SO PERCUSSION – must hear

What kind of music is this? For So Percussion, the question has never been an easy one. They’d never been just another modern performance ensemble anyway. Following two acclaimed albums of rigorous music by modern master Steve Reich and even-more-modern masters David Lang and Evan Ziporyn, as well as ongoing collaborations with electronic gurus Matmos, the 20-something quartet has discovered a bold new voice: their own. Coming together in the green pastures of New Haven at Yale’s graduate program, So Percussion was created to give fresh voice to what co-founder Jason Treuting calls “funky contemporary music.” Devoted to the conceptual dreamscapes of Reich, Iannis Xenakis, John Cage, and others, So established a disciplined work ethic, absorbing pieces over months in the Yale studio. A call to Bang on a Can founder David Lang yielded a commission. Called “a must-hear” by Billboard, their self-titled debut featured Lang’s “the so-called laws of nature.” In 2004, realizing Steve Reich’s nine-part “Drumming” as a quartet, they made one small step for music, one radical step for a percussion group: they overdubbed — and to great success. Having explored the past, in the form of Reich’s classics, and the present, in the form of Lang and Ziporyn’s freshest, it was time for So to start exploring the future. In that vein, their CD/DVD Amid the Noise began as an after-hours project. Eager to expand their palette, the members of So experimented with glockenspiel, toy piano, vibraphones, bowed marimba, melodica, tuned and prepared pipes, metals, a wayward ethernet port, and all kinds of sound programming. The resulting idiosyncratic tone explorations were synchronized to Jenise Treuting’s haunting films of street scenes in Brooklyn and Kyoto. “If you’re sick of the sounds you’ve got, you go and find more,” declares Sliwinski of the group’s sonic philosophy. “There’s always something to hit or rub or whatever.” It is an approach they have taken with them to countless educational programs, ranging from community talks to masterclasses with student percussionists and composers at Juilliard, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Texas, the University of Toronto, The Moscow Conservatory, and many other schools. This is an excerpt from the the band’s website where you can hear and download  some tracks and got the meaning of their project.

DIRTY PROJECTORS

One of the characteristics of the most interesting bands that have arisen in the U.S. musical scene is the dificulty to apply any labels. That categorization is needed to insert it in the musical market rules, just like a supermarket: “if you want post-rock-folk-trance, please go to the shelf 10X“.
When a group produces a music which is difficult to classify in the market criteria, will certainly be seeking new in the music and imposing its own identity. which is needed today to find out new and better works, combining talent and music knowledge with technologic resources available.
So the band Dirty Projectors (one more from Brooklyn) just brings exactly this to our ears and brains.
David Longstreth, leader of the band, have begun the project of experimental-rock in 2002 that included opera, electronic music, jazz, folk, African music, punk rock, among others.
Using all the resources of the contemporary music, that have been creating and producing sophisticated works, as could be seen and heard throughout the last years and is particularly refined in the last album Bitte Orca and th EP Temecula Sunrise. Longstreth could be viewed as this generation’s answer to Byrne, says BRANDON STOSUY.
Hype aside, the music of Dirty Projectors deserves attention: they are using all the resources of the contemporary music and exploring the limits of their own ability to create, and they are just in a good track.

In the videos below:
TIME BIRTHED SPILLED BLOOD from the Opera The Getty Address (the only animated opera about DON HENLEY. An avant-garde action flick poised for world domination, by Vs. Anna Films and Dirty Projectors. Directed by James Sumner, starring Dave Longstreth)

About the conception of the theme Temecula Sunrise, EP recently released

About post-rock and Iceland

Maybe it’s the  midnight sun or even aurora borealis phenomenon, but the fact is, musical scene in Iceland has some good and really creative bands.

Have you ever heard about Múm? First time someone told me about this band, it was classified like a band that make some delicious little noises to our ears.These so called “little noises”  is the band’s musical proposal: experimental music, eletronic effects and remixes.

Also from Iceland, with a similar proposal and coming from the same decade, the Sigur Rós band also uses musical resources like delicate vocals and experimentalism.

But before those two band came up, there was a little eskimo lady trying her luck in the music world, that’s right, Björk.  Eccentric, fresh and full of creativity, we may say that this avant-garde singer had opened up doors to other bands, that, later had drunk up a little in her source.

Well, let us just cut to the chase:

Múm’s Myspace

EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC IN BROOKLYN, AT A GLANCE

Dream in color, by Frank Morrison

In the beginning it was the emptiness, so arrived the artists. Not necessary there was the light but slowly arrived the audience. After all, in spite of the light or the darkness, arrived the New York Times.
Neighborhood of immigrants, poor and therefore properties at affordable prices, attracted artists and their marginal, experimental and daring proposals.
Music students, musicians, singers are creating what might be called a sound of their own neighborhood, permeated by influences of the whole world that are opposed to exhausted pop trends. Instrumental, electronic and psycodhelic music, rock and brass bands, concret music, funk, jazz. So this is Brooklyn. Now the nightlife have grown up: clubs, art gallery, recovered buildings and, of course, the speculative boom.
Setting the highlight on Brooklyn, let’s read Al Margolis talking in 2006 about the beggining, in this article published @ The Brooklyn Rail.

