening will feature works produced during residencies at the Experimental Television Center, previously preserved by the Standby Program (NYC), including works by Gary Hill, Barbara Hammer, Matthew Schlanger, Peer Bode, Connie Coleman and Alan Powell.

Migrating Media was established to offer non-profit arts and cultural organizations in Upstate New York a forward-looking and efficient means to digitize significant older video collections for preservation and access for generations to come. A new partnership project of Squeaky Wheel, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, and the Experimental Television Center (Owego, New York), Migrating Media has been made possible by a generous donation of a SAMMA Solo System by Jim Lindner, founder of Media Matters and SAMMA Systems. Migrating Media has also received additional support from the New York State Council on the Arts Technical Assistance Program and RTI, Inc. For more information, please contact Hallwalls' Media Arts Director Carolyn Tennant (carolyn@hallwalls.org)

Friday April 24th 2009 - 8pm, Squeaky Wheel, 712 Main St. $6 general/$4 members. Proceeds benefit the project.

Girl Talk Experimenting With Actual Songs For Next Album

By Gary Graff for Billboard:

Songs are what Gregg Gillis -- aka mash-up master Girl Talk -- is honing in on as he considers a new direction for the follow-up to 2008's lauded "Feed the Animals."

"I'm experimenting with different structures and different ideas," Gillis told Billboard.com during a conference call to advance his performance at this year's Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. "I'm interested in working on individual songs -- kind of in the style I've been doing, but with actual repetition as opposed to linear structure and stuff like that, some elements with a verse-and-chorus sort of structure as opposed to going through 50 minutes of change-ups the entire time. I want to evolve and keep refining."

Read more here.

Girl Talk performed at the original Soundlab space (and slept on my floor with roughly 100 Pittsburgh musicians from Pittsburgh's emerging electronic/experimental scene: Clockworm, Manherringbone, Colongib, My Boyfriend the Pilot, Powder French, and Xanoptiocon) on 07/06/02 as part of the Circuits of Steel tour. He returned to Buffalo to play the current Soundlab on Friday the 13th of April, 2007. By that time he was super famous and the show sold out in 2 seconds, disappointing the hordes hanging out in the park waiting to get inside.

Vampire Weekenders Prepping Second Album, Side Project With Ra Ra Riot

Posted to Stereogum by Amrit:

Overlapping waves of hype and backlash behind them, Vampire Weekend have moved on to the business of making new music. Except that they been had making new music since the halcyon Vampire Weekend days. We first heard "White Sky" on that little record's support tour, and again recently on Fallon. Now Ezra's talking about the VW followup to EW.com, saying that scarf-loving keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij will once again produce the sessions.

Read more here.
Vampire Weekend played Soundlab the day before they became huge. Unfortunately, I can't seem to locate the actual date. I'll update if I do.

Found Magazine Impresario Davy Rothbart Performs at Medaille on April 25

By Brett Miller for Artvoice:

It’s amazing what you can find fluttering in the wind, sitting on top of a bar, or stuck to your car windshield. Davy Rothbart is a scruffy 27-year-old with a hint of mischief that he does not try to hide. One day while walking in Michigan, he came across a note pasted to his car window: “I hate you, I hate you, page me later…” It was addressed to someone else.

How peculiar, Rothbart thought, that someone could hold so much anger yet so much hope at the same time. This sparked Rothbart’s idea for Found magazine, a compilation of postcards, notes, and other anonymous blurbs that people wrote and somehow got into Rothbart’s hands. When he told a friend about the note on his windshield, more people came forward with napkins, Post-It notes, lost love letters, and, well you get the idea…and off to Kinko’s went the crew. They made a hundred copies to start, but with a little push from a Kinko’s employee, they ended up walking out of the store with 800 copies.

Read more here.

Ian Loves Nina: a Film Fest Love Story

Posted by Ryan Dombal for Pitchfork News:

Fugazi's Ian MacKaye was approached by the Maryland Film Festival to pick and host a movie during the upcoming movie marathon. And the hardcore pioneer's choice may surprise you: MacKaye will introduce the 1992 French doc Nina Simone: La Légende and discuss it with the audience afterwards on May 9 at 4 p.m. at Baltimore's Charles Theatre.

If You Found a CD-R with Islands MP3s on NYC's C Train Tuesday, Please Smash It With a Hammer Immediately

By Camille Dodero for the Village Voice's Sounds of the City:

Ah, poor Nick Thorburn. In an era when your own mom would just as soon leak your record for ten bucks and a free YouSendIt upgrade, the Islands frontman left an entire data CD of the band's new record, unmastered, on the C Train Tuesday. "W tee eff is wrong w me?" he lamented via Twitter. Even more unfortunate, he'd originally (and perhaps, a little paranoid-seeming initially) titled the MP3s "Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb" to thwart prospective thieves, but changed the ID tags to "Islands" earlier that day. Thorburn's manager, fortunately, took it well: "He sez, 'At least it wasn't on the L train.'"

If you do find this record and leak it, the Hipster Grifter will come in your sleep and steal your iPhone.

Islands played Soundlab on 4/16/08.

Runway 2.0: the Romance of Urban Decay

By Susan Martin for the Buffalo News:

It has the buzz of New York Fashion Week –as well as the innovation, entertainment, drama and even some big names.

Runway 2.0 comes to the Burchfield Penney Art Center on Saturday with two events that merge the fashion and art worlds.

It’s all part of a collaboration between the Buffalo State College fashion department and the Burchfield Penney, where the shows will be staged in the East Gallery.

Read more here. The official Runway afterparty will be hosted by Shock and Awe at Soundlab Saturday, April 25 at 11pm.

FOR SALE: A Pop-Up Souvenir Shop

From Buffalo Rising:

According to local artist Patricia Schraven, the idea behind "FOR SALE" found its roots in similar events happening in other cities.

This is a call-to-work for artists, wherein participants are asked to re-think the idea of the souvenir, and create NEW objects to be shown in a temporary POP-UP storefront in the City of Buffalo. "FOR SALE" will be a one-off exhibition in late June of 2009. Objects must be produced in multiples. Any medium is acceptable and encouraged.

The final show will be held in late June at Western New York Book Arts Center (WNYBAC), the home of Western New York Book Arts Collaborative. There will be an opening event, and the store will remain open for a few days following.

Read more here.

Terry Riley's In C turns 45 - Download the Score!

