D.I.Y. Mummy

Sidrassi Gamelan and Second Nature at the Creative Alliance, Baltimore: April 15, 2011

2011-04-12T08:16:00.001-04:00

8PM at Creative Alliance, Baltimore
Friday, April 15, 2011

$10 general/ $5 members

Creative Alliance at The Patterson3134 Eastern Avenue
Baltimore Maryland 21224

Sidrassi Gamelan (Post-National Alternate Reality Ensemble No. 1):
Birtton Powel - light metronomes
John Berndt - Sidrassi Organus, gong, mixing desk
Neil Feather - wiggler, vibro-wheel array
Paul Neidhardt - gong
Anonymous - Gong
Owen Gardner - Sidrassi Organus
Andrew Bernstein - Sidrassi Organus
Mike Muniak - Sidrassi Organus
Stewart Mostofsky - Sidrassi Organus
Steve Korn - Sidrassi Organus
John Eaton - choir
Elisa Urtiaga - choir

This group will be playing new compositions written especially for it.

Second, the amazing Baltimore improvising orchestra, Second Nature, with:
Andy Hayleck - synth
Kate Porter - cello
Liz Merideth - viola
Paul Neidhardt - percussion, friction
Dan Breen - various
Tom Boram - various, voice
Sam Burt - bass clarinet, electronics
Rose Burt - reeds
Owen Gardner - cello
Mike Muniak - electronics
Elisa Urtiaga - voice
Shelly Blake-Plock - strings, etc.
Jeff Carey - electronics
Tiffany Defoe - reeds

News on the Ami Dang Tour

2011-01-27T13:13:00.002-05:00

From the source at Ehse Records: http://blog.ehserecords.com/?p=230

Ami Dang -- Video for 'Where Nothing Grows'...

2011-01-27T13:10:00.000-05:00

available here.

Video produced by Deep In The Game's Mark Brown.

The Annual Red Room Holiday Show

2010-12-28T10:43:00.002-05:00

Red Room

Thursday, December 30th, $5

John Dierker, Will Redman, Mark Miller, Stewart Mostofsky, Jeff Carey, Alex Weber, and Adam Hopkins

A Red Room holiday tradition for nearly 15 years, John Dierker will lead a diverse group of musicians in improvised music sets ranging from duos to large ensemble

425 E. 31ST STREET BALTIMORE, MD. 21218, USA

Ehse is proud to announce the release of Ami Dang’s new album, "Hukam" (Ehse 017) February 20, 2010

2010-12-24T22:29:00.000-05:00

Ami Dang
"Hukam" (Ehse 017)
Ehse Records
ehserecords.com

Ehse to Drop New LP by Ami Dang: the Baltimore Underground Id of a Bollywood Diva

Consider Ami Dang running for class president of this year’s crop of “New Weird World”. Creating melodies out of a mixed bazaar of sitar and hallucinogenic dance pop coupled with the right balance of underground menace and chill sweetness, Ami Dang has crafted an album that brings the world’s lesser traveled streets alive with Eastern nuance and a Western wink.

“Crafted from an intersecting background of classical sitar and composition, experimental electronics and visual performance, combined with a deep love for ’90s dance beats and a fuzzy memory of megaphones blaring Indian pop songs into the streets of New Delhi.”
- Arthur Magazine

Dang hails from Baltimore by way of New Delhi and Punjab. Her music combines the sound of these geographies -- part Dan Deacon, part K Swift, part Ravi Shankar, part M.I.A., part Lata Mangeshkar. Her explorations lead to catchy Baltimore Club inspired pop tracks with an experimental sensibility coupled with electronic arrangements of Sikh hymns and musical raga.

“Her voice ranges from subtle and sublime to massive and nearly overwhelming in power... I’m convinced that given the right amping, Dang could obliterate buildings with them.”
Aural States

Thoroughly 21st century in every way, Ami Dang’s “Hukam” is contemporary global experimental pop at its twisted best. With sweet sitar melodies, Bollywood-diva style vocals, and both minimal and maximal electronic production, her music—pop, experimental, ambient, and house—is ripe for 2011 and beyond.

“Unabashedly into pop... instantly charismatic and catchy... dancing across the stage in a bright turquoise and pink dress, surrounded by bright rhythmic electro-pop... laying trained classical sitar over layers of drone and textured electronic feedback. This is a rare and promising combination, and absolutely one we should all be watching.”
- Impose Magazine

Ehse is proud to announce the release of Ami Dang’s new album, "Hukam" (Ehse 017) February 20, 2010.

“It's abrupt when you hear Indian classical music as meditative and spiritual--that is, as it is intended to be. And it's even more abrupt when it's heard woven into Western avant-garde music, each element working to develop/unshroud the other. This act is a large part of the sublime art of Ami Dang.”
- City Paper

Keenan Lawler & Susan Alcorn // Marc Miller & Shelly Blake-Plock - Nov 27 at Red Room

2010-11-27T13:05:00.002-05:00

Tonight at Red Room!
Saturday, November 27th, $6

Keenan Lawler & Susan Alcorn // Marc Miller & Shelly Blake-Plock
A Night of Improvised Strings

Prepare yourselves for a night of radical 'string theory' from some first-string free improvisers this evening at Red Room. Lawler and Alcorn bring steel guitar and pedal steel explorations, while Miller and Blake-Plock destroy it on acoustic steel string guitar and double bass.

at The Red Room
c/o Normals Books and Records
425 E. 31st Street
Baltimore

http://www.redroom.org/
Twitter: @highzero

Ami Dang LP Coming in December

2010-10-05T22:26:00.000-04:00

Ami Dang mentioned in Washington City Paper; Dang's new LP will be released by Ehse Records in December. Here's a link to an Arthur radio transmisson with Ami.

NPR reviews Tomoko Sauvage and M.C. Schmidt at the 2010 High Zero Festival

2010-09-30T12:02:00.000-04:00

NPR on Tomoko Sauvage and M.C. Schmidt at the 2010 High Zero Festival:

I could have listened to this set all night.

The full piece published over on the A Blog Supreme blog includes audio of the performance as well as pics and a lengthy review.

12th High Zero Festival of Experimental Music

2010-09-19T20:40:00.001-04:00

The 12th High Zero Festival of Experimental Music All Week!
see www.highzero.org for all details; numerous site specific performances around town

Tuesday 9/21 at Gallery 4, H&H Building, 7:30
Opening of "Electric Petting Zoo," High Zero sound installations by Tristan Perich, Karl Ekdahl, and Julie Benoit
With an opening performance by:
- Tristan Perich, in duo with Tom Goldstein, on crotales, perform a hypnotic minimalist composition by Perich
- Ich Auch: First live performance of synth/drums improv duo with Karl Ekdahl.
- Salamander Wool Quartet. Carson Garhardt's music, in first ever quartet format, with Dan Breen, Paul Neidhardt, and Walker Teret.
- Tristan Perich, 1 bit improvisation.
Recommending donation for performance: $5

Wednesday 9/22 at 2640 Space; 8PM $5
Ghost Dancers: An special atmospheric concert by Susan Alcorn (pedal steel guitar) and Claire Barratt (movement) at 2640 Space (2640 St. Paul St.).

Thursday 9/23, Opening Night at Theatre Project, 8;30, $12
Experimental performances with Shelly Blake-Plock, Ami Dang, Owen Gardner, Liz Meredith, Tuna Pase, Karen Borca, Tiffany Defoe, Shayna Dunkelman, Marc Miller, Michael Muniak, M.C. Schmidt, Dragos Tara, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Andrea Neumann, Juanjosè Rivas and Wobbly.

Friday 9/24 at Theatre Project, 8;30, $12
Experimental performance with Andrea Neumann, Tiffany Defoe, Hans Koch, Stewart Mostofsky, Karen Borca, Ami Dang, Ayako Kataoka, Tomoko Sauvage, Owen Gardner, Liz Meredith, Dr. Johannes Rosenberg, Drew Daniel, Dan Deacon, Tuna Pase, Juanjosè Rivas.

Saturday Matinee 9/25 at Theatre Project, 1PM, $12
Two special projects conceived and curated by Baltimore's Ayako Kataoka and Dan Deacon involving numerous High Zero performers.

Saturday Night 9/25 at Theatre Project, 8;30, $12
Experimental performance with Karen Borca, Hans Koch, Liz Meredith, Michael Muniak, Tuna Pase, Gary Smith, Shelly Blake-Plock, Dr. Johannes Rosenberg, Wobbly, Ju Suk Reet Meate, Marc Miller, Stewart Mostofsky, Tomoko Sauvage, Shayna Dunkelman, Juanjosè Rivas.

Sunday 9/26 at Theatre Project, 8;30, $12
Experimental performance with Keith Fullerton Whitman, Owen Gardner, Marc Miller, Gary Smith, Shelly Blake-Plock, Dan Deacon, Ju Suk Reet Meate, Ayako Kataoka, Hans Koch, Tomoko Sauvage, M.C. Schmidt, Drew Daniel, Shayna Dunkelman, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Wobbly.

Baltimore’s 12th Annual High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music Again Set to Organize Chaos

2010-09-01T07:58:00.000-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
8.31.10

High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music
September 23rd - 26th, 2010
@ The Theatre Project 45 W Preston St., Baltimore

site: highzero.org

twitter: @highzero

PR contact: diymummy@gmail.com

Baltimore’s 12th Annual High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music Again Set to Organize Chaos

"High Zero Festival is the premier showcase for spontaneous sound." NPR

“An utterly confounding yet utopian vision of musical possibilities.” Wire

High Zero is the premier festival of Improvised, Experimental music on the East Coast, being fully devoted to new collaborations between the most inspired improvisors from around the world.