A PRE HISTORY OF LIVE EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC IN BROOKLIN (Dec, 2006)

The timing of this article may be perfect. As I write, the New York Times has just published a piece about the renaissance of rock clubs in New York City in the post-CBGB era, citing Brooklyn as “the biggest growth area.” Well, twenty years ago there may have been musicians living in Brooklyn, but you certainly couldn’t get anyone to come into Brooklyn to see music. How do I know? We tried.
In 1985, after some time living on the West Coast, I moved back to the ancestral home of Brooklyn. In 1986 Doug Walker of the post-spacerock group Alien Planetscapes began having concerts in his third-floor walkup over a fish store on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. (Sadly, Doug died this past April.) These were the days of the cassette network, where you found out from magazines like Op, Sound Choice, and Option about who was making and trading interesting music without commercial considerations worldwide—by mail. (Among the almost–household names who have come through the cassette scene are Merzbow, Jim O’Rourke, Amy Denio, Francisco Lopez, John Hudak, and many others.)
To quote cassette-network pioneer Carl Howard: “In the mid-1980s, the explosion of alternative music networking through things called audio cassettes was at its peak. Doug Walker had already offered the world both duet and trio versions of Alien Planetscapes with fellow-traveller performers such as Louis Boone (Born to Go; The Land of Guilt and Blarney; Friends of Mescalito) and David Prescott. Performances usually occurred in whatever Brooklyn apartment Doug happened to be living in at the time, due to the inherent bulkiness of the musical equipment, as well as due to the extreme age of some of the analog synthesizers and mixers. “Doug contacted me early in 1986 because he had seen my alternative and self-published music magazine ARTITUDE, and may have been aware that I had been running the cassette label audiofile tapes as well. While Doug had been a cassette trader of live rock and jazz for years, he had also begun trading Alien Planetscapes tapes internationally with like-minded producers of low-budget, self-released music on cassette. It further helped matters that Al Margolis, whose Sound of Pig cassette label was already in high gear by 1986, lived locally as well. Doug began contacting people throughout this DIY network ambitiously.”
There was a small scene happening, and Doug’s was a place to see interesting music and either trade ideas with old friends or meet new ones. Dave Prescott, Arnold Mathes, Barney Jones, Cheryl Sobas, Pat Gillick—some of these people I played with, and some just made music I enjoyed, but the connections, both personal and musical, were invaluable. For example: I had met Cheryl through reading about her in Sound Choice. We got together, then started going to Doug’s. I did a performance with her there along with guitarist Larry Olsen and drummer Paul Richard, and then we all began to play and record in various combinations. Cheryl met Pat, who she still lives with to this day, who was a friend of Ron Anderson of the Molecules, and—well, you get the picture.
Somehow, in 1987, myself, Carl Howard, husband-and-wife experimentalists Dan and Detta Andreana, woodwind player Brian Charles, and bassist/DJ Dave Mandl hooked up with fellow musician David Chevan, who was running a weekly concert series called Bar None at Lauterbach’s, a neighborhood bar in Park Slope. They had a live rock series on weekends and, probably trying to make some extra dough during the week, they gave Chevan a spot. He was busy working on his masters degree and having a kid, so at some point he had to back out, and he passed the series to us. So for seven months in 1987 and 1988 we found ourselves in charge of a weekly new music series. In South Park Slope, Brooklyn.
And it was fun. We all got a chance to play and present not just music but dance and poetry. There was jazz and free-improvisation and electronic experimentation. Musicians who were traveling wanted to play there. An audience? I can never remember ever having more that twenty people (if that many). The series was constantly shifting days—from Wednesday to Thursday to Tuesday. We got some press. We presented, among many others, Amy Denio, Ron Anderson and Yellow Tang, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, Judy Dunaway, Alien Planetscapes, Sue Ann Harkey, Ellen Christi, Jack Wright, Davey Williams, David Fulton, and Charles Gayle, not to mention a long list of poets and dancers.
I think the performances by Demo Moe—a really loud rock improv trio—and E. J. Vodka, who was loud and industrial, and had a real goat’s head that he kicked around, and smashed the place and left it a mess, were the death of the series. The local neighbors were complaining, most of the audience who did come didn’t drink, and I think the owners felt that they could make as much money with a new dartboard as they did with all this “art.” And it would be quieter. So in April 1988 what might have been the only weekly new-music series in Brooklyn died.
We had fun. And now that I no longer live in Brooklyn, and the old neighborhood has Issue Project Room and Barbès and all the other venues—well, it happened before. Just so you know.