From Pitchfork news:

This Friday, April 24, Carnegie Hall will host a concert celebrating the 45th anniversary of Terry Riley's landmark experimental work In C. The National's Bryce Dessner will join a lineup of out-music royalty that includes Philip Glass, the Kronos Quartet, Morton Subotnick, Trevor Dunn, So Percussion, and Riley himself to perform the work.

The National Performed at Big Orbit Gallery with Mia Doi Todd and The Clogs on 5/30/01. Trevor Dunn has visited Soundlab twice, on 10/11/05 and 2/15/07, with Shelley Burgon. Phillip Glass, the Kronos Quartet, Morton Subotnick and of course Terry Riley have each appeared in Buffalo several times, usually in association with the UB Music Department. The original recorded version of In C was recorded with members of the Creative Associates at UB in 1968, several members of which will also participate in the Carnegie Hall event.

Listen to the Buffalo performance here, or download the score and perform it yourself.

Torn Space Theater, in association with the ICTC, presents Samuel Beckett's "Endwords"

From the press release:

The Beckett Estate has granted exclusive rights for a revival of the 1990 production of *ENDWORDS*, adapted by Vincent & Chris ONeill from the works of Samuel Beckett. This performance which premiered at Buffalo's Franklin Street Theater (now the Chop House!) and New York City's Irish Repertory Theatre will again be directed by Vincent ONeill, Artistic Director of Buffalo's Irish Classical Theatre Company and performed by actor David Oliver.

In 1990 the original rights to perform this Beckett compilation, *ENDWORDS*, was granted to the O'Neill brothers by Barney Rosset, creator of the magazine Evergreen Review which first published the seminal Beat writers of the '50s. He was owner of Grove Press which published Beckett, Genet, Pinter and Ionesco thus being the first to introduce these essential writers to the American consciousness. It was Rosset who won a legal battle to publish the uncensored version of D. H. Lawrences *LADY CHATTERLEYS LOVER* in the United States, and in 1964, won Supreme Court affirmation to publish Henry Miller's *TROPIC OF CANCER.* A true pioneer for free speech and First Amendment rights, Barney still lives in New York and has given his blessing to this revival of *ENDWORDS.*

April 23rd, 24th, 25th - May 1st & 2nd, 8th & 9th, 15th, 16th, & 17th @ 8:00. Adam Mickiewicz Dramatic Circle, 612 Fillmore Avenue, south of Broadway at Paderewski. General Admission: $20.00 Students: $12.00. Reservations: 812-5733

Pitchfork 5-10-15-20: Dan Deacon Discusses the Musical Loves of His Life

Welcome to 5-10-15-20, a new feature in Pitchfork News. In 5-10-15-20, we talk to artists about the music they loved at five-year interval points in their lives. Maybe we'll get a detailed roadmap of how their tastes and passions helped make them who they are. Maybe we'll just learn that they really liked hearing the "G.I. Joe" theme song over and over when they were kids. Either way, it'll be fun.

Dan Deacon played Soundlab on 04/01/05 with Height w/Bow and Chugga Chugga. Read the experimental pop mastermind's thoughts on Ghostbusters, They Might Be Giants, and Philip Glass here.

YouTube Symphony

From the Buffalo News Arts Beat, by Mary Kunz Goldman:

The YouTube Symphony, a herd of talented musicians rounded up on YouTube starting last December, made its debut Wednesday at Carnegie Hall. Conducted by former Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra music director Michael Tilson Thomas, the intrepid band played music including the vivacious last movement of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, the March from Berlioz's "Damnation of Faust," and a new "Eroica" Symphony by the contemporary composer Tan Dun.

People are buzzing about it and not all of the buzz is favorable. Greg Sandow, who writes for the Wall Street Journal, dissects the concert here. His point seems to be that the orchestra did not play all that well and any substance, in any case, was drowned out by all the hype. The New York Times looked more on the bright side. You can read about a YouTube Symphony rehearsal on the paper's blog (also called Artsbeat, like ours). And the paper's music critic, Anthony Tommasini, reviews the concert here. He is fairly favorable though he does write that he wishes the concert had been more substantive and less gimmicky. As you can tell from the picture above, it was full of high-tech visuals.

Read more here.

Ian Svenonius on Sam Cooke, Kanye West, and His New Band, Chain and the Gang

From the Village Voice Sounds of the City blog, by Evan Hanlon:

Ian Svenonius has come a long way since Sassy Magazine first dubbed him the "Sassiest Boy in America" in 1991. The D.C. singer has never been anything less than political to the extreme: Nation of Ulysses had its own ministry of information, the Make-Up employed a new "liberation theology" for its gospel yeh-yeh style, and Weird War took aim at the fascist underpinnings of corporate rock. In 2006, Svenonius published The Psychic Soviet, a little pink book of 19 essays designed to "clear up much of the confusion regarding events of the last millennium--artistic, geo-political, philosophical, et al." His latest project, Chain and the Gang, approximates the down-n-out prison blues of the chain gang, infused with the jazz hooks typical of his previous bands. Their first record, Down With Liberty...Up With Chains, is out now on K Records. Svenonius and company are currently touring; they stop at the Market Hotel on April 26. We caught up with the band just before they broke out of Olympia, WA, where Svenonious was in town--he otherwise remains based in DC--tuning up for tour.

Chain and the Gang (feat. Ian Svenonius) with The Hive Dwellers (feat. Calvin Johnson) & Mahjongg play Soundlab Apr 25 for an EARLY SHOW at 7:00 PM. Advance tickets available at www.ticketweb.com

FRAMPTONIA! this Weekend at UB

That's Hollis, not Peter Frampton, by the way. Check out:

FRAMPTONIA! Buffalo’s two part screening series celebrating Hollis Frampton, a legendary instructor in the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo. On April 24th at 5pm, we will be screening the newly restored prints of Hollis Frampton’s seven part Hapax Legomena followed by a presentation by Professor Michael Zryd from York University. The next day, April 25 at 7pm, we’ll be hosting the already iconic film’s of David Gatten; he’ll present his epic series The Secret History of the Dividing Line.

Screenings will be held Center for the Arts, Room 112 University at Buffalo’s North Campus.

Magnificent Ruins of Buffalo

Goodbye 20th Century: Memorial Auditorium 4/16/09

Lord Have Merce: Sonic Youth Plays Merce Cunningham’s 90th Birthday Bash (NYC)

By Joshua David Stein for New York Press:

Sonic Youth wouldn't seem like a good birthday party band for most 90-year-olds. But Merce Cunningham isn’t your average nonagenarian. He doesn’t go in for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and pudding. But what more would you expect from the man who continually reaffirms his relevance as the most important modern dance choreographer since Martha Graham?