“A fertile laboratory of musical possibility without equal.” Signal to Noise

The festival brings together 28 core musicians each year, but also involves a much larger subculture of musicians in Baltimore and on the East Coast. Musicians play sets of improvised music alongside improvisers they are often meeting for the very first time on stage. Unlike many related festivals, High Zero is not narrow in terms of sensibility or subculture, but rather widely inclusive of all the different types of experimental music-making in the moment.

“The continent’s finest four days of all-in improv and otherwise musical exploration.” City Paper

"Baltimore is becoming a crucible for serious experimental music produced outside of academia and concert halls." ArtPapers

The fact that half of the festival's core participants are from Baltimore speaks to the depth of Baltimore's experimental music subculture, which in recent years has grown to be one of the richest cities in the country for experimental art.

“Best Music Festival” City Paper and Baltimore Magazine

"A striking glimpse into the avant-garde and a creative process limited only by the imagination." Baltimore Sun

The festival has a unique structure. HIGH ZERO is focused solely on new collaborations in freely improvised experimental music. Internationally famous musicians play side by side with younger "unknowns," united by their commitment to the musical imagination. Each year, Baltimore becomes a fertile meeting-ground for a large group of inspired players, drawn from a fascinating international subculture.

"Could there possibly be a better place for a festival of cutting edge, improvised music than Baltimore?" Washington Post

The festival exposes large audiences to this radical music in its pure form. Large-scale public concerts, recording sessions, workshops, and guerrilla street performances are all part of the heady mix. The players are carefully selected by the festival's organizers for their intense, unique music, whether it is based around dramatic intensity, humor, specially designed instruments, original approach, raw sound, or nearly superhuman instrumental technique. The resulting collaborations challenge the limits of music and delight by their audacity, expressiveness, immediacy, and innovation. It isn't about stars or established projects; it is about the most uncompromising and stimulating new improvised music we can bring together.

High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music

September 23rd - 26th, 2010
@ The Theatre Project 45 W Preston St., Baltimore

Musicians from Afar

Karen Borca (NYC): bassoon
Shayna Dunkelman (NYC): percussion
Ju Suk Reet Meate (Portland): trumpet
Hans Koch (Switzerland): bass clarinet
Andrea Neumann (Germany): inner piano
Tuna Pase (Istanbul): voice, flute, laptop
Juanjosè Rivas (Mexico City): circuit bending
Tomoko Sauvage (Paris): porcelain bowls, water
Gary Smith (United Kingdom): guitar
Li Tieqiao (China): saxophone
Keith Fullerton Whitman (Boston): electronics
Wobbly (California): electronics

Musicians from Baltimore

Shelly Blake-Plock: stringed instruments
Ami Dang: sitar, voice, electronics
Drew Daniel: electronics
Dan Deacon: electronics, tuba
Tiffany Defoe: saxophone
Owen Gardner: strings
Ayako Kataoka: electronics
Liz Meredith: viola
Marc Miller: guitar
Stewart Mostofsky: electronics
Michael Muniak: feedback
M.C. Schmidt: electronics

High Zero Special Projects

Dan Deacon (Baltimore)
Ayako Kataoka (Baltimore)
Dr. Johannes Rosenberg (Australia)
Dragos Tara (Switzerland)

High Zero Festival Sound Installations

September 21st - 26th, 2010
@ Gallery Four 4th Floor / 405 W Franklin St., Baltimore

Sound Installations
Tristan Perich (NYC)
Karl Ekdahl (Baltimore)
Julie Benoit (Baltimore)

For set lists and information about High Jinx street happenings, see: www.highzero.org

###

New Reviews: Lizz King, Salamander Wool, Katt Hernandez

2010-08-21T09:41:00.000-04:00

New Reviews:

"A mature and fully realised work that becomes better with every listen." -- Terrascope on Lizz King's All Songs Go to Heaven

"This is an album that will delight and surprise every time it is heard." -- Terrascope on Salamander Wool's Lunarsophic Sonambulist

"Unlovely is never boring, predictable, or safe; it accepts and exploits the possibilities and potentialities of the violin is a way that’s nothing short of astonishing." -- Splice Today on Katt Hernandez's Unlovely

All three LPs are available from Ehse Records.

2010 High Zero Festival: Artists Announced!

2010-08-10T21:17:00.005-04:00

This year's High Zero line-up is:

From Baltimore:

Ayako Kataoka, electronics
Drew Daniel, electronics
Stewart Mostofsky, electronics
M.C. Schmidt, electronics
Dan Deacon, electronics, tuba
Michael Muniak, feedback
Marc Miller, guitar
Owen Gardner, guitar
Shelly Blake-Plock, stringed instruments
Tiffany Defoe, saxophone
Ami Dang, sitar, voice, electronics
Liz Meredith, viola

From afar:

Keith Fullerton Whitman, electronics, Boston
Wobbly, electronics, California
Shayna Dunkelman, percussion, California
Li Tieqiao, saxophone, China
Karen Borca, bassoon, NYC
Tomoko Sauvage, porcelin bowls, Paris
Ju Suk Reet Meate, trumpet, Portland
Gary Smith, guitar, United Kingdom
Andrea Neumann, inner piano, Germany
Hans Koch, bass clarinet, Switzerland
Juan Jose Rivas, circuit bending, Mexico City
Tuna Pase, voice, flute, and laptop, Istanbul
Dr. Johannes Rosenberg, violin, technology, Australia
Dragos Tara, MAX/MSP, acoustic bass, Switzerland

SOUND INSTALLATIONS: Tristan Perich, Karl Ekdahl, Julie Benoit

And a special opening week show at 2640 Space featuring Susan Alcorn and Claire E. Barratt.

Terrascope Reviews Salamander Wool

2010-08-03T10:09:00.001-04:00

Terrascope on the new Salamander Wool LP:

About four minutes in, things start to click more into place and you realise that what you might just be listening to is a rough demo of a lost Incredible String Band album or that hurriedly shelved third Syd Barrett album before they packed him off to who knows where.

J.Gräf + Salamander Wool duosolo tour

2010-07-28T11:31:00.000-04:00

J.Gräf + Salamander Wool duosolo tour

AUGUST 7 - 20, 2010

7 Baltimore - Bentalou House ,348 S Bentalou, with Yoinsh and Caleb Johnston (Bankmaestro)

9 NYC - Zebulon with Skeletons + Seve (shinkoyo) v-j-ing

10 Somerville, MA - PA's Lounge, 345 Somerville Ave

11 Easthampton, MA - Flywheel (in the old town hall) 43 Main St. Easthampton, MA With Outerspace and Drainolith (members of Emeralds and Aids Wolf)

12 Belfast, Maine - barn in Belfast, Maine

13 Montreal – JAMM at E Cagibi, 5490 Boulevard Saint Laurent, 9 pm with the you me colour band and royal palms

14 Ottowa – JAMM in Blake’s basement

15 Toronto – JAMM @ Somewhere There227 Sterling Rd. Unit #112, the entrance is off Rattan St., with The Deep, Michelangelo Iaffaldano/D.Alex/Steven Sladkowski

18 Chicago – MOPERY

VOLUNTEERS' COLLECTIVE: NEW WORKSHOP SERIES AT RED ROOM: 6-8PM, 1ST SUNDAY OF THE MONTH

2010-07-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

VOLUNTEERS' COLLECTIVE: NEW WORKSHOP SERIES AT RED ROOM: 6-8PM, 1ST SUNDAY OF THE MONTH

After much preparation, The Red Room and High Zero Foundation are excitedly relaunching their monthly workshop for freely improvised experimental music (previously "The Crap Shoot") at a new time, with a new name, and a new attitude.

Now called VOLUNTEERS' COLLECTIVE, it will be running the first Sunday of each month, at 6PM at The Red Room (Normals Books and Records). Although the Crap Shoot workshop (which had approximately 140 sessions since it began in 1996) had been an integral part of the growth of the experimental improvised music scene in Baltimore, for some time we have been feeling it needed revitalization on a deep level.

Essentially, we want this event to be a more powerful tool for the community of improvisers in Baltimore to hone their art, network and form collaborations, and stretch themselves musically in unfamiliar and inspiring situations.

This means a new approach, and frankly, a more critical attitude.

First, the new VOLUNTEERS' COLLECTIVE workshop will be structured featuring well-known local improvisers who will attend sessions to provide a backbone of seasoned players to "seed" each workshop. This will create a more attractive and stimulating workshop situation for newcomers and seasoned players alike.

Second, the workshop will also involve more critical cross-discussion about the music actually played. Conversation, debate, and reflection are vital components on the way to honing skills in improvisation and the VOLUNTEERS' COLLECTIVE will provide that forum.

Third, the workshop will be open to anyone of any level of skill with a strong interest in getting into improvisation and experimentation in an open-ended but thoughtful and disciplined way. This is about reaching beyond and using improvisation collaboratively to guide us into new areas of music and thinking. We are particularly interested in players who want to develop new, unique, but flexible approaches to playing.

There is a catch.

In this new approach, we are asking that only those players who have a strong intention to develop their music and their free improvisation skills attend the workshop. We would like to focus on active musicians who are interested in pushing their playing to a higher level in a specifically experimental, non-idiomatic direction.

Although the workshop will be open to all, we will request that ongoing participation be paralleled by a serious interest in one's own artistic development.

We hope that folks will respect this, and that, as a result of these changes, the overall experience will be substantially more stimulating and thought-provoking than ever.

