at the People's Art Festival (Saturday and Sunday at the Russell Industrial Center, in Detroit)
Entertainment: Shadow Puppet Show Comedian Burlesque Show (saturday night) Light in August acoustic set Dr Sketchy MSD Sketch Session (sunday)
DJ Alexi DJ JCM DJ BlonDTroit Auralgasms
Here's the run-down: SATURDAY 11am - 1pm -- DJ JCM 1pm - 1:30 acoustic set (WonderWomen) 1:30 - 3pm - Auralgasms (DJ) 3pm - 4pm - Light in August (band) 4pm-6pm - DJ JCM 6pm - 8pm DJ JCM 8pm-9pm - DJ JCM 8:30 - 1st T & A Burlesque show while DJ JCM spins 9pm-10pm - Marco Polio / CARJACK set (bands) 10pm-MN - DJ Alexi / DJ BlonDTroit 10:30pm - Shadow Puppet Show by Mary Alice's Menagerie 11:30pm - Burlesque Show by T & A Burlesque
At the Russell Industrial Center - People's Art Festival - 2009 - from 11 am to midnight (Saturday) and 11am to 6pm (Sunday) you can catch "the largest assembly of artists, performance artists, musicians and filmmakers in the City of Detroit " - performances all throughout both days, with art on display and music in the air.
Tonight, the Von Bondies play the Magic Stick for their 10th anniversary.
Desktop is the collaboration of singer/keyboardist Zach Curd (from The Pop Project) and bassist/singer Keith Thompson (of Johnny Headband). The synths are swirling, the club/house beats are pounding, the bass is pulsing, shoulders shimmying, feet stomping – good golly miss molly – it’s a disco… and, “girl, you’re burning up.” Yes, indeed, you get to hear Curd, known for his gossamer tone, if still sturdy belt, wail choruses like this in some sexified R&B vocal that would fit nicely into an Off The Wall daydream. We also hear Thompson flexing his sensibility for structuring dance tunes, away from the masculiney/campy rock realm of Electric Six or the slightly more rock leaning guitar-n-drum style of Johnny Headband.
For optimal listening, you should probably get the boombox out, run it through a PA, put your headphones on – and you’ll give it the power it demands. The three tracks gathered here are all capable for that dreamy, dizzy, lost-in-the-sea-of-bodies-in-the-flash-of-lights setting of a dark, neon splattered dance floor, incanting a quintessential give-yourself-over chorus for anthemic dance pop, “Do whatever you want…” over a jittery bass line, inescapable beats and twinkly raining synths.
It helps that both songwriters are so shaped by the whirlpool-influence of the 70’s (AM pop, krautrock, metal, disco)..., Liberty ranges from the dark stylized synth pop that came out of new wave (there’s a beautiful and strikingly dark, atmospheric moment in “Liberty,” where it slows down and the bass starts flexing in a bit of a low roar and tinny synths start cascading over Curd’s looped wail, as a low end synth starts churning stronger and stronger before the beat comes back in and we’re going crazy again), ...to the flat-out disco-spurred fever of early club-set dance-pop (Thompson sets a gristly, driving bass groove under buoyant synth echoes in sunny, coaxing tones in “Fired Up” while Curd slides in with that stutter-step, soulful disco rouse), to prog-rock leaning dance-rock (the layered percussion and declarative crunchy guitars of “Too Much” calms things down from the freaked up disco, even if the chorus is just as swaying, it’s given a bit more of a head-bob/fist-pump rock feel, as synths bounce playfully unto dramatic guitars).
Local fans familiar with main projects can imagine their danciest moments of past songs - take the peanut-butter side of Pop Project’s campy, synth/rock 80’s sit-com flare up anthem “Coerce” squeezed against the jelly of Johnny Headband’s funky, post-punky-guitar-swaggering “Tell You,” put the extra punch of the pixie stix sugar of pounding beats….and you’ve got Desktop. (photo: Will Yates)
Spindrift blend style and sludge, the captivating grace and sleek sun-fried goth mystique of their penchant for gritty and surreal late 60's Westerns has carried over to become a strong influence upon their sound - thus being dubbed "Spaghettie Western Psychedelia." This is, at least, in its 'Western' form, as the band was started by singer/songwriter and actor Kirpatrick Thomas on the east coast (before a fateful stint in the Brian Jonestown Massacre shifted him to California).
Last year, the Kirkpatrick saw the release of his co-produced effort (with filmmaker Mike Bruce), "The Legend of God's Gun," inspired by the band's 2003 album, made in the style of the avant-garde Westerns pulsing through their booming, fuzzy psychedelic rock.
To paint you a picture of what you're in for (on August 31, at the Magic Stick) - this band's circle, either by friend, tour-mate or by label mate, includes A Place To Bury Strangers, The Warlocks, Brian Jonestown Massacre and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Last year's "The West" featured a tune titled "Excrete from the Collective Subconscous."
On Monday, they're joined by local psyche/shoegaze quartet Oblisk.
...been out running around today. Now, I've finally returned to my computer. If you're logging on here, and you haven't already picked it up from Eat This City - then here it is for the first time (...or, again)--
Deastro and Silent Years are two of the most prominent and brilliant songwriting outfits in Detroit. Both cast with adroit musicians, their singers, Randy Chabot and Josh Epstein, respectively, are known for their visionary pop-song-craftsmenship..., so naturally they became fast friends a while back. Collaborations were inevitable, but for the Silent Years, letting Deastro remix a song from their latest EP, Let Go, was a new step for them - since they hadn't been remixed before. Still, Epstein said he could think of no one better than Chabot. Said Epstein, "...His enthusiasm for music is inspiring so I'm glad he's the first to do a remix for us."