For his 90th birthday, Merce has invited some friends—among them Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth—to drop by BAM for three days from April 16 to 19 for a jam, and maybe some tea and biscuits too.

Also stopping by: Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and mixed-media sound composer Takehisa Kosugi. Oh, and of course, the Merce Cunningham Company dancers.The event also functions as the pre miere of Nearly Ninety. It’s 89 minutes long. Ol’ Merce is pretty funny for an old guy. Read more here.

Sonic Youth has performed in Buffalo 3 times (not counting individual members' solo appearances and performances as part of Glenn Branca's band), on: 6/22/86 at the Polish Cadets hall; 10/16/92 at Buffalo State College's Houston Gym; and 8/7/04 at the Towne Ballroom.

Merce Cunningham danced twice as part of the legendary Buffalo Festival of the Arts in 1968. On March 10 the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performed Walkaround Time with music by David Behrman and more memorably, on March 9, the company performed RainForest, with music by David Tudor, set design by Andy Warhol and costumes by Jasper Johns.

I was unable to find a clip of this performance online, although it is one of the most interesting artifacts in the Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol's Work show, which I saw at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in January. Warhol Live will be presented at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh June 10 to September 15, 2009, and although I found the show somewhat problematic overall, it's always good to visit the Warhol Museum and Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, and this show is as good a reason to do so as any.

Infringement Fest Call for Applications

Every summer, the streets of Buffalo come alive with scores of events by local and visiting theater and dance companies, puppeteers, media artists, poets, comedians, musicians, cabaret acts, virtual reality designers, and miscellaneous insurrectionists. The annual *Buffalo Infringement Festival* provides artists and audiences of all backgrounds the chance to come together, take chances, push boundaries, and explore uncharted territory because *exciting art can happen anywhere, anytime, without a blockbuster budget*. (Or any budget at all, for that matter.)

The Buffalo Infringement Festival is a non-profit-driven, non-hierarchical grassroots endeavor bringing together a broad range of eclectic, independent, experimental, and controversial art of all forms. Visual, theatrical, performing, musical, and media arts are all welcome here. "It's the stone soup of festivals, with bizarre ingredients indeed." Claims BIF Music Coordinator Curt Rotterdam.

In keeping with it's four-years of tradition, the Buffalo Infringement Festival is proud to announce applications for the 2009 festival available online at: http:www.infringebuffalo.org .

The application is free and no artists will be refused.

Deadline for the 2009 festival is May 15th. For further information:
716-602-2464 or merlinsbooking@gmail.com.

Julian Montague: Stray Shopping Cart Q&A

The earliest incarnation of Julian Montague's super popular Stray Shopping Cart Project was a spread in the winter/spring 2000 issue of Basta! (vol 2, no 2) titled: "Transient Urban Structures / A set of terms and definitions presented in the interest of establishing a system of classification to aid in the further investigation and documentation of the stray shopping cart phenomenon in northern and western Buffalo Proper." The first Shopping Cart Project installation was in the gallery at the original Soundlab in 2002 (the title of which was "The Nomadic Urban Architecture of Buffalo, New York (A Taxonomy of Stray Shopping Carts). If you are not familiar with the project, its numerous gallery incarnations or Julian's book, you can check it all out here. More recently, the blog Found Clothing.com did a short Q&A with Julian about it here. There is another recent interview at Trap Door Sun.com.

Cindy Sherman's Early Super-8 film "Doll Clothes"

From UbuWeb:

One of the first Cindy Sherman super-8 film, "Doll Clothes" has not been viewed since 1975, the year it was made (when Sherman was still a student at Buffalo State College). It comically crosses Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase with animated paper dolls in a sly, funny and clever precursor to the concerns that became signature elements in Sherman's remarkable body of photographic work.

"Sherman's 1975 animated short Doll Clothes, is among the pieces that bring Sherman's early exploration of gender and identity into focus." -- Paul Ha and Catherine Morris

C. Spencer Yeh - Audio Works (2005-2009)

Among April's UbuWeb offerings is an archive of sound and music works from C. Spencer Yeh, who performed as Burning Star Core in Buffalo first at Kitchen Distribution and second as part of Soundlab's Tonight Let's All Make Love in Buffalo festival in July of 2005:

Yeh is active both as a solo and collaborative artist, as well as with his primary project, Burning Star Core. As an improviser, Yeh is focused on developing a personal vocabulary using violin, voice, and electronics. As a sound artist/composer, Yeh works with all aspects available surrounding a work, aurally and physically, as elements key to the cumulative experience. He is concerned not only with the sensual aspects of 'sound organization,' but the gestural qualities as well. Yeh has collaborated with a deep and ever-growing list of artists and groups, including Tony Conrad, New Humans with Vito Acconci, Evan Parker, Thurston Moore, Amy Granat with Jutta Koether, Justin Lieberman, Don Dietrich and Ben Hall (as The New Monuments), Prurient and Jandek. Included here are several full-length albums, assorted singles and radio works, featuring solo and collaborative works.

"Poet-Publishers: A Contemporary Small Press Symposium" Schedule of Events

From the Just Buffalo email update:

04.19.09
Poetics Plus @ UB
Small Press Symposium: Poetry Reading
Anna Moschovakis, Jay Millar, Kyle Schlesinger & Richard Owens
Poetry Reading
Sunday, April 19, 8:00 PM
Karpeles Manuscript Library, 453 Porter

04.20.09
Poetics Plus @ UB
Small Press Symposium: Poetry Reading
UB Poetry Collection
420 Capen Hall, North Campus

Schedule:
10:00-10:45: KEYNOTE: CHARLES ALEXANDER (Editor, Chax Press)
Between Poetics, the Poetics of Between, Pressing Between

11:00-1:00: INTERSTITIAL PRACTICES: A POET-PUBLISHERS ROUNDTABLEˇ
Joel Brenden (The Enthusiast), Robert Dewhurst (Satellite Television), Geoffrey Gatza (BlazeVOX), David Hadbawnik (Kadar Koli | Hadbenicht Press), Margaret Konkol (Small Press in the Archive Series), Aaron Lowinger and Jessica Smith (House Press), Edric Mesmer (Yellow Edenwald Field), Douglas Manson (Little Scratch Pad), Richard Owens (Damn the Caesars | Punch Press), Andrew Rippeon (P-Queue | Queue Editions), Andrea Strudensky (Broke).