And, of course, if these changes don't suit some players, we encourage them to create their own collective contexts for improvised music that are more aligned with their interests.

The first VOLUNTEERS' COLLECTIVE will be Sunday, August 1st 6-8PM and will include "seed" improvisers John Berndt, John Dierker, Liz Meredith, and Will Redman. We hope to see you there!

From the High Zero Foundation: Exotic Hypnotic

2010-07-16T12:22:00.000-04:00

from the source:

Exotic Hypnotic: High Zero Foundation's 24-hours of extremely varied music sponsored by Baltimore Office of Promotion and The Arts.

University of Baltimore Performing Arts Center Student Theatre - 21 West Mount Royal Avenue, 5th Floor - Air Conditioned!!

-----------------------
Friday, July 16th, Free

2pm- Robby Rackleff: Eccentric multimedia monologist.

3pm- Aaron Henkin: Producer of the Signal presents original radio documentaries.

4pm- Square Pi: Experimental vocalist and sound-collage artist.

5pm- Baltimore Sacred Harp: Oldest American a cappella singing tradition comes alive.

6pm- The Hammered: Grandiose theatrical heavy metal ensemble.

7pm- Weyes Bluhd: Dark lo-fi ballads.

8pm- Janitor: Homoerotic industrial performance electronics.

9pm- Annex Theater: Psychadelic dream-like theater work with puppets, live music, actors, and projection.

-----------------------
Saturday, July 17th, Free

12pm- Avocado Happy Hour: Tuneful percussive oddities.

1pm- Turquiose Cats: Electro feline minimal electronics.

2pm- The Creepers: Wacky tortured songs with great lyrics.

3pm- Jason Urick: Baltimore ping pong icon and legendary laptop jammer.

4pm- Singers Madrigale: Wandering Traditional Renaissance voices.

5pm- Stuart Saunders Smith: Avant-garde classical music.

6pm- Summer Games (Schwartz/Fell/Boeldt): Money hungry boy band.

7pm- Death Race 2000 (Broydelic Sidecar I + Stewart Mostofsky): Conceptual experimental supergroup meets 70's Carsploitation film.

-----------------------
Sunday, July 18th, Free

12pm- Jah Hannibal/Aaron Martin/Britton Powell: Down-to-earth cosmic free jazz.

1pm- Nothingberry Plasma: One-man electronics and drum psychosis.

2pm- Stewart Mosotofsky, John Berndt, Kate Porter and friends.

3pm- Jeff Carey: Globe-trotting experimental electronic musician.

4pm- Andrew Bernstein: Electronic free-wheeling post-song rock.

5pm- Yoshiko Ohara w/ Gerry Mak: Doom and gloom from members of Bloody Ailuropoda melanoleuca.

6pm- Embarrassment Poems: A cavalcade of experimental language.

7pm- Baltimore Experimental Dance Group: Unusual movement and inspired oddity.

See the full schedule of events here: http://www.exotichypnotic.org/

"See what Baltimore REALLY has to offer."

2010-07-14T09:13:00.000-04:00

This year's Exotic Hypnotic is a Critic's Pick in City Paper.

The full schedule is available at exotichypnotic.org. The marathon fest runs July 16th - 18th at University of Baltimore's Performing Arts Stage and is part of Baltimore's annual ArtScape.

Ehse on Ice, Part Deux

2010-07-05T21:09:00.002-04:00

Ehse On Ice, Part Deux
Come get your ice on.
Performances by:
Snacks
Beastmaster
Weyes Bluhd
Plus DJ “Hot Dog” (Elijah)
And refreshments by Taco Style

Start Time:	Friday, July 9, 2010 at 9:30pm
End Time:	Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 12:30am
Location:	Mount Pleasant Ice Arena
Street:	6101 Hillen Road
City/Town:	Baltimore, MD

High Zero is Announcing 2010 Line-up Piece by Piece via Twitter

2010-06-17T11:10:00.000-04:00

Here's the deal as reported by City Paper.

Ehse Records Releases Now Available from Thrill Jockey

2010-06-16T20:38:00.000-04:00

Thrill Jockey is now distributing releases from Ehse Records including slabs of vinyl from Salamander Wool, Harrius, Ian Nagoski, Sejayno, Lizz King, Snacks, Needle Gun.

Do yourself a favor and go pick up the Fresh Ehse Platters.

Get a Taste

2010-05-27T22:29:00.000-04:00

Get a Taste at Taster:

Thursday, June 3th, Free

At 2640 Space: a collectively run events venue in Baltimore, located at 2640 St. Paul St.

TASTER! A free introductory concert to experimental / improvised music with a bevy of stellar Baltimore musicians.

Are you interested in experimental music but not sure where to start? Or do you have friends or family members that you think might be interested in this stuff if it was introduced to them in the right way? In order to make this sort of thing happen more frequently, High Zero has put together this special free event at 2640 space called TASTER. Its a buffet of virtuoso experimental music styles.

In addition to good food and drink and casual conversation, this event will feature short, highly varied sets by these hand-picked ensembles of great Baltimore area musicians:

Neil Feather: inventions
Eric Franklin: inventions
Dan Breen: inventions

John Dierker: bass clarinet
Samuel Burt: bass clarinet
Britton Powell: bass
Will Redman: drums

Susan Alcorn: pedal steel guitar
Paul Neidhardt: drums
Chris Pumphrey: alto saxophone

Andy Hayleck: inventions
Ayako Katoaka: inventions
Peter Blasser: inventions

Audrey Chen: cello, voice
Shodekeh: human beat-boxing
Brian Sacawa: saxophones

Please come and bring interested friends and family. Its a chance to get them to peek into the amazing, exotic world of Baltimore experimental music and see what you like. We think they will find it interesting, and it may open some interesting doors for people. The whole event will last about an hour and a half, starting at the Church at 8PM sharp.

Ehse Records is Proud to Announce the Exclusive ReRelease of a Rare Katt Hernandez LP

2010-05-20T21:59:00.000-04:00

Katt Hernandez

"Seriously Boss" - Byron Coley and Thurston Moore in Arthur

Ehse Records is Proud to Announce the Exclusive ReRelease of a Rare Katt Hernandez LP

"It's a solo record I did a bit back in boston. My landlord had 1950s Cole ribbon mics from the BBC sound studio (incidentaly of a series number which apparently indicates their probable use on Doctor Who). I made this very sort of purist recording there with him."

Ehse will be rereleasing the very rare Boston solo violin recording of Katt Hernandez. The release will be available in June, with Katt touring in Europe from her new homebase in Stockholm.

INFO

Katt Hernandez is about to move to Stockholm, Sweden. She went there to play at Hagenfesten with pianist Eve Risser in summer of 2008, met her current partner, and so will go to join him there. She has done a bit of work in the Electronic Music Studio there already, and played with Joel Grip. Currently Katt is in Boston, where she has most recently played at X-Fest, in Zack Fuller's "Into the Shiny Battle" at Mobius and performed and recorded with Joe Morris, Luther Gray, Matt Samolis, Steve Norton, Mitch Ahern, Andrew Neuman and Junko Simons.
Katt lived in Philadelphia for three years, after living in the Boston area for nine years, playing the violin, running spaces, and producing shows. She immediately became involved in performances with Bowerbird, Soundfield, Ars Nova, and Nicole Bindler's Dance Ensemble upon her arrival. During her time there she played regularly with the Balkan Dance band West Philadelphia Orchestra, toured the U.S. with Vashti Bunyan and Vetiver, sat on the Board of World Music presenting organization Crossroads Music, and worked with musicians from Gregg Weeks' "Language of Stone" Label. She created a quasi-composed piece for shadow-puppet and screen print artist Erik Ruin which toured throughout the East Coast. She worked regularly with Psychotic Quartet and permutations thereof- Dan Blacksberg, Evan Lipson and Michael Evans. And she regularly went to Baltimore to collaborate as well. She has worked a great deal with John Berndt, the Second Nature ensemble, the duo Isabel with Audrey Chen, and collaborated most recently with Andy Hayleck and Catherine Pancake.

Focused primarily on freely improvised music, Katt draws a firey array of electronic-like sounds and keening melodies from her unaltered, accoustic violin. She also works extensively with microtonality, drawn from a study of a mixture of sources, including traditional folk and sacred musics of the Middle East, Turkey, and Eastern Europe, various odd-ball whisps of old Americana, and the Maneri/Sims 72 note system. Playing with as wide and unexpected a variety of other performers as possible is tantamount to her sonic and spiritual pursuits. She has also played music of the late Ottman empire and Whirling Dervish ceremonies with the Eurasia Ensemble. She spent some time playing old-time, vaudeville, and early jazz tunes with Matt Samolis(a.k.a. Shoe) whilst channelling the spirit of Amelia Earhart in the duo Lindy's Radio. And she also has played the mysterious incarnation of a disturbing cartoon character in the frightening music and performance art duo Dr. Selenium and Madame Margo.Before leaving for Philadelphia she participated in the Voltaic Vaudeville festival, wherein she played Solo, with butoh dancer Jennifer Hicks, and as part of the Beat Circus Vaudeville Orchestra. In fact, she plays somewhere for somebody at least weekly, come hell or high water.
Katt has collaborated with a magnificently variated sea of musicians, dancers, and others including- but certainly not limited to- Joe Maneri,David Maxwell, Nicole Bindler, John Voigt, Allisa Cardone, Gordon Beeferman, Jonathan Vincent, Walter Wright, Joe Burgio, Eric Rosenthal, Jeff Arnal, Jaimie McGlaughlin,Dave Gross and Hans Rickheit. She has twice been invited to perfrom on the Autumn Uprising, High Zero, Mobius ArtRages, and Improvised and Otherwise festivals, and has also appeared at the Montreaux-Detroit, Brandeis New Music, Boston CyberArts, Michiania, Phenome, IAJE, IASJ, and Ear Whacks festivals. She has been a guest artist at MIT, Harvard, University of Indiana and the New England Conservatory, performed in a vast slew of localized venues and life-making places throughout the east coast metropolii.

