Wednesday, May 22, 2013

ripe•people by Silent Lions


Silent LionsDetroit b/w/o Toledo duo Silent Lions are testing the Twitterati attention spans with their newest, a fuzz-mucked, fire-charged freak-funk jam called "ripe•people" --

There may only be two of them, but you could never call them minimalists (look at all the shit they're packing with them on their forthcoming midwest tour: sax, fx-boards, synthesizers, bass, drum-kit, sampler...)- thus, they fittingly go just as big on this track, giving you get an eight minute jitter-jaunt of avant-garde garage-punk sprung disrputively into space-rock territories. (Say, the "territory" traversed in this video kinda looks  like Woodbridge).



They'll be back "home" on June 14th - but more on that, later. Have a great Wednesday, everybody.

Silent Giants bandcamp - - facebook

Friday, May 17, 2013

Fest Season


2 days. May 31 & June 1 at Tangent Gallery.
FRIDAY
Tyvek / Homostupids / E.T. Habit / Frustrations / Heroes & Villains

SATURDAY
Protomartyr / Sediment Club / Leather Nightmare / Johnny Ill Band / The Mahonies
Beekeepers 
Doors at 8PM, music at 9PM. $10 per night.

And then...



And then...

CLONE DEFECTS * TERRIBLE TWOS * PROTOMARTYR * LIQUOR STORE * GUINEA WORMS * MOONHAIRY * RITUAL HOWLS * OBNOX * GROWWING PAINS * FEELINGS * DRUGS DRAGONS * MOUNTAINS AND RAINBOWS * K9 SNIFFIES * 
And then...

Ann Arbor Summer Festival - click here for music line ups

AND THEN...




INFO:

Sunday, May 12, 2013

What We Do Is Public


No one wants to frame this article and no one will remember this lead sentence and damned if you’re going to take my word for it that you are going to want to be at this show, tonight.

You can maybe hear my voice through these disjointed discourses, but my words will have no color to them. Writing about music’s insufferable.

Drawing about music? That’s a whole other gig, man. A whole other world.

Whereas it feels everything’s been said, everything’s been sung, every word’s been used and every note’s been played, there’s so many colors you can blend, so many layers you can screen, so many meticulous messes you can drizzle…


































And you can make music with your art. Art that’s about music. Art propping art. 

`
Love It To Death www.loveittodeathapparel.com

Bossman Graphics www.bossmangraphics.com
Shawn K. Knight www.shawnkknight.com
Create And Destroy/Jason Smith www.jasonabrahamsmith.com
Perfect Laughter www.perfectlaughter.com
Nerl Says Design www.nerlsaysdesign.com

Thursday, May 9, 2013

What's a Band? Freak-out and Re-Fresh


Thoughts burst...


The Rolling Stones are 51 years old. Their songs are twice as old as you. They haunt the halls of the modern Music-Macrocosm – They echo up from behind us, insistent bony Nosferatuian nails tapping on our shoulders. Whose listening?

They are an adjective onto themselves, now; an idea. They're a style that is itself not a style but a stirring of a mixture of a hodgepodge, a mumble of a whisper of a legend. Like some Holiday Tradition –its observances and choreographed ceremonies survived by heavily obfuscated (and perhaps forgotten or mis-told) origins.

And now everyone, everywhere, is trying to re-invent music. Re-invent EDM, re-invent hip-hop. Start a new holiday. How will our hyper-reflective, hyper-reflexive, hyper-retweeting selves look back upon the Religion of Rock music, 100, 50, or even 25 years from now?

Some think that these cathartic ceremonies, the punks and the drone mystics, the wordsmiths and the dance shamans, the rock n rollers, some think that these religious practices should be inherently fleeting. A run. A tank of gas, just one gallon, that runs out. A shot-put. A high jump. To BURN-out, rather than fade away… This is it. Your band. Go. Write songs. Collect them, put them onto albums. Release those albums. Did you stick to the wall? Did your boulder roll far, did your stone, in fact, roll…Did it knock over all our ear-pins? Did it lose momentum? Did your band, four components as a metaphoric-muscle, not flex or cramp-up? Did you stop rolling? You had your chance… Other bands are rolling onward and you’ve hit a rut.

But now bands are lasting. They’re being preserved, some way, some how… They’re 51 years old. If one band lasts 10 years, another lasts 20, but your band only lasts for five months, than what is the difference? Was your “band” –a band? Or were you whimsically toying with the hollow tropes of the Rock Religion? Playing dress-up with the vinyl album hats and scarves you clumped from your wardrobe turntable?

What’s a band, anymore?

And why are we always trying it one way, but assuring ourselves that we’re out to reinvent it? Why not blindfold yourself, turn around backwards, jabber away in a new language, grunt it out, and try something…not “new” but crazy?  

The Cro-Magnon creature discovers a tool by mindlessly beating the earth like a drum with broken bones. 
Something out of nothing.

