Stereo Total with Openers The Octopus Project, Bowery Ballroom 8.24.07
Brezel takes a dive.
The crowd was asked onto the stage during the encore for a bit of dancing. Unfortunately, the photographer was also dancing.
Fantastic show. Octopus Project opened with an extremely busy set of soft-textured synthy post-rock. The layering of guitars, drums, and beautifully pure synthesizer tones made me close my eyes and float with the notes in space more than once. The whole band ran around the stage like the parts of a Wankle rotary engine, executing daring and astounding feats of multi-instrumentalism much to the crowd’s delight and approval. If their current band name wears thin and they consider a change, they might think of switching it to Mazda RX-7. I need to learn more about this band to give more pointed kudos, but the stylish lady cephalizing it all was quite an accomplished performer on the Theremin. A very friendly and talkative crew, to boot. Their new album comes out in October.
Francoise Cactus and Brezel Göring, Stereo Total, came on the stage and rained on the crowd with rapid fire pop, spending cartridge after cartridge of danceable disco/rockabilly/pop/rock/electronic ditties. Their energy was infectious- Brezel didn’t want to stop playing after the second encore, and Francoise’ running commentary was both hilarious and enchanting. They pulled a lucky member of the audience onstage to perform their song “Menage a Trois”, and pulled half the audience on stage near the end of their show for a dancing accompaniment to their danceable pop that lasted through to the end of the last encore.
God DAMN I had fun. Their new album, “Paris-Berlin”, just came out. Haven’t heard it yet, but I need to.
Technorati Tags: Indie, Music, Punk, Rock, Stereo Total, Bowery Ballroom, Octopus Project
Mysterious Gun Moll Melodrama :: Maybe We should Tune in Freitag.
From the Stereo Total website:
Friday, 24.08.2007, at 8.30 p.m. Bayrischer Rundfunk will present the radio play “Patty Hearst – Princess and Terrorist”
They list the live stream as being here.
Clip art Cleopatras and cold Kalashnikovs? Black and white back in the day ballyhoo, or better brandishings of business gone by? This spectator is speechless- not so sure I savvy. Still, seems standard to savor Stereo Total. Time to tackle the Time-zone tables- tuning in takes timing.
Technorati Tags: Stereo Total
A Vision of HIM, Galilee Stylee OR I’M ON UR EARZ DYIN’ 4 UR SINZ
In the full eventuality of everything, so goes the notion of ergodicity, all possible things must be.
The most popular metaphor used to describe this ergoditic necessity of the universe to, over time, fulfill all the possibilities it has laid out for itself is the notion that, if one put 1000 monkeys in front of typewriters, probability dictates that eventually they must produce a flawless copy, in chronological order of original penning, of the complete works of William Shakespeare.
Now, please, consider:
So, should I see a plan in randomness or a Deist plot in the propagation of this thinking? Should I tremble and declaim that I have seen the hand of the demiurge at work and that I have seen that work playing out (O Mystery!) when I catch a glimpse of the divine, as I did Friday morning, in such an unlikely, such an unworthy, quotidian mise-en-scène as the Bedford L stop on my stumbly way to work? Should I wear hair shirts, wigs of razors, beat myself with cats ‘o nine tails until I am worthy to soil such hallowed observations with the words I form in this mouth, those words spat bathed in my lowly sinner’s saliva?
Suppose this condition of certain sets of behavior in the universe IS the result of the hand of a higher power. If this is Destiny, then 1000 monkeys laboring at metallurgy in the shop class of history for these 2007 years brought to mine eyes Friday morning a vision that is so much more, so much better and more unmistakeable than those recent manifestations of Him on toast, or Him in a sliced-in-half avocado, or Him on grilled cheese. Because He willed it, I saw Him punched in stencil out of a thin sheet of brassy alloy, hanging from the ears of a deluded daughter of Williamsburg , beatific and haloed. His bearded visage smiled at me reassuringly between blingy glintings, as if to mumble such pillow talk to the immortal souls of passers-by thus:
I’M ON UR EARZ, DYIN’ 4 UR SINZ
4 EVAH & EVAH
SON!