In addition, Katt booked well over a hundred shows, festivals, and concerts during her time in Boston. She was a crazed avatar for the Zeitgeist Gallery, where she worked on everything from publicity and shows to mischeif and whimsey. She also lived in the short-lived Andrew Square art space next to an elevator shaft, and performed multiple times at the Pan 9 space. She continues to seek out underground spaces for those things too strange and magnificant for commercial clubs and foundation concert halls.
Katt grew up in Ann Arbor, MI, where she met all kinds of the most remarkable humans you might imagine, and played her violin throughout the Detroit metro-area on a regular basis starting at the age of 14. Her first free improvisation show was at teh age of 15, where she was delighted to find herself sharing the stage with Eugene Chadbourne, Frank Pahl and LaDonna Smith. She attended Community High School as a kid- a public school based on the utopic visions of the late sixties. She also spent two weeks every summer at the National Music Camp, wearing silly uniforms and learning about symphonic and chamber music. After attending classes as a teenager at the University of Michigan's Music School, she went there and studied composition, violin, electronic music, jazz, and improvisation, graduating in the end with the very first BFA in "Jazz Studies and Contemporary Improvisation" awarded by the school. Her teachers were George Balch Wilson, Ed Sarath, Even Chambers, Donald Walden, Elaine Sargous, Karin Swanson, Mike Grace, and Andrew Jennings. She played with a great many musicians and others there, including Only a Mother, Doctor Arwulf-Arwulf,the Creative Arts Orchestra, and the Blue Sun Quintet.

QUOTES FROM REVIEWS AND SUCH

"Another Beantown expat is improvising violinist Katt Hernandez, whose debut solo LP Unlovely (no label) is seriously boss. A student of Joe Manieri, Katt plays in a style that flies through the valley separating new music and free jazz, like a hive of cunning bees. Great inventions." Byron Coley and Thurston Moore, Arthur No. 32 (Dec 2008)

". . . musicians everywhere are aware of her exceptional artistry, and even international writers and producers are telling us of their fortunate discovery. . .it may be overdue, but it is good to see that someone as good as Katt is finally being recognized." Stu Vandermark, Cadence Magazine, Dec. 2004, pg. 133

". . .The Long Awaited Etcetera puts Hernandez squarely on the radar. . . as one of the few violinists of consequence in improvised music" Stanley Zappa, Bannanafish, Issue Seventeen, pg. 88

"Hernandez is a young violinist who shows the potential to develop into a major voice in experimental violin improvisation and join the ranks of Mat Maneri, Mari Kimura, Malcolm Goldstein, and Takehisa Kosugi". Michael A. Parker, All About Jazz, http://www.allaboutjazz.com/reviews/r0502_135.htm

"It was Hernandez that stood out in this piece, bringing an ear clearly comfortable with classical and rock approaches, but despite this grounding, at times flirting with complete choas" Eric Allen Hatch, Signal-to-Noise Winter 2002/issue 24, page 55

Ehse Radio Brings the Fresh Top Hits!

2010-05-12T21:41:00.000-04:00

Ehse Records' owner Stewart Mostofsky was recently interviewed on Baltimore's best local radio program: The Signal.

Check out the program and hear how host Aaron Henkin responds to the likes of Leprechaun Catering and Sejayno. The Ehse talk takes place towards the last ten minutes of the program.

April 30: Salamander Wool LP Release

2010-04-29T23:00:00.000-04:00

Reminder from Ehse Records:

Salamander Wool LP Release

Friday, April 30th, 9pm
at Tarantula Hill, 2118 W. Pratt Street, Baltimore, MD 21223

With performances by:
Salamander Wool
Needle Gun
Weyes Bluhd
Ami Dang & Jenny Graf & Nathan Bell

Triple Point - Pauline Oliveros, Jonas Braasch, and Doug Van Nort: Live at Red Room 4/24

2010-04-19T17:33:00.002-04:00

Saturday, April 24th, $6

The Red Room
at Normals Books and Records
425 E. 31st Street Baltimore
Doors open at 8:30

Triple Point ++ Michael Bullock ++ Joe Reinsel

Triple Point - Pauline Oliveros (digital accordion), Jonas Braasch (soprano sax) and Doug Van Nort (laptop) - are an improvising trio in which a variety of synthesized acoustic sounds emanate from an accordion, acoustic saxophone is bent beyond recognition and all of these timbres are captured and transformed into a third set of sonic material via greis/laptop. The result is an ever-shifting tapestry guided by Deep Listening. Triple Point is the performance outlet for the trio's research/creation project that explores and experiments with intelligent interactive systems. Triple Point is also the location on a phase diagram wherein all phases of matter exist in thermodynamic equilibrium - a metaphor for the group's performance practice. This is where the trio operates exploring musical spaces and boundary conditions where contrasting ideas and streams can co-exist, while expanding the vocabulary of musical instruments acoustically (Braasch on soprano saxophone) and electronically (Oliveros, digital accordion and Expanded Instrument System, EIS, Doug van Nort on laptop and GREIS).

For many decades Pauline Oliveros has been actively expanding the voice of her main instrument, the accordion. Given the limited natural possibilities of this instrument with respect to sound (fixed tuning, no pitch bends, narrow variety in overtone spectrum), Oliveros has begun half a century ago to alter the sound of her instrument using tape delays and other electronic devices. Van Nort's work is based in digital signal processing, transforming Oliveros', Braasch's and his own sounds using Granular Synthesis, psychoacoustically-motivated sound analysis tools and Genetic Algorithms to explore new musical textures and timbres.

Michael Bullock does terrible, wonderful things with his contrabass. He rattles its thick, braid-like strings until they come to resemble a cyclone fence doing battle with a ferocious wind. He bows it with a quiet intensity that brings out every fiber of its physical being. He attacks it with alternative materials, leaving the bow aside like so much antiquated performance history. He takes the proud beast of an instrument and uses it to make expressly quiet noises. He takes an instrument capable of deeply sonorous experience, and turns it — mischievously, perhaps, but also concertedly — into a tool for sonic abrasion.

Joe Reinsel’s works have been performed at national and international events including: SIGGRAPH 2006, Zero One San Jose, Art Interactive, Contemporary Museum (Baltimore), University of Glasgow, Pixelache, Roulette, Deep Listening Space, Galapogos Arts Space, Tonic/subtonic, Engine27, and Mobius.

Also his projects have been supported by the Baltimore Museum of Art. New York State Council for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts,Maryland State Arts Council, William G. Baker Jr. Memorial Fund, Baltimore City Office of Promotion and the Arts, Freefall Baltimore,and Baltimore Community Foundation

Reinsel presently directs the Digital Media Arts Program at College of Notre Dame of Maryland. He has a Master of Fine Arts in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute(iEAR Studios), and a Master of Arts in Composition from Radford University.

www.deeplistening.org/site/catalog/Triple+Point

www.finenoiseandlight.net/

joereinsel.org/

Double Quadraphonic Endurance Event at the True Vine

2010-04-19T17:29:00.000-04:00

Friday, April 23rd, Free Show at the True Vine Record Shop

Double Quadraphonic Endurance Event at the True Vine

Can you endure all the quadraphony? Test your senses!

Strotter (turntable-machines) from Switzerland
Ear, Nose and Throat
Electric Junk Band
Zomes
FunkHouse

Strotter Inst. is Christoph Hess from Switzerland. He creates music through the use of old, modified, Lenco turntables which he modifies and manipulates in countless ways. Rubber bands are affixed to the rotating turntable and plucked by the stylus, records have tape affixed in patterns to create textural rhythms, electrical current is sent via live wires to the needle to create pulsing feedback. These sounds are then manipulated by Hess through effects pedals to create warm and dense sound structures, looping, rumbling rhythms and multilayered broken beats.
The music of Strotter Inst. has more in common with the anti-electronica of Pan Sonic or the early minimalism of Steve Reich, than to other experimental turntablists like eRikm, Philip Jeck or Christian Marclay. Hess’ roots are not in improvised music, but in industrial culture, the electronic avantgarde and electro-acoustic composition.

Christoph Hess is also a member of post-industrial band, Herpes Ö DeLuxe (since 1995) and the experimental doom-trio Sum Of R (since 2007). He has collaborated live with Sudden Infant, Maja Ratkje, and others. Strotter Inst. has performed throughout Europe, China, Russia, and Bolivia.

PLEASE NOTE
This event will be held at

True Vine Record Shop

3544 Hickory St (just off the Avenue in Hampden)
Event begins at 4 PM

www.strotter.org

www.thetruevinerecordshop.com/

Jack Wright, Pascal Batus, Michael Johnsen, Tyler Wilcox, Andy Hayleck, and Paul Neidhardt: Live at Red Room 4/21

2010-04-19T17:22:00.001-04:00

Wednesday, April 21st, $6

The Red Room
at Normals Books and Records
425 E. 31st Street Baltimore
Doors open at 8:30

Improvised music with Jack Wright (saxophones), Pascal Batus (objects, pickup), Michael Johnsen (saw, electronics), Tyler Wilcox (saxophones), Andy Hayleck (electronics, amplified Gong) and Paul Neidhardt (percussion).