You won’t take my advice because music critics liking weird sounding esoteric shit that jars against your ears proclivities towards pleasing pop-structures is all too commonplace on these hipster blogs. But I don’t mind. That the critic would sanctify the strange is, itself, a cliché… Something you’d expect. So what good would it be for me to recommend that you swim through this startling sea of chaos (and by that, I mean, a piece of music… If you can even call it “a piece.”). What good would it do? Maybe you’re still reading… 

...Good. Thanks. Well, this whole write up was inspired by the newest work of Colin Stetson. He hasn’t reinvented anything. And I don’t want to say he’s INVENTED anything, either. It’s just refreshing to listen to a piece of music and say that I don’t know what to say…

That’s a start.


A new start.
Refreshing

~
Also refreshing?
A.)   There’s a new Musicalinspired by King Kong.
B.)   It features EDM/trip-hop icons like Massive Attack, Bjork, Justice and the Avalanches.
C.)   This is flabbergasting and effervescent all at once.
D.)   I’m “happy” to hear anything new from the Avalanches

Friday, March 29, 2013

Watch: Destroy This Place / Silent Lions / Thee Oh Sees




I've cobbled together three new videos from this past week and it seems they share a Monster theme.

Detroit-area indie-punk / anthemic-alt-rock revivalists Destroy This Place pay homage to mid-80's slow-chase Slasher films (...with a bipedal demonic looking red stag).
Destroy This Place: Graves from Scott Allen on Vimeo.



Toledo's Silent Lions are synth-spilled indie-blues that chart the wobbly-est grooves while still keeping things chugging along the rawk-rails... and they've got a bit of a zombie-terror trope spilling over them as they perform in what seems to be a haunted house.



And then... thee inimitable Thee Oh Sees are showcasing their own endearingly lo-fi stumbled-grace in filmmaking as they go a bit orchestral for their Minotaur ballad.


~

R.I.P. Paul Williams

http://www.paulwilliams.com/

Paste Magazine on: Crawdaddy! Founder

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

May Looks Good To Me



Spring is coming...
And...- new music from Saturday Looks Good To Me

Monday, March 25, 2013

So what do you guys wanna talk about?

Ypsi

"...and a good megaphone-morning to you, sir!"
sincerely-
Congress



(film by Scott Boyink) 

Another Level: Detroit X Detroit -- Art X Detroit


So here's a video, featuring a pair of inventive rappers whom I'd interviewed about two years ago for a modest music feature... 
...they've come quite a ways. Last Spring, they were awarded the Kresge Arts Fellowship, toured with Jamaican Queens and very recently returned from the SXSW Media Festival. 

photo by Tony Katai
They've taken their writing, recording and live performance to another level. To meet them, hear them, chill with them "...in the same trance," doing "the same dance," seems to be quite an "Experience..." 

And that isn't my opinion, it's the opinion of the arts community and every other music fan, hip-hop or otherwise, who've seen them progress throughout the last two years. 



On April 13th, Passalacqua (a.k.a. Brent 'Blaksmith' Smith of Cold Men Young and Bryan Lackner, a.k.a. 'Mister') will be featured as part of the Art X Detroit - The Kresge Arts Experience: a five-day (April 10 - April 14) multidisciplinary celebration featuring presented works from recent Fellows (2011-2012, in varying types: visual, writing, performing).
The Full Schedule (including a guide of the artists, their types, their performance times and a map of venues) is available from the Art X Detroit main site. 
The Passalacqua Experience - Part 1 and Part 2 (A documentary film by Andrew Miller and a live performance spanning the rap duo's entire discography) will be at 8:30 p.m. - 4/13/13 - Michigan Science Center’s Chrysler IMAX® Dome TheatreOpening Night Reception is April 6th at the MOCAD. More info is available from the Kresge Arts site, as well. 


















____
MEANWHILE - Detroit X Detroit III goes down the following weekend (4/20/13 at the Magic Stick ) - - (Read more on this event in the April print edition of  iSpy Magazine  (main site). 


Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? 

Detroit X Detroit is a whirled display of camaraderie through a whole bunch of Detroit-area bands covering each other’s songs. But, perhaps this could also stoke a healthy elbowing of one-upmanship, thereby challenging each “contender” in “the ring” to take their indie-rock games to up to the next level. 

Cue the Rocky theme, man. “…get-ting STRONG-ger!” Right? Maybe?

These geographic-self-celebrations started two years ago, created and curated by Melissa Rowe, (marketing specialist and and local-music-lover (both of the “modern” and “classical” scenes). Bands signed up a while ago, excitedly selecting which fairly-recent / currently-active local act they’d impersonate in song (and, often, in appearance). 

There’s a tinge of Halloween-ish surrealism involved, (last year saw a strapping young male drummer don fake boobs to mimic Meg White and another guitarist wear nothing but leather bicycle shorts). Overall, it’s an easy-going, fun, endearing event – featuring: After Dark Amusement Park embodying mystic/revered local troubadour Rodriquez (of “Searching For Sugar Man”) while electro-ambient-pop composers James Linck and Christopher Jarvis (of Phantasmagoria) will cover rap-duo Passalacqua’s stuff. Many more will be “covered,” find the full line-up: http://majesticdetroit.com 

The School of Rock students will open things up, joining in the spirit of things by covering one of their teacher's bands. Hip In Detroit will play EmCee for the festivities. The cover charge funds a special scholarship at School of Rock. 



Sunday, March 24, 2013