19th March 2011

Text

Quick Hit: String Theories @ St. Ann’s and the Holy Trinity Church

Last Saturday I got to check out four new commissions for String Orchestra by composers Duane Pitre, Tony Conrad, Katherine Young, and Alex Mincek at St. Ann’s and the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn. Of the four compositions, my favorites were Mincek’s, entitled “Ebb and Flow,” and Conrad’s, called “Eleven Across.”

“Ebb and Flow” had a dark, urgent feel to it, and “Eleven Across” utilized the eleventh harmonic and required half the orchestra to tune down a quarter-step. Definitely the most aggressively weird of the four compositions, with lots of breaks and dissonance.

All four pieces were fantastic, and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn performed them seemingly with little difficulty.

Tagged: Duane PitreTony ConradAlex MincekKatherine YoungString Orchestra of Brooklynweird

16th March 2011

Text with 2 notes

Sarah Lipstate + Lee Ranaldo, Kyle Bobby Dunn, Seaven Teares @ Roulette

Last Friday, Roulette (moving to Brooklyn in the Spring, by the way) hosted a performance by Sarah Lipstate and Lee Ranaldo, as well as Kyle Bobby Dunn and Seaven Teares. I was familiar only with Lipstate, from her solo work Noveller, and her time spent with Parts and Labor and Cold Cave, and of course Ranaldo’s work with Sonic Youth. So, my impressions on the rest of these performers are initial ones.

Seaven Teares were first of the night, four-person group consisting of Charred Lucre on guitar and vocals; Amirtha Kidambi on vocals; Robbie Lee on portative organ, woodwinds, and guitar; and Russel Greenberg on percussion. Experimental chamber folk is what I would describe their set as, often ghostly and melancholy, but they did display some high energy pieces as well, which contrasted well with the softer tone of most of their songs.

Kyle Bobby Dunn played in the second slot, using a laptop, a mixer, and a guitar and amplifier. It seemed that most of what he did was manipulate the sound of the guitar feeding back through the amplifier. At one point, he detuned it momentarily, which created a really interesting sound, but after about 20 minutes or so, I’d had my fill. This is of course just a personal opinion, but ambient music can only hold my attention for so long without something else happening. I’d have been much more appreciative, I think, if I’d had something else to do while listening. It wasn’t really the right environment for me to appreciate it.

Lipstate and Ranaldo were the closers, and they held their position well. Lipstate seemed to provide the backbone of the piece; her treatment of the guitar looked more or less traditional (though the results were anything but) and she used several effects to loop and layer the sounds. Ranaldo, on the other hand, seemed to be following the advice of the great Bruce Dickinson, exploring the space with his guitar, and utilizing a great array of extended techniques, bowing the back of the guitar’s neck, knocking on the body, and moving it around to utilize different spacial relations to the amplifier. They also projected images on the wall behind them; it seemed to be looping close-ups of some kind of fibers, and the faster the images changed, the more it started to look like a double-helix. By the end of the set, they were splattered with color. They both created a range of interesting sound, and their set fell on the more interesting side of ambient drone.

Tagged: Sarah LipstateLee RanaldoKyle Bobby DunnSeaven TearesRoulettegetting into a serious thing

15th March 2011

Text with 2 notes

Parts & Labor, Pterodactyl, Fiasco, Fuck Ton @ Monster Island Basement

Hey, remember when this blog used to have things on it? Well, that time has returned. It’s good to be back.

Parts & Labor (left to right: BJ Warshaw, Joe Wong, Dan Friel)

Last Tuesday (that’s March 8th, for those of you keeping track), Parts and Labor played a record release show for their new album Constant Future, which plopped on that same day and is incredible. If you’ve not picked it up yet, you should. I don’t think a single day has gone by since I got mine where I’ve not listened to it at least a couple of times. “Rest” and “Hurricane” won’t leave my skull, which is fine by me. Fantastic stuff.

Anyway, the show. DJ 1000TimesYes (former Parts and Labor drummer Chris Weingarten) spun between sets — if I’m remembering this right, he opened things up with Soulja Boy — and, despite the fact that I’m an asshole and have left shows because the DJ’s played stuff like that (seriously, like an old (wo)man), I was totally cool with it. But I guess that’s because he also played songs that were not looped ringtones. Uh … this was meant to be a positive review. He was good. Jeez, sorry about that. 

Fuck Ton, a group I’d never seen, started the show by playing a set of grinding chamber noise that reminded me a good deal of Lightning Bolt. The bassist was wearing an orange ski mask, the drummer left the group and wandered around the audience for a bit, and the vocalists were howling into some heavily effected microphones. It was sort of like those Tibetan monks that all sit in a circle and moan at the same time, but all slightly out of phase with each other. Once the set ended, I heard someone say this:

“They certainly [pause] make a racket.”

Let that be proof that I was not the lamest person at this show.

I’d seen Fiasco just short of two years ago when they played a show with the Homosexuals (actually, as the Homosexuals, backing Bruno Wizard) and Monotonix (who I did not see, because my friend’s butt fell out). At the time, they were playing mostly (great) hardcore/grindcore-type stuff, but they’ve since branched out to include more progressive- and pop-sounds. There was a good deal of guitar-mashing, and a lot of it was reminiscent of the Advantage, if the Advantage played originals. The first time I saw them, they sounded like one good hardcore band, but now they sound like three great bands of varied styles. But, they seem to play about a million shows a year, so one would hope they’d gotten some shit down.

I swear to you that, at the time I wrote it in my notebook, this sounded like something a hack wouldn’t say about a band called Pterodactyl: ”prehistoric grind-pop.” Obviously, I must have been hallucinating. I think what I was getting at is that there’s something about the group that reminds me of a more punk-rock version of Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. But goddamn, sometimes I read my notes and make myself sick with some of the shit that I’ve convinced myself is worth writing down. Dan Friel from Parts and Labor joined the trio for most of their set, lending his neat electro-magic to their already highly enjoyable post-punk sound. One of the monitor speakers fell on a guy, then stopped making sounds, but they powered through, and it actually kind of sounded better (or at least as great). These guys are definitely worth checking out. Good harmonies, by the way.

Finally, Parts and Labor went up, joined by Joe Kremer from Pterodactyl on guitar. Their set was almost entirely stuff from the new record, with fan-favorites “The Gold We’re Digging” and “Fractured Skies,” from Mapmaker, thrown in as well. The band was incredibly tight; you’d think they’d been playing these songs all their lives. I was particularly impressed with Joe Wong’s drumming; he’s always held it down performing frenetic tracks from the group’s earlier records, but most of what I’d seen him play came from their second-most recent album, Receivers, which does not have as much “holy shit” drumming on it as other Parts and Labor albums might. This set involved him going full-speed for around forty-five minutes, and he handled it with ease and flair. Kremer seemed to know his leads well, and he shined particularly on “Fractured Skies,” cutting through the mix like a drill. Parts and Labor: still the best band.

If you’re interested, I interviewed Dan from Parts and Labor just under a year ago (when they were about to record Constant Future) on my old radio show for WMUA-FM. You can find that here. I think I had a cold.

Tagged: Parts & LaborDan FrielFiascoFuck TonPterodactylLightning BoltChris Weingarten1000TimesYes