The Red Room is overjoyed to present these improvisers of super-human sensitivity and creativity on its humble stage. Jack Wright is a legend of North American improvisation. Pascal Batus is an amazing sound-oriented guitarist from France who utilizes an unusual method of "stringless guitar". This is his first visit to Baltimore. Michael Johnsen is a singular mind, a contemporary improvement on both David Tudor's electronics and Paul Loven's saw playing. His visits to Bmore from Pittsburg are rare.

Opening the night is the (semi) local trio of Paul Niedhardt, Andy Hayleck and Tyler Wilcox. Paul and Andy are amongst the finest members of the local inprovised music scene. Both members of Trockeneis, they share some like-minded goals of psychically transporting, disorienting electronacoutic timbres. They are both masters of subtle, shifting sound fields full of odd colors and dark, metallic friction. Tyler Wilcox is a one-time resident of Baltimore and returns throughout the year to play with Paul, Andy and others. He is a multiple reeds player. Together, the music they make is likely to be really transcendent. You'd be a fool to miss this one.

Cellist Charles Curtis, plus "Deacon at Bernie's" (Dan Deacon and Andrew Bernstein) Live at the Red Room 4/20

2010-04-19T17:03:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, April 20th, $6

The Red Room
at Normals Books and Records
425 E. 31st Street Baltimore
Doors open at 8:30

Cellist Charles Curtis, plus "Deacon at Bernie's"

Charles Curtis is one of the most important 'cellists in new music. He has had works written for him by La Monte Young (Curtis being his foremost interpreter), Eliane Radigue and Alvin Lucier and is likewise experienced in more traditional classical music, having served as first solo 'cellist of the Symphony Orchestra of the North German Radio for over 10 years. That's not all! He's performed at all the cool weirdo clubs in New York (Tonic, Knitting Factory, CBGB's etc.) and collaborated with people like Elliott Sharp, David First, Bongwater and Borbetomagus.

Deacon at Bernie's is a collaboration between Baltimore musicians Dan Deacon (electronics) and Andrew Bernstein (saxophone, Teeth Mountain). Deacon is best-known for his more pop-oriented solo work, the subtle experimentalism of which comes full flower in this collaborative context with Bernie's nurturing saxophone. The two will be accompanying, modulating or overtaking three short films by Lillian Schwartz and Stan Van Der Beek, lovingly chosen by local experimental film maven Mary Helena Clark.

musicweb.ucsd.edu/people/people.php?cmd=fm_music_directory_detail&query_Full_Name=%20Charles%20Curtis&query_Active_Status=Faculty

www.myspace.com/dandeacon

www.myspace.com/teethmountain

Salamander Wool LP now available online via Ehserecords.com

2010-04-18T22:40:00.003-04:00

Salamander Wool's first release on Ehse Records is now available online.

Track List

Moon of Arq
Blaq n White Coursed
Vesica Pisces
Lantern Bearer
Flame Afloat Pulpit

A Language Before
Mothern Poem
Opaqe
Alien Beloved
Daylight of Midnight

Ehse Records to Release LP by Baltimore's Salamander Wool

2010-04-11T23:36:00.000-04:00

Ehse Records to Release LP by Baltimore's Salamander Wool

Ehse Records will release a new LP by Baltimore's Salamander Wool on May 18th, 2010. There will be a special local-release show in Baltimore on April 30th, 2010 at Tarantula Hill (2118 W. Pratt St., Baltimore, MD 21223) with guests Needle Gun, Weyes Bluhd, Ami Dang & Jenny Graf & Nathan Bell, and Ian Nagoski spinning 78s.

"Salamander Wool is the fiber mineral asbestos, which shows a particular resilience to fire. This force field spins its own protective web."

And so on this, the first Ehse LP by Salamander Wool -- the solo project of Baltimore artist and musician Carson Garhart -- resilience and force fields abide in plucked and chimed tre-melodies and fleeting glances of recorded sound.

Garhart resides in the Carollton Ridge neighborhood of Baltimore where, "while living in a constant nomadic flux sailing down concrete rivers across known and unknown provinces, he paints musical landscapes". Using electronics, stringed instruments (homemade and other), voice, and poetry, Carson creates songs and movements meant for metaphysical keys and ecstatic dances.

Having released a solo album in 2004 with the Shinkoyo collective, Garhart plays in the time-travel band Sejayno and occasionally paints birds on his wall. His music is at once a revolt against modernity and an embracing of possible futures, especially ones that restore an age of light and life.

See: ehserecords.com for more album info.
For contact and updates on tour dates, see diymummy.com.
###

Salamander Wool “Lunarsophic Somnambulist” Record Release Party

2010-04-07T10:17:00.001-04:00

Friday, April 30th, 9pm
at Tarantula Hill, 2118 W. Pratt Street, Baltimore, MD 21223

With performances by:
Salamander Wool
Needle Gun
Weyes Bluhd
Ami Dang & Jenny Graf & Nate Bell

+ Tom Boram and Dan Breen spinning records

John Berndt: Upcoming Performances

2010-04-01T14:01:00.000-04:00

John Berndt: Upcoming Performances

Friday, May 8th
John Berndt performing as part of Matana Roberts "Coin Coin" composition
www.redroom.org, Baltimore

Sunday, May 16th
John Berndt: "Three Algorithms: Strange connections between formal logic, disoriented experience, and experimental music." Lecture with concert.
Megapolis Festival, Baltimore

Saturday, May 22nd
John Berndt with Janel Leppin Group
at The Hexagon, Baltimore

Tuesday, May 25th
John Berndt (sax), Zach Branch (cello), Jon Rogerson (guitar), Will Redman (drums )
Out of Your Head Series
The Wind Up Space, Baltimore

Saturday, May 29th
DEADMIX DANCEBEAT
Baltimore old-school Relabi dance partyw/DJ Berndt & others
at The Hexagon, Baltimore

PHILOSOPHERS UNION EDITION #1

2010-03-30T21:04:00.000-04:00

Friday, April 9th, 8:30 PM, Free
The Red Room
425 E. 31st Street, Baltimore

*PHILOSOPHERS UNION EDITION #1: Alphonso Lingis!*

The Red Room has a new series: PHILOSOPHER'S UNION ("Keep thinking live!").* For the first installment, we are extraordinarily happy to have Alphonso Lingis, one of the most interesting philosophers of the present age. Lingis has created a unique synthesis of the concerns of academic philosophy, with a highly creative and risk-taking existential endeavor. A description of his talk is included below.

*The Outsiders--A Talk by Alphonso Lingis.*
In 1922 Dr. Hans Prinzhorn published Artistry of the Mentally Ill--in which he reproduced and analyzed 187 from the more than 5000 paintings, drawings, and carvings he had collected from insane asylums in and around Heidelberg, mostly from patients diagnosed as schizophrenic. Professional artists were astouned by what they saw in this book; Paul Elouard called it "the most beautiful book of images there is." Jean Dubuffet argued that the mentally ill had access to the fundamental sources of human creativity, and launched a far-reaching criticism of the professional "art world" and the taste of the cultivated elite. The paper examines the new conceptions of art, of creativity, and of authenticity that were advanced by the champions of this art. It also examines the subsequent production of the art of the self-taught, and the ideas about all this work that have been elaborated since.

*About Alphonso Lingis*
Alphonso Lingis (born November 23, 1933 in Crete, Illinois) is an American philosopher, writer and translator, and was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. His areas of specialization include phenomenology, existentialism, modern philosophy, and ethics.

Lingis has had wide success as a public lecturer due both to his captivating style of writing and also the performance art atmosphere of his lectures. During public talks he generally appears in costume or speaks amidst strange background music or recorded screams, often in total darkness. Throughout his years at Penn State, he was also well known as a classic college town cult celebrity, welcoming students to a strange home filled with rare birds, dangerous fish and insects, and numerous third world artifacts. In this period his travels shifted increasingly from Europe to the developing world, with especial bases in Bangkok and Rio de Janeiro, and most recently Africa. In recent years he has also renewed contact with his ancestral heritage, reaching a certain degree of prominence in Lithuania. Now retired from Penn State, Lingis lives near Baltimore, where he continues to write books similar to his earlier works. His books have been translated into French and Turkish, among other languages. In the spring of 2004 the first college course on Lingis was offered at Towson University in Towson, Maryland, taught by Wolfgang W. Fuchs co-editor of "Encounters with Lingis" (2003).

* in the 90's, The Philosophers Union was an ill-defined collective project involving Stephen Schzelkun, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENINECE, and many others. We have resurrected it at the Red Room for this new free lecture series.

Honestly, Lizz King...

2010-03-30T21:02:00.000-04:00

"All Songs Go To Heaven is the sound of worlds colliding. And this is a glorious sound, full of banjos and beats, heartbreaking melodies and odd noises, softly sung words and deeply stinging rhythms. It is a highly intoxicating musical trip, and one on which we are lucky enough to have King as our guide." -- visit Honest Tune to read the whole review!

John Berndt in Boston

2010-03-23T23:14:00.000-04:00

Performing in Boston this Thursday!

John Berndt: solo saxophone + Matt Samolis- flute, Joe Burgio- movement, Paul Erlich- microtonal guitars, John Voigt- bass, Katt Hernandez- violin

8PM, Thu Mar 25, 369 Congress St, Boston, 7th floor

Photos from 'Ehse on Ice'!

2010-03-07T11:06:00.000-05:00

Check out more photos from the 'Ehse on Ice' event!

Baltimore Magazine reviews Lizz King: "Her earthy songs are, indeed, heavenly."