Like Xanadu, however, this vision’s glow faded, became misted. The way back to it was lost. I roused from these musings as a train rolled into the station and back out again with too many people crowded on for me to board. The only words I could remember then echoed back to me…
“1000 monkeys… 1000 monkeys… something… Man that girl had some fucked-up earrings.”
Certainly, in the eventuality of everything, there will be some variety of circumstances that will stun us into wonder.
And, just as certainly, there will be some variety of circumstances we can safely attribute to more prosaic forces than divine intervention, ones which will provoke an affect dissimilar to wonder. This, friends, is what happened Friday morning.
Thanks to this girl, we are helped to see that, no, ergodicity is not destiny. Although 1,000 monkeys can, conceivably, pound out the social and moral musings of each of Lev Tolstoy’s extensive novel meditations on the right conduct in life in descending order by page length, it seems they could just as easily run enchanted through a room of shiny iconic images, affixing them to their persons.
Ergodicity is not destiny, and this probably also isn’t the year for someone to take it on themselves to see that Galilee-Stylee Crunk breaks out to get its fart in the pews of fashion.
It might be time, however, if it please the universe, to get a grilled cheese and avocado sandwich for lunch.
Technorati Tags: Jesus earrings
Friday Sits Atop the Week Like a Solid Gold Cherry Atop a Sleep Deprivation Sundae
Tonight, wondergroup The National bare their profession on stage at the South Street Seaport. No scene for longshoremen, no scene for candied ladies of the fly-specked late afternoon, no scene any longer, even, for the fishmonger- the Seaport is a beautiful place where you can spend money. However, occasionally, in the long, muggy apology that is the New York summer, some great free rock shows are presented there. This is one of them. It’s part of the River to River festival, and its in support of the very deservedly-well-received “Boxer”, which you might recall me slobbering on at Heso, and in these very pages.
Sunday, August 17, Tiger Beer is having their annual crabfest at Riverview in Long Island City between 48th and 50th avenue. You could take the water taxi if you so desired. The website has directions. I can’t tell if there’s free beer or not, but I guess I’m innocently hoping so.
It’s late summer in New York. Go to work, get out of there, unwind. May the wind take your troubles away, and the events upcoming prompt you to utter at least one good, follow-through type “EUREKA.”
Oh, and new street paste-ups at Bedford and Grand.
Technorati Tags: Goings-on, Indie, Music, Booze, Rock, South Street Seaport, The National
Ted Leo and the Thermals at McCarren Park
Applications for Reincarnation Now Being Taken in Local Government Chapter of Celestial Affairs
There was an interesting story in the past week or so perched atop the newswire regarding recent Chinese legislation that the living Buddha’s of Tibet be required to register prior to reincarnation. More than one report made the comment that begs to be committed to the page here that, despite the adamantly secular nature of the People’s Republic’s government, they would so baldly dabble in the affairs of religious administration while officially accepting the concept of reincarnation. Certainly other motivations here exist for doing such a thing, but it is an interesting case of forces of opposition taking on the attributes of one another.
Ted Leo this Weekend
I’m happy to announce that I will be able to continue my custom of repeatedly seeing Ted Leo in concert this weekend, when he plays the McCarren Park Pool for free on Sunday, 8/12. Also on hand will be the Thermals, a band I don’t really know that much about, but whose last album has been highly recommended to me.
Yes, so, this Sunday, take that L train to the first stop with the rest of the babies, ingenues, hipsters, missteppers and miscreants, tattoo-wearers, rockers, and lifestyle triers-on. Should be real- which is rare for this neighborhood.