2:00-2:45: KEYNOTE: MICHAEL BASINSKI (Curator, UB Poetry Collection)
"Exploration and Acquisition: Collecting All of Small Press Poetry"

3:00-5:00: RETHINKING POESIS: MAKING | REMARKING | RESPONDING

"Five Micro-Ecologies: A Presentation of 5 Portable-Press at Yo-Yo Labs Chapbooks," Brenda Iijima (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs)

"__________," Jay MillAr (Bookthug)

" the temptations of anti-sustainability, or wherefore survival?," Anna Moschovakis (Ugly Duckling)

"Ragged Edges," Kyle Schlesinger (Cuneiform Press)

MONDAY EVENING READING
THE KARPELES MANUSCRIPT MUSEUM
453 Porter Ave, Buffalo

8:00PM: Poetry readings by Charles Alexander, Michael Basinski, Brenda Iijima and Andrew Rippeon

Sound Poet Jean-Pierre Bobillot Reads at Hallwalls Thurs 4/16

Thursday, April 16, 2009 @ 8:00 PM, Hallwalls Cinema:

Jean-Pierre Bobillot is a sound poet ("Poëte bruyant non-métricien tendance pro-Dada”) in the tradition of the French sound poets Chopin and Heidsieck. He teaches at the University of Grenoble and is the author of several studies including Trois essais sur la poésie littérale, Al Dante (2003) and Rimbaud : le meurtre d’Orphée, Champion (2004) as well as poetry books and audio productions: Eff&,mes Rides [+ CD], L’Atelier de l’Agneau (2005), Y a-t-il un Poème dans le Recueil ?, Voix (2008)

Cecil Taylor's Most Recent Recording Free mp3

From Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel's Freelance Urban Improvisation:

Pianist Cecil Taylor, live at the Village Vanguard from July 2008 with drummer Tony Oxley, was recorded for a 2-lp vinyl album titled Ailanthus/Alitssima, and one cut of it is being offered as an MP3 for a limited time, free, by the website Destination-out.com.

Word is only 475 copies of the lp will be sold -- details on that at Triple Point Records.

Cecil Taylor plays Hallwalls April 18.

The Sea Performs Organ Architecture

From oddmusic.com, via the Arthur mag blog:

The musical Sea Organ (morske orgulje) is located on the shores of Zadar, Croatia, and is the world’s first musical pipe organs that is played by the sea. Simple and elegant steps, carved in white stone, were built on the quayside. Underneath, there are 35 musically tuned tubes with whistle openings on the sidewalk. The movement of the sea pushes air through, and – depending on the size and velocity of the wave – musical chords are played. The waves create random harmonic sounds.
This masterpiece of acoustics and architecture was created by expert Dalmatian stone carvers and architect Nikola Basic in 2005, who recently received the European Prize for Urban Public Space for this project. Many tourists come to listen to this unique aerophone, and enjoy unforgettable sunsets with a view of nearby islands. Famed director Alfred Hitchcock said that the most beautiful sunset in the world can be seen from precisely this spot on the Zadar quay. That was how he described it after his visit to Zadar, a visit he remembered throughout his life by the meeting of the sinking sun and the sea.

Click here for more info and sound files.

Dirty Projectors Collaborate with Bjork, Post New Track Online

Holy cow! Indie pop superstar Bjork will perform a suite of new music composed for her by David Longstreth of The Dirty Projectors at a benefit for The Housing Works Bookstore in New York on May 8. The suite, written for five voices, will pair Björk with the Projectors (Dave Longstreth, Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian, and Haley Dekle). I remember the Dirty Pros playing for something like 5 people at Soundlab back in June 2005 (they returned to play much more successful shows 2 more times, most memorably with Anticon indie rock wordsmith Why?). Footage of the original show can be found at the Soundlab Events Archive page, or you can hear what they're up to now by listening to "Stillness is the Move," the first single from the Dirty Projectors' forthcoming album, Bitte Orca.

Quiet Again: USA is a Monster Break Up

From a post by Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

Brooklyn noise-monster duo the USA Is a Monster are calling it quits, not for the first time, according to Brooklyn Vegan. They'll play their final show on May 9 at Brooklyn's Market Hotel.

USA is a Monster played Soundlab in 2007.

Microcosm DIY Skill-Shares Tour Visits Sugar City 4/18

From the press release:

Microcosm Publishing is heading out on tour! This time around we're sending some of our authors and artists to teach you a little somethin' (and hopefully entertain you in the meantime!) First off, though in no particular lineup order, Do-It-Yourself Screenprinting author John Isaacson will show you the ins and outs of turning your bedroom into a full-on DIY t-shirt factory. Says his tour-mate and Microcosm founder Joe Biel, "If there were awards for niceness, John would be in the top three. He teaches writing programs when he's not busy teaching silkscreening workshops. He'll be bringing his skills and knowledge to your town and showing even the experts a thing or two."

Then we got Moe Bowstern, author of the extra rad zine series Xtra Tuf, who will show you some sailors' knots and teach you a few sea chanteys. Moe's zines tell the story of her life as a woman in the male-dominated commerical fishing industry and are high adventure no matter how you shake it. She's also a real sweetheart!

Next there's Microcosm founder Joe Biel who will screen his latest documentary If It Ain't Cheap, It Ain't Punk: 14 Years of Plan It X. You may know Joe from the celebrated zine Perfect Mixtape Segue, of which his latest issue just came out. Joe is also the co-author of the recently released zine-making how-to book Make a Zine and the dude who brought you the excellent zine-makin' "talk-umentary" $100 and a T-Shirt. He's a great guy and wears a lot of green and orange.

Also on the lineup we got Shelley Jackson, co-author of the Chainbreaker book and zine. Joe Biel had the following to say about the wonderful Miss Jackson: "The first time I visited New Orleans, I knew no one except for a polite GK Darby who kept insisting that I should come. Shelley offered to put up two strangers in her cute little shotgun home and we became closer over years. She's been a bike mechanic for longer than I've known her and wrote down her thoughts on the matter with her friend Ethan in her Chainbreaker book. She's going to teach you how to fix yer bike."

Last but not least--or, really, last--the incredibly awesome traveling vegan chef Joshua Ploeg will prepare some mind-blowing cuisine from his hot-off-the-press debut cookbook In Search of the Lost Taste. Joshua is also known as Joshua Plague, member of such kick-ass punk bands as Behead the Prophet, the Mulketeo Fairies, and, his latest outfit, Warm Springs. You haven't lived until you've had Joshua's cooking, for reals!

