Posts tagged ‘experimental’
Quiet City – A Reminder
Quiet City - May 14th 2010
Don’t forget about this…
May 14th
Quiet City
connect_icut
Dr. Dad’s Sound Lab
Holzkopf
Kellarissa
Blim (115 East Pender, Vancouver)
8pm
connect_icut – “Chrome Burner Holy Day”
connect_icut at Fake Sleep by Steve Louie
More great Fake Sleep images at Steve Louie’s Flickr page.
connect_icut Shows – A Reminder
Tonight:
Fake Sleep 6 featuring Angel Lust, coin gutter, connect_icut & Empty Love
VIVO Media Arts Centre (1965 Main Street, Vancouver)
8.30pm
May 14th:
Quiet City featuring connect_icut, Dr. Dad’s Sound Lab, Holzkopf & Kellarissa
Blim (115 East Pender, Vancouver)
8pm
Quiet City - May 14th 2010
Fake Sleep 6
Fake Sleep 6
This is that other connect_icut gig mentioned in the previous post. Sadly, it will almost certainly turn out to be the final Fake Sleep show because Brad Empty Love (who organizes these things) is moving to Montreal. Nevertheless, it’ll certainly be an exciting one – especially for those of us who missed coin gutter‘s performance at the Fake Jazz Fest, through no fault of our own.
Here are the full details:
Fake Sleep 6
Angel Lust (members of Aerosol Constellations and Ahna)
coin gutter
connect_icut
Empty Love
VIVO Media Arts Centre (1965 Main Street, Vancouver)
April 30th (doors 8.30pm)
Now that this show is definitely happening, preparations will have to be made, which may create a slight blog lack around these parts over the next couple of weeks. Still, there should be enough stuff in the archives for visitors to get their teeth into – particularly those of you who haven’t yet delved into that crazy post about obscure compilation albums by The Fall.
connect_icut – “Phil Slows the Dave Down”
Empty Love – “Sinking, Floating, Listlessly”
And don’t forget about…
Quiet City
connect_icut
Dr. Dad’s Sound Lab
Holzkopf
Kellarissa
Blim (115 East Pender, Vancouver)
May 14th (doors 8pm)
Static Kitten & Scant Intone – “Brood” (CSAF) MP3
Static Kitten & Scant Intone - "Brood"
The latest release in CSAF’s 10-20 2010 series of free MP3 downloads is now online. It’s called “Brood” and it’s a collaboration between Static Kitten and Vancouver-based digital electronica artist Scant Intone – aka Constantine Katsiris.
Constantine is also the fellow behind the Quiet City shows at Vancouver’s Blim gallery and – wouldn’t you just know it – there’s a Quiet City event coming up soon, which will feature a rare appearance from connect_icut.
Here are the details we have available right now:
Quiet City
connect_icut
Dr. Dad’s Sound Lab
Holzkopf
Kellarissa
Blim (115 East Pender, Vancouver)
May 14th (doors 8pm)
Benefit for CFRO Co-op Radio
Presented by Soundscape & Panospria
Please note that the artists are listed in alphabetical order and that this does not represent the actual running order of the show. Oh and watch this space for the announcement of another, sooner connect_icut show.
When Did This Happen???
Quiet City January 2010
Well, January 15th, apparently! Still it’s quite amazing that some of Vancouver’s finest experimental/electronic music acts, playing at one of the city’s most hospitable venues, managed to escape the attention of this here blog. That, presumably, is what one gets for refusing to join Facebook.
The good news is that connect_icut has been asked to perform at the next Quiet City show, which will take place on March 12th. More details will be posted here as and when they emerge. In the meantime, why not treat yourself to some lovely MP3s?
Aerosol Constellations – “Vii-Ii”
Coin Gutter – “anadiplosismeiosis”
connect_icut – “Betty & Veronica”
Aerosol Constellations
Crys Cole & Friends Live in Paris
Improv musician/sound artist Crys Cole is a friend of this here blog and any friend of this here blog is a friend of your ears. The sonically and visually startling video posted above is a montage of highlights from a performance Crys did in Paris recently. Allegedly, she has an LP coming out soon, which teams her up with Oren Ambarchi! We await it in tremulous anticipation.
Sylvain Chauveau – Nuage (Type) LP
Sylvain Chauveau - Nuage
Those of you who admire Max Richter’s blend of neo-classical composition, post-rock and electronica are strongly urged to investigate the work of Frenchman Sylvain Chauveau. At first glance, the two artists seem to have the exact same modus operandi. However, Chauveau’s music eschews the simple, melancholy loveliness of Richter’s compositions, in favour of a rather thornier aesthetic.
The Black Book of Capitalism, Chauveau’s first album, presented a startlingly lo-fi take on chamber music – with musty strings coming under siege from ominously chiming guitars and primitive sampling. More recently, his 10″ single S displayed a new-found mastery of digital signal processing – with shards of piano and guitar refined into ornate glitches and stutters.