2010-03-03T22:03:00.000-05:00

From the review:

I like to think of Lizz King as Baltimore's antidote to indie phenom Sufjan Stevens. Both songwriters conjure a shambling melodicism and neither shies away from the ukelele, banjo, and glockenspiel—with the occasional singing saw in the mix—but I'll take King's dusky voice and worldview over Stevens's precious musings any day.

Click here for the whole enchilada.

Aural States reviews Lizz King's 'All Songs Go To Heaven'

2010-02-23T20:44:00.001-05:00

Aural States posted an intensive review of Lizz's new LP. And we think they liked it...

Absolutely stunning... I can’t bestow enough praise onto All Songs Go To Heaven, and I don’t think you could do yourself a better favor this month other than to seek it out at Ehse Records.

That's a great idea: go visit Ehse Online and pick yourself up a copy.

Lizz King: Femme-Fatale Fuzz

2010-02-23T20:34:00.001-05:00

A.V. Club Austin describes Lizz on tour:

Baltimore’s Lizz King flirts with... femme-fatale fuzz, but also wends in bluegrass-inspired torch songs from her odd combo of laptop and ukulele.

Tour Notes: Montana Digs Lizz King

2010-02-16T22:33:00.000-05:00

"With her gritty electro-dance tune 'Booty Queen', Baltimore's Lizz King launches a sneak attack worthy of Werner Herzog. It's a catchy, spooky little number featuring the refrain 'Oo la la, she's just a baby' over samples covering the history of the Big Bad Wolf in pop culture.... She is frank, intimate and saucy like a latter-day Marlene Dietrich." - Missoula Independent

Lizz King: Tour Winter 2010

2010-01-19T17:11:00.001-05:00

Lizz is coming to see you. Spread the word.

Jan 12 2010 8:00P the Blue Moon Saloon Shepherdstown, West Virginia
Jan 13 2010 8:00P Death By Audio w/ GDFX, Thick Business, Kate Ferencz, & The Dreebs NYC, New York
Jan 14 2010 8:00P 17 Mules w/ Holy Sheet & Brrmuda Providence, Rhode Island
Jan 15 2010 8:00P the Butcher Shoppe w/Isa Christ, Rotten Apples, The Great Valley Boston, MA
Jan 16 2010 8:00P Skrummage w/ Breezee One Detroit, MI
Jan 18 2010 8:00P Mixtapes w/ Breezee One & ChicaX East Moline, Illinois
Jan 19 2010 1:00P www.daytrotter.com Moline, Illinois
Jan 19 2010 8:00P Cactus Club w/Big Fun4ever, Breezee One, Magic Words Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Jan 21 2010 8:00P Ames Progressive Ames, Iowa
Jan 22 2010 8:00P The Picador w/ Breezee One & Datagun Iowa City, Iowa
Jan 24 2010 8:00P Rhinoceropolis Denver, CO
Jan 25 2010 8:00P Kilby Court w/ Tigergrrl & Breezee One Salt Lake City, Utah
Jan 27 2010 8:00P The Palace w/ w/ Breezee One, Colin Johnson(Vampire Hands)& Bryan Ramirez(ExCocaine) Missoula, Montana
Jan 30 2010 8:00P 6315 NE Rodney/ crosstreet Holman Portland, Oregon
Feb 1 2010 8:00P Pehrspace Kyle H. Mabson's bday slurprize w/ Breezee One & more tba Los Angeles, CA
Feb 4 2010 8:00P Club 1808 Austin, TX
Feb 5 2010 8:00P Super Happy Fun Club Houston, Texas
Feb 8 2010 8:00P tba Athens, Athens, Georgia
Feb 9 2010 8:00P The Tin Roof Charleston, South Carolina
Feb 10 2010 8:00P The Nightlight Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Feb 11 2010 8:00P Slim's Raleigh, North Carolina
Feb 16 2010 8:00P The Tipsy Teapot Greenville, North Carolina
Feb 24 2010 8:00P The Golden West Baltimore, Maryland

COLLINSPORT

2010-01-15T18:09:00.001-05:00

Geodesic Gnome presents
COLLINSPORT

Friday, January 15, 2010
8:00pm - 11:00pm 2640 Space 2640 St. Paul Street Baltimore, MD

Don't miss this major event! John Berndt, Stephanie Barber, Ric Royer and
Connor Kizer's COLLINSPORT is an inquiry into the structural anomalies of
Dark Shadows (1966-1971), the American gothic-occult soap-opera famous for
its unstable cast, momentum-less plot, and unusually over-elaborate dialog.

In this multimedia production of COLLINSPORT performed by Geodesic Gnome,
all these elements and more are made to spin faster and faster in a
test-tube until a precipitate of pure, undiluted reason drops onto the floor
and shatters along with the known universe. Carved from the molten ice of
popular-culture-as-
psychedelic-logical-modality, the piece is a direct expression of your
greatest fears about misunderstanding, enthused lethargy, and, well,
vampires. Add to this the obscure theory of 'paradox paradoxes' which
threatens to consume all of semantics and what have you got?

A ROLLICKING GOOD TIME HAD BY ALL, THAT'S WHAT.

With the immortal talents of:

Connor Kizer
Stephanie Barber
Lexie Mountain
Peter Blasser
John Eaton
Samuel Burt
Ric Royer
Sarah El Jallad
John Berndt
Mike Muniak
Melissa Moore
Peter Blasser
Kate Porter
Liz Meredith

Geodesic Gnome is Baltimore's meta-conceptual super-group, performing
boundary-defying philosophy and paradoxes-as-structure, lead by John Berndt.
In this case the group is joined by Baltimore geniuses Connor Kizer and
Stephanie Barber for this unique tribute to the Dark Shadows of Dark
Shadows.

Needle Gun and Sejayno Reviewed in Terrascope

2010-01-15T09:25:00.006-05:00

Mixing avant-garde strangeness, free jazz skronks, a punk aesthetic and anything else they fancy, the album is a rollercoaster ride for your ears.

Terrascope reviewing 'Afternoon Computer Umbrage' LP from Ehse.

Definitely, or maybe defiantly psychedelic, the tracks have weird tunings, odd mixes and an alien air about them, sounding like space-rock played by drunk Venusians, a spiritual quest performed in a shopping mall, the end of the world reduced to a video game.

From a review on 'Quantus' in Terrascope. That record is also available from Ehse.

The Multiphonic Choir and Melissa Moore: Live Tonight at Wind Up Space, Baltimore

2010-01-14T17:15:00.002-05:00

The Multiphonic Choir
A Night of Exuberant AFRO-GERMANICISM

1/14/10, 9PM, $6

The Wind Up Space
12 West North Avenue

Melissa Moore:
Wake-making: Ceremony of a Polyrhythmic Biogram

The Multiphonic Choir
Music of John Berndt, Sun Ra, Kraftwerk, and Daktaris

AFRO-GERMANICISM, the sensibility that no one wants but everyone loves, was born in Baltimore, The Ambiguity City, where the forcing of contradictions between historically opposed sensibilities comes as natural as beavers building beaver dams or human beings building nuclear power plants.This show combines the talents of two of the "thought leaders" of the genre, Melissa Moore and the Multiphonic Choir.

In *Wake-making: Ceremony of a Polyrhythmic Biogram*...
"“The diagram becomes a type of topological transformation, variably looping between virtual potential and the actualized possibility.” (Doruff 2006) I attempt to create moments that are in transport and go between re-articulations and potentialities { future – past – becoming }. An “abstract machine” of sorts. One that is unstable and contains a spatiotemporal duplicity. A system that precludes form but paradoxically organizes itself into a pseudo-form. With the use of traditional African ceremonial drumming music, invented polyrhythm machines, and electric guitar, I am employing a technique that shifts layered polyrhythms into abstract polyrhythms that are biogrammatic in nature; a language of the body that brings external realities into the internal field."-Melissa Moore

The Multiphonic Choir
John Berndt's AFRO-GERMANICIST ensemble includes some of the best musicians in Baltimore: John Dierker, Chris Pumphrey, Tiffany Defoe, Rose Burt and John Berndt (Saxophones), Dan Breen (electric bass), and Paul Neidhardt (drums). Using extended multiphonic technique, the band has a unique sound and rock-band intensity mixed with complex structure and rhythms. Together they play new compositions by Berndt, as well as unusual covers of pieces by Daktaris, Sun Ra, and Kraftwerk.

"Rather elaborate boots": Bmoremusic.net Photo Set of Lizz King LP Release

2010-01-14T16:04:00.002-05:00

Bmoremusic.net has posted a great set of pics from the release party for Lizz King's new LP: "All Songs Go to Heaven".

Lizz is currently touring North America.

Lizz King: City Paper Interview

2010-01-07T19:11:00.003-05:00

"I'm 29, and I've been playing open mics and music in general since I was 16," she says. "And it's taken me a lot of pushing from other people to get me to be legitimate. To get me to be, like, Oh, duh, I should have a music MySpace page. OK, you're right, I should have an amplifier."

- Lizz King interviewed in City Paper, 2010

Read the whole interview here.

Lizz King: New LP/CD on Ehse Records

2009-12-15T21:17:00.002-05:00

Lizz King: New LP/CD on Ehse Records

www.ehserecords.com
www.diymummy.com

artist: Lizz King
album: All Songs Go To Heaven
release: 2010 Ehse Records
release date: February 16th, 2010 -- a belated Valentine

Ehse Records is proud to be releasing the new LP and CD by Baltimore's favorite West Virginia transplant: Lizz King.