Just one minute into Weather Patterns,local quartetOblisk effectively set you into an ethereal headspace, with ornately pictorial lyrics of being on top of the world with crashing waves. Their second full length is a heavier, moody listen, but highlights breadth of songwriting, dips into more theatric atmospheric soundscapes and pensive lyrical territories on the interconnectedness between man and nature. Dark, fuzzy, churning, it’s facilitated by their adroit conjuring of feedback-fueled mysticism, drums that trudge through muddy jungles only to explode and accelerate out onto winding freeways, guitars that crunch and stomp and slide in head-swimming sways. We’re welcomed by a throbbing synth, a warm stretchy bass groove and singer Asim Ahktar’s distinct voice, chilly, arresting, seemingly attuned to the growling clamor of these thickly laid guitars, a voice that often weaves hypnotically between the showers of reverb, shambled hi-hats and heart-beat bass drums, a chameleon tone that drowns in the sound at one point but soars and echoes like a passing jet the next...
“On Radar” and “Epicenter” show penchants for rough textures, those subtly shrieking guitars underneath Nick Baran’s more iridescent, pedal stepped tones. The latter song also exemplifies the crux of Oblisk’s song formation – propulsion, Roy Elturk’s peppered, driving rhythms are enhanced by the soulful bend of bassist Dave Cheal. At it’s heart, both a meditative and exhilarating rock, treading near an undeniable psychedelic, or dreamlike inflection – exploring both the temperaments of Earth’s seasons and man’s subconscious.
The clasping feedback, percussive trounce, synthy flits and guitar roars of “Fences For Teeth,” the middle piece of You Are You, effectively demonstrates the Detroit collective’s flair for twinkly atmospherics, mellifluous guitars, and dream-gazer melodies spread over hard grinding guitars, onslaught drums and an overall focused sonic exertion. Never has such a tenseness felt so soothing, the way these tight picked, pedal fired guitars kaleidoscope in some post-rock jazz ballet over steady booming bass and drums that know when to go from heartbeats into piston pounds. It’s romantic, it’s soothing, it’s jolting, it’s expansive – heavy on atmospherics and drama, songs feel operatic, or even galactic, in scope. Songs range from quiet, introspective, to driving and dressy – foggy feedback swirls around in pensive meditations (“Who Are You?”) or all cylinders are firing, with buzzy vocals howled out with equaling vigor (“Lost in the Business World”). The beautiful guitar wizardry, wanderlust song structure and dreamy reverb sheen recalls the meticulous/experimentalism of post-rock, with a bit of indie and atmospheric space rock – a strong debut, strong in the sense of well constructed and well presented, but strong in its ability to disarm you like the punch of a dark roast coffee with three shots of espresso – it’s a journey.
Sometimes these things just happen. It was early in 2007 and singer/guitarist Allan James’s main project had just come to a stop. Simultaneously, his friends, Sean Sommer (also of Friendly Foes) and Tom Currie (also of Au Revoir Borealis) had seen their respective other projects slow to standstills and it felt like the right time for the three of them to plug in, drink some beers and make some songs, start up something new.
The result: Allan James & The Cold Wave, a melodic, atmospheric indie-pop, heavy on guitars and often mood; never over-bearing or pummeling, just classy and endearing. Or, if pressed, James name drops Pedro The Lion and Elliott Smith. However, he notes that some listeners scramble a bit when classifying the Cold Wave; “We’ve been told…Dinosaur Jr, a slowed-down-Superchunk, Big Star and all sorts of random things that really make no sense (like…Cheap Trick).”The current line up includes Sommer, Ryan Allen (both F. Foes), Gjon Gjavelini and Scott Allen (of Thunderbirds Are Now). The band plays August 21st at the Pike Room (Crofoot) with Now, Now Every Children and Bad Veins. They record this month with Ben West (The Great Fiction) and play the DIY Street Fair (in Ferndale) in September. Myspace.com/thecoldwave
There was a great interview/discussion this week, onFresh Air (NPR), with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Alex Jones, on the deterioration of objective journalism, in the age of blogs, twitters and 24-hour-news-network pundits.
"For over a century," Jones writes, "Americans have had as a birthright a remarkably good — though far from perfect — core of reported news that is as essential to our freedom as the Constitution itself. But the times we live in trigger an unsettling cascade of questions about journalism and news."
What good or harm will it do us, if everything we get is slanted?
For blogs and pundits, the five W's are often altered: Who (-ever I want to talk about), What (depending on my/our interests), Where, When, and Why (I think it happened, or why-I think it's important...and why-you should think I'm right)
(...phew..., still don't know what to say, or what-or-how to put this all together... but, for those of you who went through it, or those of you who didn't, here's a nice little picture book, from the Fucking Awesome Fest...in descending order, Thursday through Sunday, of what the lil' camera was able to catch, or whenever it decided to work...or whatever room or set time Mike Milo was in or at, who took 94% of them...obviously we're missing like, 60-some-odd bands)
![Deep Cutz - [[Uncutz]]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj56Cy6ejCrNHSD2kFvaVuF4KxeWxvSzDiAy8Qkrjg0RD74ZVaNFczlCm7F-YxRrwevxWXonBDJFBi03G1Lr_jbFWSpu9WS1jhuzgiuZizcLgWLBkIq26ZR6OqJJIfRrDw3YzWw3opFkgs/s730/Deep_Cutz-HEADER.jpg)