About the Author

Al Margolis runs the Pogus label and has performed and recorded for the past twenty-two years as sound-artist If, Bwana.

Is It Indie?

Indie Music By Definition ( from  Shepizzle)

Defining Indie music can be like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree, it’s just not the easiest thing to do. Categorizing it can be just as difficult because so much of Indie music made out on the fringes and new genres are created in a desperate attempt to classify a certain band or a certain sound. If you have gripes about what we call Indie or which genre a particular band should fall under, let us know and we’ll give it as much consideration as we can possibly muster and then probably just leave things the way they are! Indie (abbreviated from Independent) is a term that has been used to classify music for quite some time. Indie music in the 80’s was much different than the Indie music of the 90’s which are both very different from what is deemed “Indie” today. The Indie Attitude Indie music is not so much a sound as it is an attitude. Most Indie bands and artists have the Do-It-Yourself attitude, they write their own music, book their own shows, get in with a small record label and distribute their albums on a smaller scale than artists and bands who have some of the huge music moguls backing them up. In many ways Indie musicians are underground, at least initially, and are content to be so. Some controversy arises when an underground Indie band gains enough popularity and fan base that they are able to headline shows and sign bigger record deals, and maybe even (heaven forbid!) have their music video play on MTV. Truth is, many Indie bands choose to keep it low key and keep to their underground roots. Others use their popularity to catapult them into a bigger spotlight. It’s up to you to decide whether or not a band is “selling out” if they sign with a big label. However, some of the bands you’ll see on this site were once considered Indie, even if some wouldn’t consider them so now. Check out our growing list of Indie artists and bands on the Reviewed Artists & Bands  page.

FLOTATION WALL – beyond the pop music 4 good

Flotation Walls is a Columbus, Ohio group that combines choral music, psych-folk, IDM, Tropicalia, cabaret, Ye-Ye and orchestral music into a distinct brand of intelligent art-pop. Since its inception in 1996 as an experimental performance group, Flotation Walls has been led by singer/songwriter/instrumentalist Carlos Avendano through many different styles and formats.

In 2004, Avendano began work on NATURE, the group’s forthcoming debut full-length release. Over its five years in the making, the album has grown to feature the efforts of over 25 musicians. The songs move through various areas of 20th- and 21st-century music, from the French-waltz-turned-Disney-nightmare “Sperm & Egg,” to the cinematic, four-on-the-floor memento mori “Worms.” Avendano’s recurrent lyrical themes of mating, youth, desperation and family provide a disarming narrative among heavy orchestration and soaring choral arrangements.

In 2007, Avendano began to assemble a group that could support the eventual release of NATURE. Ryan Stolte-Sawa (violin, guitar, piano, synths, vocals), Zak Moses (electric bass, upright bass, vocals) and Luke Brevoort (drums) now join Avendano to comprise Flotation Walls. The group’s live show is high in energy as four musicians work to recreate the sound of 25 in their trademark yellow outfits. All the while, they make a deliberate effort to connect with the audience in a good-humored manner that is juxtaposed with the sincerity of their performance.

Following the release of NATURE, Flotation Walls will be quitting their jobs and touring indefinitely in support of the album. Lets listen their works at their website.

SUSANNA & THE MAGICAL ORCHESTRA: new album is out

Yesterday was released their third album “3” (Rune Grammofon) and one of the ten tracks could be listened @ myspace! The beautiful Someday, which shows the dramatic and cool style of the vocalist Susanna Wallumrød and keyboard player Morten Qvenild. They will be playing a special concert at the festival Punkt in Kristiansand on the 4th of September. The official release-concert will be at Parkteateret in Oslo 10th of September.day. And the album can be bought at Itunes. more about the band