Cory Arcangel Performs "Art Since 1960 (According to the Internet)" In Toronto Tonight

From Buffalo-born media-artist Cory Arcangel's blog:

This is last minute, but tonight, if you are in Toronto please come and see Art Since 1960 (According to the Internet), a performance I am doing with Hanne Mugaas kinda about how the internet screws up everything for tidy histories. This is the 3rd time we have done it, and hopefully we can pull it together this time. Pleasure Dome and the Images Festival. Theatre Centre, 1087 Queen Street W. 7pm / $10, $8 students, seniors + members.

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

YACHT'S New Album Cover Will Hurt Your Brain

According to Pitchfork:

The album cover for Portland party-monster duo YACHT's forthcoming album See Mystery Lights, due from DFA in July ... will include a "special holographic foil". As great as the internet is, we can't show you exactly how a special holographic foil will look. Fortunately, though, Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans have created an animated version of the cover to give us some indication of how it'll look. It's posted here, but you probably shouldn't click if you have epilepsy.

YACHT played Soundlab with Dirty Projectors on August 27, 2007.

Busdriver's "Erratic Syllable-Splay Rap, Influenced by Staticy Global-Pop Field Recordings, Written on Airplanes, w/Guys from Islands/Deerhoof," Album

Pitchfork reports:

Busdriver's Jhelli Bean, due June 9 on Anti, promises to be a deeply perplexing album for reasons that go way beyond the appalling title. For one thing, there's the L.A. speedster's rapping style, which is something like how Twista might sound after a six-month binge on off-brand candy and Anticon records. Then there's Busdriver's ongoing collaborative relationship with reliably elusive Islands frontman Nick Thorburn. Thorburn guests on Jhelli Bean, as do fellow L.A. rap quick-tongue weirdos Mikah 9 and Nocando and spazzed-out Deerhoof guitarist John Dietrich.

And finally, there's the way Busdriver, in a press release, describes the way he prepared to record the album: "A bulk of the songs were written on planes somehow. I listened to Sublime Frequencies records, Bollywood soundtracks, and electronic music rather than indie rock and rap. I was able to shed a good amount of self-awareness that way."

So: An album of erratic syllable-splay rap, influenced by staticy global-pop field recordings, written on airplanes, with the guy from Islands and a guy from Deerhoof guesting. Sounds confusing but fun.

Busdriver performed at Soundlab November 14, 2007

The Future Has Failed Us

Want proof? Check out this '60s era clip imagining dancing in the future. The present, as always, is humbled by daydreams of Futurists past (or perhaps that's just the way they danced in Germany in the '60s!).

Noise With a Capital N

In this article, the latest in a series of essays commissioned in celebration of The Wire's 300th issue, Keith Moline runs through a history of Noise music, with references to Soundlab alumni Toshimaru Nakamura and Wolf Eyes.

It’s all noise, of course, everything that’s ever been written about in The Wire. The territory staked out by the magazine since 1982 is one whose marginal nature means that it’s only willingly explored by we few intrepid souls. The territory contains stuff that we know to be music, but that we also know, deep down, everyone else thinks is anything but. It’s always been about Us and Them; why be coy about it? After all, how else can we make sense of the phenomenon we call Noise-with-a-capital N? If we accept its usual definition as ‘unwanted sound’, we need to have some idea of who exactly it is that doesn’t want it. Obviously, it’s not Us – here we are listening to it, reading about it, writing about it, making it. What makes it Noise is what They think. Or rather, what we think They would think if They ever listened to it. Which They don’t.

And in that endless, tortuous loop of cogitation and speculation, lies the key to what Noise is: the actual sound of conflicting ideas doing battle. It’s Toshimaru Nakamura’s notorious no-input mixing board, but with ideas rather than cables plugged back into themselves, paradox breeding paradox, feedback producing feedback. Once you do away the idea that it’s just about confrontation, Noise becomes a whole lot more confusing, and a whole lot more interesting. And that’s what’s happened, slowly but surely, since 1982; it’s gradually orientated itself towards a community of sympathetic listeners as opposed to baiting audiences as if they constituted the enemy.

Read the rest here.

Hello From Siew-Wai

This update comes from former Buffalo sound/performance artist Siew-Wai Kok, who has been organizing improv activities in her home country of Malaysia since leaving Buffalo a few years ago:

Just wanna share with you some recent performances at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. One is a duet performance with a woodwind player. Another one is something that my artist collective SiCKL organizes, an art laboratory for improvisation. Improvisation in art & music is not so popular in KL, and we're trying start this Improv Lab project as a monthly series. Hopefully, we can create a humble group of people who can start to appreciate and explore art/music improvisation.

The Improv Lab concept sounds similar to Soundlab's discontinued Openlab monthlies. Anybody interested in reviving the series? If so, hit me at soundlabbooking@gmail.com with ideas. In the meantime, check out Siew-Wai's Improv Lab footage here.

Download Terry Riley's In C For Free as MP3!

By Zach Baron for The Village Voice's Sound of the City:

So today, for whatever reason, Amazon is offering the California minimalist Terry Riley's most iconic piece, 1964's "In C," as a free download. Don't think too hard about this one. [h/t Alex Ross]

This is the classic recording of this towering composition featuring members of UB's legendary Creative Associates. Absolutely essential listening for anybody interested in the evolution of modern music or Buffalo's place in it.

Animal Collective Auctions Test Pressings for Rarities Set To Benefit Doctors Without Borders

From Pitchfork:

A test pressing of an Animal Collective release is being auctioned on eBay. This is news? Not usually. But in this case, it's not just any Animal Collective release, it's the long-rumored live box set on the Catsup Plate label. And the auction is for charity.

Playfully titled Animal Crack Box, the 3xLP set gathers live material that was "recorded live to MiniDisc at various locations over the course of the course of the first three years or so of the band." The box set has been talked about for years (including in a recent Pitchfork interview), and now it looks like it's really happening. Catsup Plate, who released Animal Collective's Campfire Songs album, put up the auction to benefit Doctors Without Borders. Here's the story, cut and pasted from the listing:

"We never know what to do with test pressings here at Catsup Plate. Fairly soon after we approve them we have commercial copies of the record, so the test pressing usually go into a box somewhere. Save them for the grandkids or something like that.

For our upcoming 3LP boxed set of live and unreleased Animal Collective music, entitled Animal Crack Box, we've decided to do something a bit more positive with a set of the test pressings and offer them up for auction with 100% of proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, a Nobel Peace Prize winning medical humanitarian organization who do a tremendous job in offering impartial and non-political help to victims of violence, neglect, or catastrophe around the world."