A crucial part of the Wham City collective, for the last few years King has been performing critically acclaimed concerts with the likes of everyone from Dan Deacon to Daniel Johnston. Her style mixes weird weird pop with big big soul, and the new album features some of the catchiest, quirkiest, and yet most sultry songwriting Baltimore has ever heard.

Lizz King will be touring the USA throughout Winter 2009 - 2010.

"The quality of music on this bill was outstanding, far and away one of the strongest I’ve seen in years. As I walked towards the Ottobar, a few minutes after Lizz King’s set time, I was hopeful that she had not come on. The place was dead silent. But as I walked through the door, I could see the reason. King was on stage and delivering a captivating performance that had the room so silent you could hear the floorboards creak. Nobody even tossed away beer bottles. This was going to be something special… Lizz King is a pixie and an angel. It’s a shame that in this day, in order to get noticed, you have to have a strong gimmick in addition to a gorgeous, timeless voice. For all the Winestones that get attention, a deserving gem like King is swept under the rug. Let’s remedy that, shall we? King’s music is some of the most barebones, heart-wide-open stuff I’ve heard… in a good and completely disarming way; she goes from banjo to ukulele to what I think was an electric tenor banjo, alternating playing some groovy, delicious computerized beats track as the musical foundation of some of her songs. Her voice is warm, like Billie Holiday and the best voices of old found on gramophone records or streaming through the vacuum-tube radios, and haunting like Fiona Apple and the other female vocal prodigies of the present. The whole picture is distinct, something I imagine sounds not unlike an electrified, breaking music box mating with the aforementioned gramophone jazz records and a healthy dose of desolate country and blues twang and instrumentation likely inspired by her time in West Virginia. She is a unique sound that is nothing short of refreshing."

- Aural States

Best of Baltimore 2007: Best Songwriter
"Wham City might be best known for giddy, hyperactive noisemakers such as Dan Deacon and the Santa Dads. But the collective's best-kept secret, Lizz King, defies her crew's prevailing aesthetic with bluesy vamps wherein she wraps her throaty voice around a single instrument, usually guitar or keyboard, and the occasional minimal drum-machine pattern. Sure, a little bit of that old Wham City absurdity lurks in song titles like 'Booty Queen' and the maniacal cackling that abruptly concludes 'Bigger Better Faster Stronger'. But the Lizz King whom we fell for is the gal who sings torch songs like 'Kissin Part' with banjo accompaniment."

- City Paper

"When the folks at Wham City, named 'Best Creative Hive' by the City Paper in 2006, were forced to stop holding shows last September, the bands who lived there-- Dan Deacon, members of Videohippos, Lizz King, Santa Dads, to name a few-- diffused only to regroup at other burgeoning fire hazards with crappy ventilation to continue to inspire the blood out of everyone around them."

- Pitchfork

"Sounds like: A haunting blend of rustic country and synthetic punk. King’s satirical lyrics linger against minimal keyboard beats and basic guitar chords.
Influences: King borrows electro-bops from her Wham City constituents, but her sultry scowl is reminiscent of R&B powerhouse Big Mama Thornton."

- Venus Zine

"In a stuffy, odd house called Lemon Hill in a crappy area of Baltimore, a girl with just her banjo sat cross-legged on the floor and sang us all to sleep with absolutely beautiful lullabies. Her voice was smooth and soulful, and I snapped her photograph with a yellow glow from the only streetlight shining outside the windows. Her name is Lizz King."

- The Walrus

Chicago Loves Peeping Tom

2009-10-29T08:25:00.000-04:00

"On its superb debut album, File Under: Bebop (Umlaut), this clever French-Swedish trio transforms classic tunes by the likes of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell into delivery systems for loosey-goosey free jazz. Alto saxophonist Pierre-Antoine Badaroux, bassist Joel Grip, and drummer Antonin Gerbal clearly love and understand the hijacked standards, and in each performance PEEPING TOM refer back to abstracted bits of their source material. Their buoyant, spontaneous improvisations are somehow both craggy and lithe, hurtling surefootedly along knotty paths—even at its most chaotic the music is as elegant as it is explosive." —Peter Margasak, The Chicago Reader

Peeping Tom: On Tour!

2009-10-21T19:50:00.004-04:00

Peeping Tom
on tour now!

Pierre-Antoine Badaroux sax
Antonin Gerbal drums
Joel Grip double bass

Furiously contemporary free-bop trio release debut CD on Umlaut Records and goes on a cross-Atlantic tour.

French-Swedish trio Peeping Tom just recently gave release concerts in Paris and Dala-Floda with master musicians Axel Dörner and Alan Silva as guests. Their CD, "File Under: Bebop" (Lunar Caustic Series - Umlaut Records), is designed by legendary free jazz drummer and contemporary artist Sven-Åke Johansson, and has already had recieved warm greetings from the press in France, Sweden and USA.

In February 2010, BBC 3 will make a live recording at the Vortex in London of Peeping Tom with Evan Parker as guest.

After the opening concert at the Umlaut Festival in Berlin, October 8-11, Peeping Tom head out on a twenty-day tour in the Nordic countries as well as USA, giving concerts at festivals and clubs in cities Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Chicago, Washington DC, New York to name a few. In Chicago, radio station WNUFR will make a radio documentation of Peeping Tom's visit there.

The members of Peeping Tom are nestled up in the new scenes of improvised and contemporary music in Europe, and with Umlaut Records - based in Paris, Stockholm and Berlin - they take part of a worldwide community of creative artists. Ongoing projects, separately or as a group, include collaborations with musicians like Evan Parker, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Sven-Åke Johansson, Katt Hernandez, Barre Phillps, Eve Risser, and Raymond Strid to name a few.

Peeping Tom peeps back in time, deeply inspired by the energies of be-boppers like C. Parker, B. Powell and D. Gillespie. And by giving an up-to-date attention to their compositions, Peeping Tom tear jazz down to its bare bones and re-furnish it with the new blossom of free-bop.

TOUR SCHEDULE

Date/Time Venue/City
• 21-Oct/20:00 Brötz/Göteborg
• 22-Oct/20:00 Skyddstasjonen/Trondheim
• 23-Oct/20:00 Biermannsgården/Oslo
• 25-Oct/17:00 Färgfabriken/Östersund
• 26-Oct/19.30 Hotel Hellsten/Stockholm
• 27-Oct/20:00 Club Liberte/Helsinki
• 28-Oct/21:00 Vastavirta/Tampere
• 29-Oct/21:00 Elastic/Chicago
• 30-Oct/22:00 Heaven Gallery/Chicago
• 31-Oct/16:00 Kresge Theater/Pittsburgh
• 1-Nov/20:00 Katt's/Philadelphia
• 2-Nov/20:00 Outpost 186/Cambridge
• 4-Nov/20:00 Bossa/Washington DC
• 5-Nov/20:00 Windup Space/Baltimore
• 6-Nov/18.00 Downtown Music Gallery/New York City
• 7-Nov/21.00 Douglas Street Music Collective/Brooklyn NY

contact

Umlaut Records
+46 70 33 55 685 (Sweden)
+33 6 43 82 74 99 (France)
joel@umlautrecords.com
www.umlautrecords.com

New Reviews of Needle Gun's 'Afternoon Computer Umbrage' LP

2009-10-21T19:36:00.002-04:00

Dusted:

Needle Gun takes the free/spazz-noise rock to the harsh lands.

Foxy Digitalis:

It isn't typical critic/PR hyperbole to say that "Afternoon Computer Umbrage" is a free-wheeling, scattershot, psych-noise free-for-all. That's seriously the best and most appropriate description I could muster after having my synapses fried by this electrified trash heap of mind-rotting noise perversions. Okay, now THAT was hyperbole. As one stands in the crossfire generated from Needle Gun's guitar, electronics, drums and vocals melee, they begin to realize the grotesquely punkish beauty being vomited from the amplifier.

SEVENTH ANNUAL CURATORS’ INCUBATOR PROGRAM EXHIBITION

2009-09-17T00:27:00.000-04:00

SEVENTH ANNUAL CURATORS’ INCUBATOR PROGRAM EXHIBITION

PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information contact:
Cathy Byrd, Executive Director at 410.962.8565 or map@mdartplace.org

Maryland Art Place Announces:
SEVENTH ANNUAL CURATORS’ INCUBATOR PROGRAM EXHIBITION
September 15 - October 24, 2009

Featured Curators:
Shelly Blake-Plock: Art of the Set-Up: Sound Objects as Artifacts
Artists: Peter Blasser. Alessandro Bosetti. Andy Hayleck. Bonnie Jones. Melissa Moore. Mike Muniak.

Rachel Sitkin: In Our Nature: Artists Reflect on the Manmade Landscape
Artists: Kim Beck. Laura Cooperman. Michelle Hagewood. Alex Lukas. Igor Pasternak.

Margaret Winslow: Soft Space: Architecture in Contemporary Art
Artists: Ronald Longsdorf. Janell Olah. Stephen Ruszkowki.

Featured Events:
Thurs Sept 24: Opening Event
5pm Rush Hour: Art Beats Traffic
6pm Gallery Talk and Sound Art Performance: Shelly Blake-Plock, John Berndt and Art of the Set-Up artists

Thurs Oct 8
5pm Rush Hour: Art Beats Traffic
6pm Gallery Talk: Margaret Winslow, Soft Space artists, and George Holback of Cho, Benn, Holback + Associates

Thurs Oct 22
5pm Rush Hour: Art Beats Traffic
6pm Gallery Talk: Rachel Sitkin and In Our Nature artists

Sat October 24
2pm to 5pm: Curating 101 presented by Cathy Byrd, MAP Executive Director

This Fall, MAP offers a communal platform for three inventive projects, including our first-ever sound art exhibition—The Art of the Set Up: Sound Objects as Artifacts, curated by Shelly Blake-Plock. Rachel Sitkin conceived In Our Nature: Artists Reflect on the Altered Landscape to feature artists who mine the outfall of urban development. Margaret Winslow’s ideas materialize in Soft Space: Architecture in Contemporary Art, a set of drawings and installations that explore physical and psychological nuances in the built environment.