FUN*KEY – funk dalla Sardenha

Fun*Key is a creative movement and promoter of culture funk. The club membership is free, just send your own groove in a sealed envelope to FIFA (Federation of Italian Acrobatic Funk). Formally we are a group and our music is supported by three pillars: The first is an old and solid friendship, the second is the love of so with Funkadelia was revealed and disseminated by George “Dr. Funkenstein “Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars while the third is the desire to spread the first two points to invade the minds of those who listen and engage as many people as possible. We know what we want: to be unique, and only very Funkadelics. Like a basketball team going forward playing and passing the ball to the table in the most spectacular possible. No matter. We are heroes, superheroes of truth and this text should have demonstrated it. Spread groove where we’ve been and let the funk happen smoothly so gladly do it and then wake up the funk in someone who already is funky and does not know, or practically all. We like to appear and be smug. We like to spread shit and shake our heads under a rhythm. Ghetto, ghetto, ghetto!
Our dreams and limit is have no limit. Unfortunately we’re not black. Here in Italy we are not created to call the other brother. Religion, music, art, suffering, nothing has helped. But one day we’ve received the call of the groove and we all answered: STAN-G, Uele, FUNKY ‘DU, DJ FUNKEE, FEEL HIP-HOP & MORIS: together we are the FUN*KEY. We defend the Earth against the dark forces and the imobility. We believe in the funk and funk played on planet Earth. Keys created to bring smiles through fun and fun through the funk.
As a group we are born in September 17, 1999, anticipating a little the birth of the new millennium. Our music is kind of funk’n'roll lowers his head forward to anything and anyone: an explosive mix of rock, soul & hip-hop! Besides playing constantly throughout Sardinia, we’ve been playin’ around the world. We released two beautiful self-produced demo: Coloring Black and White (2006) and 4 / 4 = 1. In 2006/2007, we joined the project in Balentia Stoccada ‘E Funk: we put the funk, the tools and put them in Italian and rap bases, scretch and rap in Sardinian, a good fusion between hip-hop and live music that we intend to repeat short (just keep an eye on raga!). Now, we can record not one, but even in the next 2 CD release!

TRIPS AND FALLS

Trips and Falls is formed by Jacob Romero(guitar, voice, various instruments), Paul Gareau (drums, percussion, various instruments), Amanda Caron (vocals, shakers) Ashleigh Delaye (bass, glockenspiel) . They are from Montreal and make music as they like, and listening their songs we’ll see that they are in a good track, that’s was just I’ve felt when I’ve listened In the real life he wears corduroy pants, and imediately I listened another ones @ myspace. Impressed with the band’s purpose, I’ve decide to send some questions to Jacob to publish here, and I’ve got it, few words about a great work, that we must know.
Unbb – What’s the real meaning of music for you?
I don’t know. I try to imagine life without music and that’s a pretty hard thing to imagine. I would say that we are sort of spoiled today as we can listen to music whenever we want. There is so much media, where not too long ago you would have to actually be at a performance to listen to music. However, music has become such an integral part of life as it can shape your whole day, or you can shape your whole day with the music that you listen to. I listen to music in different situations and certain music seems to be more appropriate at certain times. For me music means, well I don’t want to say it means everything, but it certainly means quite a lot. It stirs up emotions, thoughts, images, it can be a total experience. When I play and when I listen it is a part of my entire experience. That’s awesome.
Unbb – How do you see the pop music nowadays?
I am not even sure I like the term pop music anymore, or indie or indie pop or any of that. The term “pop” has been so overused that I find it sort of silly to have any sort of definition for “pop music” anymore. I suppose in a strict sense it could just mean popular and in that sense I guess I do not really listen to that much contemporary pop music. So, I guess I would say that I do not really regard pop music nowadays in any sort of a favorable light. I know I can be a bit pretentious, but in my more positive outlook I see “pop music” as always changing and sort of wide open. All sorts of things can be pop music, and that’s cool.
Unbb – Tell me about your “early days”, how did you begin?
We were born, we played in our bedrooms growing up, and then met up somewhere while we were doing other things. Paul (the drummer) and I met at University, and discovered that I played guitar and dabbled in singing and he played the drums. However, we were not doing anything with this and we both didn’t really know why. We had both played in other bands previously but had sort of given up on it for a while. Paul’s friends were in a band and needed some musicians so he asked me to play and I sheepishly said yes. Then out of that experience we decided to form our own band. I was always looking for somebody to write lyrics for music I was writing but I never found that so I just decided to try myself. Wrote some songs, practiced them and decided to record an album. Found Ashleigh (bass) and Amanda (vocals) and they fit right in. It has worked out so far, made one album last year and are currently finishing another one. Just trying to make music that we like and hopefully other people like it too.

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DETACHMENTS – subversion and conversion

Detachments are a London-based, Northern-affirmed trio led by Lancastrian masterdom, Sebastien Marshal, guitarist Max Moreau (Antwerp, Belgium), and drummer, Pete Dawson (Leeds).

Their musicality is both wide and niche, incorporating the Northern electronic permutations of Factory Records, Eighties androgyne synth-poppers, to modern pioneers such as DFA and Warp Records. Imagine a hybrid victim of New Order, The Cure and Depeche Mode.

Their ability to present abstruse, cold veneers with wistful melodies in pop structures is their magna carta. Their sinewy, incisive rhythms are often interwoven with layers of lush melancholic tonality; sharpshooter shot through with infectious, barbed hooks. “Tuneful pathologies” as the NME ascribes.
Detachments have been working hard with Trevor Jackson, Tim Goldsworthy, and Andrew Weatherall in the studio. Alongside this illustrious talent, the group has collaborated with the enigmatic Salem to dream-pop effect. It’s time for subversion and conversion.