So there you have it. A good cause and a lot of music, but it'll cost you a few bucks. No word yet on a release date for the proper set. Per the auction description, it will be limited to 1,000 copies and will not be sold in record stores.

Animal Collective Visited Soundlab on April 14, 2005

Underground Comics Legend Harvey Pekar to Speak at Central Library 3/28 (Submit Your Questions Now)

This Saturday, March 28 at 2pm, local graphic novel advocates GetGraphic present "An Afternoon with Harvey Pekar" at the Central Library Auditorium, 1 Lafayette Square. Best known as the author of the autobiographical American Splendor (later made into a critically acclaimed motion picture), Pekar is a cult legend in the arena of underground comics.

From Wikipedia: Robert Crumb led to the creation of the autobiographical comic book series American Splendor, later adapted as a movie. Crumb and Pekar became friends through their mutual love of jazz records, and Crumb became the first artist to illustrate American Splendor. The comic documents daily life in the aging neighborhoods of Pekar's native Cleveland, where Pekar worked throughout his life (even after gaining fame) as a file clerk in a large Veterans Administration hospital.

American Splendor has been illustrated over the years by some of comics' best talents. Pekar's most well-known and longest-running collaborators include Crumb, Gary Dumm, Greg Budgett, Spain Rodriguez, Joe Zabel, Gerry Shamray, Frank Stack, Mark Zingarelli, and Joe Sacco; while recent years have seen him repeatedly team up with artists like Dean Haspiel and Josh Neufeld. Other notable cartoonists who have worked with Pekar include Jim Woodring, Chester Brown, Alison Bechdel, Gilbert Hernandez, Eddie Campbell, David Collier, Drew Friedman, Ho Che Anderson, Rick Geary, Ed Piskor, Hunt Emerson, Bob Fingerman, and Alex Wald; as well as such unexpected illustrators as Pekar's wife Joyce Brabner and legendary comics writer Alan Moore.

A critically acclaimed film adaptation of American Splendor was released in 2003, directed by Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman.[1] It featured Paul Giamatti as Pekar, as well as appearances by Pekar himself.

GetGraphic want to know what you want to know from Pekar. Submit your questions here.

Hypertext Pioneer Robert Coover Buffalo Residency

By Christina Milletti for Artvoice:

Since the 1966 publication of The Origin of the Brunists (which won the William Faulkner Award for Best First Novel), renowned novelist, short story writer, and hypertext pioneer Robert Coover has been a one-man fictional tour-de-force, negotiating the elusive boundary between the real and the illusory with intrepid, unerring vision. Described by the New York Times as “one of America’s quirkiest writers, if by ‘quirky’ we mean an unwillingness to abide by ordinary fictional rules,” Coover makes fiction that examines darkly laughable elements of the human experience, drawing upon fairy tales, the history of baseball, religious cults, and perhaps most famously the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Rosenberg trials.

He has played many roles in his many, varied books: author, ringmaster, wizard behind the curtain. Coover’s work relishes mythmaking, with none of the avuncular simplicity that tends to accompany washed-up notions of the surreal that dominate the present moment. In his world, the imagination is perilous and heady, the origin of infinite creation, and therefore the source of all downfall—a place of fetish as much as fantasy. But what is clear above all is that Coover is not so much a master of illusion as its willing servant, lavishing its many secret nooks with an elegant hand and a cheeky slap. His work ethic is outrageous: 20 books in 40 years. He is always on the move.

Like his long list of well-told fictions such as Briar Rose and Pinocchio in Venice, Coover’s most recent novella, Stepmother, gives the infamous fairytale figure new life and a modern edge. Carefully peeling back layers of easy narratives that have conventionally portrayed stepmothers as self-centered and cruel, he instead reveals a powerful woman—trickster and temptress both—who is as loyal as she is full of equivocation; above all, a protector of the women who fill the text: frisky maidens who aren’t willing (or capable) of behaving as they should, even when their missteps get them into trouble they can see coming miles off. In this case, the stepmother’s efforts are wholly directed at saving a daughter who has been accused of castrating the king’s addle-headed son (a crime she did not commit). Though impressive and full of magical powers, the stepmother’s skills prove off the mark; her daughter is executed—drowned as a witch—in a particularly horrifying way. The reader knows it’s coming and wishes it otherwise. But both their fates were written long before the book began: The stepmother’s revenge will certainly be deadly, vile, and deserved in the face of a mother’s incalculable loss.

One of the most renowned American novelists writing today, Robert Coover will take part in a three-day residency at the University at Buffalo, March 25-27, under the auspices of a Morris Visiting Artist Grant. His visit—designed to highlight UB’s long tradition of fostering eminent avant-garde and postmodern fiction writers such as John Barth, Donald Barthelme, J.M. Coetzee, Raymond Federman, and Samuel R. Delany—is the signature fiction event of the Spring 2009 season of the Exhibit X Fiction & Prose Reading Series.

Coover’s residency will culminate with a fiction reading at the Albright-Knox Gallery on March 27 at 8pm. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information about Robert Coover’s visit, see the Exhibit X Web site: www.english.buffalo.edu/exhibitx.

New Films, Video & Installations from Squeaky Wheel's Artists-in-Residence Showing 3/14

Each year, Squeaky Wheel offers local artist access residencies to four exceptional local media artists. Chosen artists receive equipment and a small stipend to produce new work that premieres at Squeaky Wheel. This year’s artists, Aimee Buyea, Christine Davis, Thomas Holt and Elizabeth Knipe, have created a diverse selection of media art.

Aimee Buyea’s Re (memories) is an interactive exploration of her past and identity created using hand processed super 8mm film with an accompanying performance. Aimee is a self-proclaimed hoarder- holding on to mementos from my past including tickets stubs, love letters, postcards, bills, post it notes, photos and other ephemera- amassing several boxes collected since middle school. Aimee documented her attempt to let go of the past and live in the moment, processing her experiences through the making of this film-a film that becomes a symbol of memory and a piece of ephemera of its own.

Christine Davis’ Beyond Recognition is a short narrative about choices and how the choices we make ultimately effect our lives.

Tom Holt’s Signals ( Skulls and Candy as Metaphor for Life ) is a short animation about communication and non-communicable information. The video visualizes how and where energy travels. Signals string together surreal and psychedelic clips in a way that is loosely logical. The video is constructed from frame by frame manipulated photos, drawings, and paintings. The audio heavily makes use of a circuit-bent Casio S-K 5.

