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early show 5pm, $6 // later show 9:30pm, $10 |
early show - Rodger Stella, Bren't Lewiis Ensemble, R. Jencks Rodger Stella
Rodger Stella is an American noise artist who is most well known for his work with the Pennsylvania noise groups Macronympha and O.V.M.N. (both groups existing as collaborations with Pittsburgh noise impresario Joseph Roemer), as well as the more recent Birmingham, Alabama duo Hollow Bush. He also has a concise and excellent body of solo work that both underlines his immense contribution to all of those groups as well as explores many unknown and strange new directions in sound.
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Bren't Lewiis Ensemble
"Thrilling document of the more radically deconstructive side of the Butte County Free Music Society (whose Induced Musical Spasticity box set is a mandatory purchase), with a bunch of sound actions drawn from 1984-1986. Brent Lewis Ensemble come across like a darker, more occult Glands Of External Secretion, combining the goof-off Scientific American appeal of the early LAFMS broadcasts with outer space shortwave and electro-acoustic group actions that would conjure the ghosts of Taj Mahal Travellers and The Skaters." - Volcanic Tongue |
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later show -- Cheap Time, Unnatural Helpers, Warm Soda -- 9:30pm, $10 Cheap Time (In the Red)
Cheap Time is a refined power pop vehicle that gleans the irresistible glittery nuances from all the right hiding spots for modern inspiration, and blasts them forth onto the futuristic palette of today's glam-savvy punk fans.
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6:00pm, $7 |
6:00pm show Mako Sica
"Mako Sica" is a translation of what many Native American tribes called "land bad"; hence the moniker of dusty mazes, buttes and spires created by millions of years of erosion in poisoned deserts. Taking on a phrase from an extinct language for a band name certainly carries a fair share of social metaphor, political baggage and spiritual darkness. The band lives and works in Chicago (also a Native American term meaning "wild onion"), where the city's rich jazz history and punk ideals give Mako Sica, containing two ex-members of avant/experimental band Rope, the complete freedom to create music which reflects the spirit of their chosen name.
The band's debut, Dual Horizon, was recorded and mixed by Todd Rittmann (D. Rider, US Maple, Singer) and Jim Zespy (Magnolia Electric Co.) at Logan Hardware. The sessions were captured completely live without any over-dubs and the result is a powerful and natural forty minute cycle in album form. Layered guitars emerge then disappear, primitive rhythms echo around ancient vocal chants and dark electric grooves lead the journey through a desert of unexpected peaks, valleys, and micro-songs. Their lengthy cinematic approach recalls Godspeed You Black Emperor! with the expressive freedom and abandon of Soft Machine and hometown heroes The Art Ensemble of Chicago. (bio)
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Brandon Nickell
"Well-constructed electronic compositions by Brandon Nickell which “ring” and resonate like super-nova church bells from the eighth dimension, in a gold and black embossed package decorated by the artist with one of his Op-Art styled grids, and issued under the title And If You Set This Mind Of Mine Afire Then On My Bloodstream I Yet Will Carry You (ISO_09), to my mind one of the finest titles Keiji Haino never came up with. Come to that Nickell proves he is not unwilling to travel similar paths as those blazed by the quasi-mystical all-in-black Japanese guitarist, occasionally exhibiting a single-minded devotion to working fibrous mental growths out of his system patiently and relentlessly, using sound and foreign techniques to do it. Frottage, howling, grunting and chiming seem to form the basis for many of these unusual pieces, none of which are content to settle into a familiar or welcoming envelope." - The Sound Projector |
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9:30pm, FREE |
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8:30pm, $6 |
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 Marisa Anderson (Portland)
"The Golden Hour is an utterly fabulous set of straight-to-tape improvisations for guitar and lap steel from Portland, Oregon based artist Marisa Anderson, who also plays with the Evolutionary Jass Band. While the world is not exactly under-populated with solo guitar records from the post-Delta blues, post-Takoma gene-pool, Anderson stands tall and proud. Her approach to playing her instrument hovers somewhere between extreme confidence and a kind of poetic tentativeness, coupled with an eager sense of the microtonal exploits you can uncover when a slide meets six strings. Her melodic sense is rustic, earthen, and deep, as though she has been playing these tunes for the better part of her life, but The Golden Hour really takes off when she combines this knowledge with a rambling, almost aleatory zeal for experimentation, most powerfully heard on the strung-out lights of “Electricity”, or the buzzing swarms of feedback that descend upon “Nebulae”. Anderson also has great tone-gruff, raunchy and brutal on “Drop Down” and “Nebulae”, revenant with vibrato on the pellucid “Last Light”. It’s hard to explain exactly how The Golden Hour works its magic, though I suspect it ahs to do with the deceptively off-the-cuff nature of the performances. Ultimately, these are improvisations borne from many years of hardcore woodshedding. It’s a spellbinding record." - Signal To Noise
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8:30pm, $8 |
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8:30pm, $6 |
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Love Songs
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9:30pm, $10 |
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9:30pm, $10 |
Popscene co-presents Cult of Youth. Tix available at the door. Cult of Youth
Born out of a love for the post-industrial music and culture that had inspired him ever since he had first discovered music as a teenager, Cult of Youth began as a series of home recordings by founder Sean Ragon. Ragon’s solo Cult of Youth project released a 7-inch and then one full length on then fledgling Dais Records (also responsible for introducing the world to Cold Cave and releasing Genesis P-Orridge’s pre-Throbbing Gristle recordings for the first time). The early recordings seemed to strike a chord with many people who felt alienated by the cultural irony and lo-fi slacker mentality that was ever present in independent music at the time. Adding three permanent members to the line-up: performance artist/director/painter/occult scholar Micki Pellerano on bass, machinist drummer Glenn Maryanski, and the violin virtuoso/goddess Christiana Key. (Key’s brilliant string arrangements were recently featured on new Zola Jesus single “Poor Animal.”)
This is their first album as a proper band, produced by Chris Coady and mixed by Swans producer Kevin McMahon; it’s an ideal realization of the amazing potential this new full band line-up. It is a neo-folk masterpiece, perhaps the first of its kind from an American band. Although still rooted in the acoustic guitar driven Teutonic chants of the early material, the focus has changed and the scope is broader. Cult of Youth shifts from delicate pagan folk music reminiscent of Paul Giovanni’s landmark soundtrack to The Wicker Man, to hazy Turkish psychedelic passages, and even to the rugged Americana of traditional country music. This debut is an unapologetic and unabashed search for a spiritual identity in an increasingly homogenized world. It serves as a clear and thorough introduction for all the burgeoning dark punks out there who wanna go a bit deeper but haven’t yet figured out where to start. (bio)
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 Chasms
Drenched in the dreaminess of early 4AD, Chasms takes familiar shoegaze affectations to biting temperatures, arriving intently at dysphoric soundscapes and swollen compositions. From whispered vocals to droning bass, and guitar that's as blistering as it is lush – all elements are commanded by a blown-out drum machine that throbs with industrial authority. Culling influences from the avant underbelly of decades past, the dark San Francisco duo released their debut "When It Comes" cassette EP on Dream Recordings in the summer of 2012. (bio)
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