But the best place to start – if only because it bares the closest resemblance to Max Richter’s work – is the quite staggeringly beautiful Nuage. Some wag recently noted that the rise of eclecticist composers like Chauveau and Richter may be related to the fact that soundtrack work is one of the few ways recording artists can still make a living. Whether or not this is true, the facts remain that Nuage is indeed a collection of music composed for films and that it often recalls the mellower soundtrack work of John Zorn.
Hopefully, Cheavau will gradually gain the recognition he deserves, which will allow him to build a discography as diverse – if not as voluminous – as Zorn’s. The available evidence suggests he has both the talent and the attitude to succeed on these terms. To give Sylvain Chauveau a helping hand, you are strongly urged to buy Nuage from Forced Exposure.
Not One but TWO Interesting Shows in Vancouver This Saturday
Valet (Honey Owens of Nudge) at Little Mountain, with Sinoia Caves.
Pulido Fennesz Siewert Stangl – A Girl & a Gun (Interstellar) 7″
Pulido Fennesz Siewert Stangl - A Girl & a Gun
What the hell is up with that cover, eh? We’ll deal with this issue in a minute. But first…
In the last couple of years, Christian Fennesz does seem to have become a little less choosy when it comes to collaborations. You have to hand it to him, though – for every collab with an experimental jet-set superstar like Ryuichi Sakamoto or Mike Patton, there’s one that teams Fennesz with some hardcore, grass-roots improvisers based in his native Vienna.
This 7″, released by Austrian label Interstellar, features the great man alongside Martin Siewert and Burkhard Stangl – names that should be familiar to long-term Fennesz fans. The unknown quantity here is Lucia Pulido. Apparently, she’s a fairly well-known Columbian singer and each side of this 7″ is based on a traditional Columbian song.
The recordings were made for an art film titled Film ist. A Girl & a Gun, which – judging by the vaguely grotesque sketches adorning the record’s cover – must be pretty, erm…. racy stuff. The songs, on the other hand, are quite straightforwardly pretty and civilized.
“Canto de Velorio” is full of chiming guitars, subtle electronics and cooing vocals. On “Canto de Zafra”, Pulido becomes rather more strident, with intense – but never less than decorative – results. Both sides are very accessible but richly inventive and original.
This seems like the kind of record that’s going to disappear from print pretty quickly. Hopefully, it’s not already too late for you to buy A Girl & a Gun from Touch.
Sparklehorse + Fennesz – In the Fishtank 15 (Konkurrent) LP
Sparklehorse + Fennesz - In the Fishtank 15
The early career of Christian Fennesz was positively littered with collaborative releases – of varying quality. A few years ago, Fennesz announced that he was going to start being a lot more choosy about collaborations, mainly concentrating on FennO’berg, his trio with Jim O’Rourke and Peter “Pita” Rehberg.
Rather confusingly, there have been no new FennO’berg albums since that time but Fennesz has gone on tour with Faith No More vocalist Mike Patton (an artist whose good intentions do little to mask his lack of talent) and has also appeared on an album by a rather nondescript indie rock act called Sparklehorse.*
You might be forgiven for greeting the news of a full-on Sparklehorse + Fennesz release with a copious yawn. But if you took the time to give said release a fair listen, well you’d be taking back that yawn pretty quickly, mister.
In the Fishtank 15 is the latest entry in the Konkurrent label’s series of collaborative releases, which has previously paired up Low with the Dirty Three and Tortoise with The Ex. It’s basically a document of Fennesz jamming in the studio with Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous and it really is surprisingly satisfying.
Things do not start off promisingly. Early on in the opening track (“Music Box of Snakes”) you can clearly hear Linkous fiddling with a delay pedal – usually the first sign of a clueless rock guitarist trying to be “experimental”. Things pick up pretty quickly though and Linkous ends up acquitting himself rather well – in spite of the fact that the whole session takes place in Fennesz’s abstract/electronic realm and barely strays into Linkous’s world of singers and songwriters.
In fact, if there’s a weak link here, it’s Fennesz’s guitar playing. Don’t take that the wrong way, Fennesz is an excellent guitarist – with a strong tone and a lovely melodic sensibility – but he does tend towards always playing the same kind of thing. There are a number of moments on this release where he sounds like he’s about to burst into his own classic tune “Codeine”, most obviously on “Christian’s Guitar Piece”.
And to be honest, the best parts of the whole record are the bits where Linkous’s voice makes an appearance, as on “Goodnight Sweetheart” and “If My Heart”. Listening to these tracks should be pretty humbling stuff for any Fennesz fans who’d written Linkous off as a mere indie rock hack. Maybe Sparklehorse isn’t so bad after all!
The vinyl version of In the Fishtank 15 is available for pre-order from Insound.
(*To be fair, there have been some pretty great Fennesz collab’s in recent years, perhaps most notably 2008′s Fennesz Brandlmayr Dafeldecker 2CD.)