Elizabeth Knipe’s RoomBionic II is the second in a series of installations featuring an autonomous display system that projects a robotic vacuum cleaner’s interactions with human life and its detritus. In this episode, Squeaky Wheel’s new street-level gallery has been transformed into a studio apartment patrolled by the RoomBionic. The room is clean to the point of sterility and the RoomBionic has little to do but wander around, remembering the way it used to be and projecting memories of piles of clothes, dirty dishes and unmade beds.

The Local Artist Access Residency is for emerging media artists in Buffalo. Artists-in-Residence receive one free workshop, 100 hours of access to our digital and film post-production suites, two days free quipment rental, and a $100 stipend for supplies. The deadline for the 2009 residency is June 16th, 2009. The application is available online at www.squeaky.org/opportunities.

Tomorrow Night (3/14) - 8pm @ Squeaky Wheel. $6 non-members / $4 members

Experimental Theater Icon Richard Foreman Brings Ontological-Hysteric Project to Buffalo

From Artvoice's Theater Week, by Anthony Chase:

Richard Foreman is universally regarded as one of the great pioneers of the American theater. His two-week visit to Buffalo (March 16-29) with his collaborator, Sophie Haviland can, therefore, be seen as something historic. During their residency at the University at Buffalo, Foreman and Haviland will conduct an intensive theater/film workshop for students in the UB departments of Media Study and Theatre and Dance as part of “The Bridge: An International Art Initiative.” The general public will have an opportunity to see Foreman at an event on March 23.

Known for his non-narrative theater projects, Foreman has been recognized with numerous honors, including multiple Obie Awards (five for Best Play of the Year), and is the director and designer of more than 50 plays.

Begun in 2004, the Bridge Project promotes international art exchange through a collaborative process. Reached by telephone in New York City, Foreman described the Bridge Project as a kind of artistic sharing.

“My collaborator, Sophie Haviland and I, have taken the Bridge Project to nine different countries,” says Foreman. “Buffalo will be the first American city to host the project. We will work with a group of performers and technicians provided by the University. Each participant will create independently shot film in the style of the project, and we hope that they will then use this material to create their own original works, their own short films. The interesting part is that all of the participants will have access to all the footage shot by other participants, so the Buffalo participants will have access to film shot in Portugal, or Australia, or Japan, and so on.”

I ask Foreman to describe “the style of the project.”

“That’s very difficult to say,” he answers candidly. “I’d say it has a quality of ‘presentation,’ of performers looking into the camera. And in every image, a sense that something is about to appear or occur, a strange sense of expectancy.”

Much of Foreman’s work has been done at his own “Ontological-Hysteric Theater,” which he founded in 1968. According to its web site, OHT exists “with the aim of stripping the theater bare of everything but the singular and essential impulse to stage the static tension of interpersonal relations in space. The OHT seeks to produce works that balance a primitive and minimal style with extremely complex and theatrical themes.”

In Buffalo, OHT certainly will find kindred artistic spirits. Most prominent among them is probably Dan Shanahan, founder and artistic director of Torn Space Theatre, who happily acknowledges Foreman’s influence on his own work. Shanahan has made his reputation for large non-narrative theatrical presentations as the Adam Mickiewicz Dramatic Circle, the old Central Terminal, and the Ukrainian center on Broadway.

“I think Foreman’s biggest influence on me has been in the way he uses theatrical time in his productions,” says Shanahan. “He analyzes time while he manipulates time, fracturing it, going backward, repeating it. I used it in Architect the most, and also in Area, because in both instances the production confined the characters and took away their autonomy. The production, itself, was an outside force that the characters were living in.”

Shanahan thinks that bringing the Bridge Project to Buffalo makes perfect sense.

“There is plenty of experimental work going on here; we have a lot of well-informed people who are connected to the larger theater world. I think the upcoming production of WoyUbu is an example. There’s Alt Theatre, and what’s being done there. There is a lot happening.”

The Foreman piece that resonates most vividly in Shanahan’s memory is My Head Was a Sledgehammer, which he saw at St. Mark’s Church in New York City. In describing the piece, Ben Brantley of the New York Times wrote, “the most recent offering of Mr. Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater, is to be swept into a dazzlingly self-contained, thoroughly exhilarating universe that seems in the viewing—as does the best of Mr. Foreman’s work—logical, rational and disturbing in the way that individual dreams can be. It is a testament to Mr. Foreman’s hypnotic artistic control that only afterward do you scratch your head and wonder what it was all about.”

The same is often said of Dan Shanahan.

The general public will have an opportunity to interact with Foreman on March 23 at 7pm, when the University at Buffalo Center for the Moving Image (CMI) directed by Emmy Award-winning arts filmmaker Elliot Caplan, UB professor of media study, will host “An Evening with Richard Foreman,” free to the public, in the Market Arcade Theater. Foreman will discuss his work and screen material selected from 25 years of his plays, as well as his last film production in Japan and the UK.

More information on Foreman can be found at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater site: www.ontological.com. Additional information on the Bridge Project is available at www.bridgefilm.com.

Boris, sunn O))) Soundtrack Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control

By Tom Breihan for Pitchfork:

The last time I noticed a celebrated indie filmmaker using a heavy dollop of doom metal to soundtrack a movie, it was Harmony Korine using Sleep and Eyehategod in Gummo. The music is easily the best thing about that sensationalistic trainwreck of a movie, with the cinematography a distant second.

Judging by the trailer, Jim Jarmusch's forthcoming The Limits of Control includes the following things: Ghost Dog's best friend as the lead, the ridiculously beautiful Paz de la Huerta never taking off her Weezer glasses, Tilda Swinton wandering around in a white wig and a cowboy hat, Gael Garcia Bernal with a gigantic scar on his face, Sadly Bemused Bill Murray, cinematography from the great Wong Kar-Wai collaborator Christopher Doyle, and "graphic nudity and some language." Based on all available evidence, it is going to rule. And the music might still be the best thing about it.

As the Playlist points out, in the quick flash of credits at the end of the trailer, we see something encouraging: "Music by Boris." And as sunn O))) mastermind Stephen O'Malley wrote on his website last week and the bands' publicist confirms, the soundtrack includes music from Boris by themselves, sunn O))) & Boris together, and Earth.

Jim Jarmusch has a history of using great music in his movies: eerily ringing minimal Neil Young guitar chords in Dead Man, sparsely chilly RZA beats in Ghost Dog. And he knows that titans of drone-metal go with mysterious outlaw movies like champagne and strawberries. He is a smart man.

The Limits of Control gets a limited release on May 22, and I can't wait.