Technorati Tags: Goings-on, McCarren Park, Music, Ted Leo
Gui Boratto: Chromophobia
The name of Brazilian DJ Gui Boratto’s work of SonicRothko House, Chromophobia, is the only thing about this album that I don’t think fits. It’s an album of definite strokes. It’s an album of strict punctuation. It’s a visual album, absolutely, and one that stands very far afield of anything drab or colorless. It’s layers of discrete monophonics, each tone bold and uncomplicated, undistracted within itself by minor tones or deviations. It’s like looking at a Rothko. It’s like a Lichtenstein. It’s reminiscent of another very visual work by a fuzzier act in less of a hurry, the very good “In a Beautiful Place Out In the Country” EP by Boards of Canada- especially that record’s kaleidoscopic dream-strobing finishing track, Zoetrope. It’s like that, and yet it still opens up sometimes just enough to give you a cinematic, sparse orchestral fill before the sequencers start back in with the blipping density.
If it hasn’t arrived on your television under cover of Nissan advertisement, Minneapolis, MN headquartered retailer and New York City toeholder corporation Target seasonal spot, or culpability-defying, life-enhancing STD medication commercial, then just wait a few measures- destined for the mainstream feelgood techno track “Beautiful Life” is probably just one commercial bumper away from playing behind the box of habit-breaking nicotine patches you’re going to need to quit smoking the cigarettes you’re puffing while you chill and wait for this track to air.
Chromophobia was released in February of this year, 2007, on German label Kompakt.
Technorati Tags: electronica, Music, Gui Boratto, record reviews
Andrew Weatherall: The Bullet Catcher’s Apprentice
I was a huge fan of “From the Double Gone Chapel” by Two Lone Swordsmen with its filthy noir, reverb drowned distorted intensity. I loved the follow-up to Double Gone Chapel, the Big Silver Shining Motor of Sin EP, with its remix of their cover of Gun Club‘s “Sex Beat” and two new original tracks “Feast” and “Hollywood Shotguns”. They still reeked of unease and heavy reverb, but on that release pulled further in toward a clean and squelchy truer house sound. However, if you’ve heard either of the two Wrong Meeting releases by Two Lone Swordsmen, released this year on their own Rotters Golf Club label, you know that they’ve more or less committed to adapting their lurching, recorded in a culvert-pipe guitar electro sound to a live, Brit-rock bar-and-chart band format.
The to-date Two Lone Swordsmen sound, broken from with their new release, finds its continuation here, in Single Lone Swordsman Andrew Weatherall’s able DT’s-wracked knob-twitching fingers. It’s a further exploration of Bauhaus and Joy Division-pioneered gothic guitars and bass effected and plugged in to an enjoyably modulated version Giorgio Moroder’s four on the floor disco.
The obvious anchor track of The Bullet Catcher’s Apprentice is You Can’t Do Disco Without a Strat. It’s a great melding of Weatherall’s creaking, growling, echo-chambered menacing vocals, and his ability to layer sounds to create a true and truly fat synthetic disco track. The track is a nod to “From Here to Eternity”era breakthrough Moroder tracks like “Lost Angeles” and “First-Hand Experience in Second-Hand Love”, down to his use of spectrum-smearing harmonica vocoders and disco queen-sweet songbird choruses. It’s a nod to a master that makes itself more than equal to the task. More than that, the synthetic discotheque bassline he reverts to for the chorus walks nearly imperceptibly, fooling the expectations by not being a simple, automatic arpeggio, but one that dips and evolves at complicated intervals, deepening the feeling of depth in each of the tone-freaky patches and rhythms he relies on.
And let’s talk about that, shall we? Weatherall’s production JUMPS, not only because it is well compressed, is comprised of clean, undiminished signals, but also because the man knows how to put sounds together to bang out a bass drum that’s a hot chimera of real audio samples and recordings and low-end trunk rumbling bass computer Detroit-grandchild sequencer action. His basslines are heavily layered, giving a pleasing beefy depth, a depth that’s modulated, reverbed, effected at different layers at different time, never with one layer stepping on the spectrum of another. He has a mendicant’s devotion to sound, the know-how to make his ideas a reality, and a real talent for making dance music that somehow excludes the prick club-going, don’t-listen-to-the-music-anyway set. This isn’t bleeding edge, it’s compound fracture, bone poking through the skin, marrow spilling-edge.
Technorati Tags: electronica, Music, Andrew Weatherall, record reviews