See the trailer here & here.

Sunn O))) played Soundlab in July 2004. Boris followed its Tralf appearance by blowing out the power at Soundlab in December 2008.

Adolescent's Field Recordings of Ithaca Video Game Arcades 1982-1988

This is an admirable collection of digitized audio casettes capturing 80s kids playing video games:

"In November of 1982 my best friend had a Sony TCS-310 Stereo Cassette Recorder. Audio cassette tape was the affordable recording medium at the time and one wintery day while on our way to the arcade 'Just Fun' in Ithaca, NY, we came up with the idea to record video game sounds in the arcades.

We recorded our video game experiences from 1982 until 1988 in a variety of locations on the east coast. Most of the recordings come from Ithaca, NY, Albany, NY and Ocean City, MD. Other locations include Lancaster, PA, Falmouth, MA, Rehoboth Beach, DE and Key West, FL.

Luckily I stored all fourteen audio tapes in a safe place and rediscovered them when I moved the rest of my stuff out of my parents house in 1997. In the last several years I digitized these nostalgic recordings to preserve and share them.

Experience the magic and the wonder of the early years of coin-op video games. Hear the classic arcade ambience like you haven't heard it in over a quarter of a century! The blend of several video games being played simultaneously, the kids yelling and the quarters clanking. We will never hear such beautiful chaos quite the same way again...."

Courtesy of boingboing.net

http://www.coinopvideogames.com/sounds.php

Mono Gets Symphonic

According to Pitchfork, "Mono, the Japanese masters of slow-building epic metal, absolutely crush live. They do not need the help of a 22-piece orchestra to melt your eyeballs. But on a May 8 show at the Society for Ethical Culture in New York City, they'll get one anyway. That's right: Mono is the latest of a seemingly unending string of bands to play a show with an orchestra. Who will be next? Crystal Castles? Lil Boosie? Hatebreed? Probably Hatebreed. In other, probably more important news, Temporary Residence will release Hymn to the Immortal Wind, Mono's awesomely titled fifth album, on March 24. Steve Albini produced it, and it includes two different songs with the word snow in their titles."

Mono performed at Soundlab with Eluvium in April 2005 and again in April 2007 with World's End Girlfriend.

Magik Markers' "Balf Quarry" Hits 5/5

From the press release:

BALF QUARRY, an old stone pit just outside of Hartford, Connecticut, represents a central place for Elisa Ambrogio and Pete Nolan, the duo who call themselves Magik Markers, and is the apt title of their forthcoming May Drag City release. Unearthed from the mines of Connecticut in 2001, Magik Markers have been brutalizing audiences with their shattering live appearances and recordings since the first part of this century. They are now living and creating on opposite sides of the country. Elisa Ambrogio recently moved to Seattle from San Francisco and Pete Nolan resides in Brooklyn, but they came together in Elisa's new city to record BALF QUARRY with Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls, Animal Collective, Sir Richard Bishop). BALF QUARRY has moody space in its soul, and on this album you'll find Elisa and Pete locked together, beating it out, listening to and feeling the sound of their earth quake. And slicing through all the atmosphere, Elisa's voice is a spear of light, splashes of mud, and an acid purple flashback. Listening to BALF QUARRY is like immersing yourself in a great horror film, complete with mental dissipation, catharsis for the ears, and the most satisfying psychotic listening experience you'll have this year.

Magik Markers visited Soundlab with Sunburned Hand of the Man as part of its Fall Brawl Tour in 2005. The following footage, shot by John Long, also includes documentation of the opening act, Buffalo noisemakers Caustic Solution.

Forever 21 Sold Bootleg Minor Threat Shirts: Butt Ugly Ones at That

A huge part of the story of Dischord Records-- still one of the greatest indie labels ever to exist-- is the label's general longstanding aversion to commercialism. Fugazi, for instance, always refused to license their name for T-shirts, which forced kids who still wanted to publicly claim allegiance to the band to spend the 90s walking around in bootleg "This Is Not a Fugazi T-Shirt" T-shirts. (Yeah, I had one.)

So when teenybop mall fashion institution Forever 21 welded the logo of Dischord flagship band Minor Threat onto what looks like Hair Cuttery wall art from 1986 and then slapped it on a shirt, it's a problem. The resulting atrocity, which looks like some bullshit that Jenny Humphrey might design on "Gossip Girl", can no longer be found on the Forever 21 website, and we might have the band themselves to thank for that.

The image of that shirt above comes from the blog You Thought We Wouldn't Notice, who first caught onto the Forever 21 shirt. When Tripwire reported on it, Dischord's Alec Bourgeois gave them this statement:

"This is an unauthorized shirt and it is still unclear whether the shirt was produced by Forever 21 or if it is a bootleg that they just happen to carry. Either way the members of Minor Threat are looking into it and Forever 21 will be asked to stop selling it.

"In the beginning, Minor Threat did not license anything and any shirts you saw were screened by band member Jeff Nelson. But Jeff stopped screening shirts and over the years the band members realized that the shirts were going to be made with or without their permission, so they may as well authorize a couple friendly printers in order to better control the quality, content and revenue.

"The band and the label tend to deal with bootleg shirts on a case by case basis, acknowledging the vast difference between kids screening shirts for friends and professional printing studios screening shirts for profit. Obviously this absurd Forever 21 shirt falls under the 'unacceptable' category."

This isn't the first time Dischord has had to deal with Minor Threat-related copyright infringement. In 2005, Nike launched a skateboarding tour called Major Threat. On their poster, they used an almost exact copy of the image that originally appeared on the first Minor Threat 7". After the campaign pissed off enough people, Nike pulled the poster and apologized.

However, Bourgeois downplays any connection between the Nike case and the Forever 21 one. He tells Pitchfork, "It's apples and oranges. Minor Threat shirts get bootlegged all the time and, as is the case with all bootlegs, it's a simple case of selling something under the false pretense that it is band approved and that the band will see some of the revenue. In the Nike example they were attempting to hijack Minor Threat imagery in order to link themselves to the band's legacy as a means to sell something completely unrelated to the band or the label."

So, small potatoes, I guess. In any case, the offending Minor Threat shirt is now gone from the Forever 21 website. Bourgeois doesn't know if the band or the label were involved in their removal. "I just know that the band was making some calls," he says.

But if you really need to get a piece of strident hardcore agitprop band merch at Forever 21, this Public Enemy shirt is still available."

Minor Threat and Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye seems to visit Soundlab every two years with his new band The Evens. We hope to see him again soon!