Each year, MAP’s Curators’ Incubator Program renews the opportunity for Maryland Art Place to become a working laboratory for aesthetic experiments. Curators’ Incubator provides a creative space for the region’s aspiring curators to develop and present their concepts. MAP guides the curatorial process, beginning with an open call that encourages proposals and ending in the presentation of selected projects. MAP’s Program Advisory Committee took on the review and selection of our 2009 curators and MAP staff facilitated the production of the exhibition and companion catalogue.

OF NOTE: Programs for our Seventh Annual Curators’ Incubator will be presented on scheduled Thursdays at 5:00 pm this fall for RUSH HOUR: Art Beats Traffic. RUSH HOUR is an invitation to those who work and live in the downtown neighborhood to visit MAP at the end of the workday.

# # #

Maryland Art Place is a not-for-profit contemporary art center located in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, at 8 Market Place, Suite 100. Gallery hours: 11am to 5pm, Tuesday through Saturday. For further information, please visit mdartplace.org or call 410.962.8565. All programs and exhibitions are free and open to the public.

Elliott Sharp at the Red Room: September 23rd

2009-09-16T23:35:00.004-04:00

Elliott Sharp is coming to the Red Room.

Wednesday, September 23rd, $6

Elliott Sharp (composer/multi-instrumentalist/producer). Jorge Martins will be opening.

"Having worked in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock, and techno music. He pioneered the use of a lap top computer in live performance with his Virtual Stance project of the 1980s and more recently has used algorithm and fibonacci numbers in experimental composition. He has cited literature as an inspiration for his music and often favors improvisation. He is an inveterate performer, playing mainly guitar, saxophone and bass clarinet. Sharp has led many ensembles over the years, including the blues-oriented Terraplane and Orchestra Carbon. - courtesy of the democratizing force of Wikipedia.

The Red Room
at Normals Books and Records
425 E. 31st Street Baltimore
Doors open at 8:00 (for this show)

NPR calls High Zero Festival "premier showcase".

2009-09-16T22:04:00.004-04:00

Here's the first of two concert night reviews of High Zero by NPR:

High Zero Festival is the premier showcase for spontaneous sound.

A full set by Margarida Garcia, bass; Hans Grusel, electronics; Paul Neidhardt, percussion, friction; Morten Olsen, drums; and Raed Yassin, bass is available via the NPR site.

NPR Music Mixes Up High Zero

2009-09-09T09:36:00.002-04:00

NPR Music has put together a fun piece featuring a series of great videos of High Zero artists:

When you strip away the blues, swing, and polyrhythms, what's left of jazz? Improvisation, for one, but probably not resulting in what one would call "jazz." Some call it "free improvisation," others "non-idiomatic." In any case, it's sound that seeks new sound.

For the past 11 years, the High Zero Festival in Baltimore, Md., has done just that ... with a twist.

Here's a highlight:

High Zero Opening Party: TONIGHT

2009-09-08T06:14:00.001-04:00

High Zero Opening Party
September 8th, 2009
@ Load of Fun 120 W North Ave. Baltimore

7:30 PM - $6 admission

The High Zero festival kicks off with a party at the site of High Zero's gallery installation show, INEQUALITIES, and will feature varied performances by the installation artists. Tickets available only at the door.

"INEQUALITIES"
High Zero Sound Installations
August 28th - September 14th, 2009
@ Load of Fun 120 W North Ave. Baltimore

Since 2001, High Zero Festival has included a gallery show of installations, primarily to do with sound and other elements related to the broad experimental music and thought culture of which High Zero is a part. This year, High Zero Foundation presents INEQUALITIES, a gallery show at the Load of Fun curated with works of four very interesting local artists. Special thanks are due to Ric Royer and Sherwin Mark, and to the artists. The gallery does not have regular hours but is often accessible during the day, and is accessible during all Load of Fun events. See loadoffun.net for a schedule.

Please visit the INEQUALITIES page for further details.

The following artists will present work in the show:
Walter Carpenter
Owen Gardner
Jesse Haas
Ayako Katoaka
Jimmy Joe Roche

2009 High Zero Festival Schedule Announced!

2009-08-18T20:23:00.004-04:00

Major Concerts at The Theatre Project
Doors open 7:30 PM, Performances start 8:30 PM sharp.

Detailed set listings:

Thursday Night, September 10th
[buy tickets]

Solo
Christofer Varner: trombone

Group One
Tom Boram: prepared piano, tap shoes
Miya Masaoka: koto, electronics
Melissa Moore: electronics, turntable

Group Two
Nick Becker: moog, electric guitar
Max Eilbacher: sax, violin, electronics
Hans Grüsel: electronics
Twig Harper: electronics

Group Three
Samuel Burt: clarinets, electronics
Will Redman: drums
Raed Yassin: bass

Group Four
Martin Blažíček: projection
Michael Evans: drums
Melissa Moore: electronics, turntable
Morten Olsen: drums, supercollider 3

Friday Night, September 11th
[buy tickets]

Solo
Morten Olsen: drums, supercollider 3

Group One
Dave Ballou: trumpet
Killick: harpeggione
Stewart Mostofsky: electronics
Kate Porter: cello

Group Two
Tom Boram: prepared piano, tap shoes
Chris Cooper: guitar
Michael Evans: drums
Andrea Neumann: inner piano

Group Three
Jorge Martins: guitar, wild wave
Miya Masaoka: koto, electronics

Group Four
Shelly Blake-Plock: guitar
Samuel Burt: clarinets, electronics
Hans Grüsel: electronics
Stewart Mostofsky: electronics
Christofer Varner: trombone

Saturday Matinee (Day), September 12th -- SPECIAL EVENT!!!
[buy tickets]

1. Programmed by Snacks

Featuring:
Nick Becker: moog, electric guitar
Samuel Burt: clarinets, electronics
Max Eilbacher: sax, violin, electronics
Michael Evans: drums
Jorge Martins: guitar, wild wave
Ava Mendoza: electric guitar
Christofer Varner: trombone

2. Programmed by Will Redman

Featuring:
Dave Ballou: trumpet
Rose Burt: reeds
Margarida Garcia: bass
Melissa Moore: electronics, turntable
Kenta Nagai: fretless guitar, shamisen
Paul Neidhardt: percussion, friction
Raed Yassin: bass

Saturday Night, September 12th
[buy tickets]

Solo
Andrea Neumann: inner piano

Group One
Martin Blažíček: projection
Rose Burt: reeds
Killick: harpeggione
Miya Masaoka: koto, electronics
Kenta Nagai: fretless guitar, shamisen

Group Two
Chris Cooper: guitar
Nick Becker: moog, electric guitar
Stewart Mostofsky: electronics

Group Three
Margarida Garcia: bass
Hans Grüsel: electronics
Paul Neidhardt: percussion, friction
Morten Olsen: drums, supercollider 3
Raed Yassin: bass

Group Four
Shelly Blake-Plock: guitar
Chris Cooper: guitar
Michael Evans: drums
Twig Harper: electronics
Ava Mendoza: electric guitar

Sunday Night, September 13th
[buy tickets]

Solo
Twig Harper: electronics

Group One
Martin Blažíček: projection
Paul Neidhardt: percussion, friction
Andrea Neumann: inner piano
Christofer Varner: trombone

Group Two
Margarida Garcia: bass
Jorge Martins: guitar, wild wave
Kate Porter: cello

Group Three
Dave Ballou: trumpet
Max Eilbacher: sax, violin, electronics
Killick: harpeggione
Ava Mendoza: electric guitar

Group Four
Shelly Blake-Plock: guitar
Rose Burt: reeds
Kenta Nagai: fretless guitar, shamisen
Kate Porter: cello
Will Redman: drums

For more info see www.highzero.org.

2009 High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music

2009-07-22T14:38:00.002-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JULY 22ND, 2009
BALTIMORE, MD

What: High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music
When: September 10th - 13th, 2009
Where: Theatre Project 45 W. Preston Street, Baltimore, MD 21201-5717
General Contact: info@redroom.org
Press Inquiries: blakeplock@gmail.com
Tele: press: 410-493-0912 / general: 443-414-5414
Website: www.highzero.org
Twitter Hashtag: #HZF2009
PR Updates: http://diymummy.blogspot.com

11th Annual High Zero Festival to bring global experimental culture to Baltimore

“A fertile laboratory of musical possibility without equal.” - Signal to Noise

“An utterly confounding yet utopian vision of musical possibilities” - Wire Magazine

Baltimore’s High Zero Festival—one of the longest running and most successful festivals of experimental improvised music in the country and what City Paper called “one of Baltimore’s great cultural treasures” is entering its eleventh year.

The High Zero Festival -- called by Baltimore Magazine the city’s “Best Music Festival” -- gathers avant-garde musicians and artists each year from around the world for a series of concerts featuring startlingly new ad hoc collaborations, virtually taking over the city that Rolling Stone cites as having the “Best Music Scene” in the USA.

Attendance of the High Zero Festival in previous years has been exceptionally high for this non-commercial music, with the festival frequently selling out. A weekend pick in the New York Times and regularly covered by major European and U.S. magazines, the festival is an outgrowth of the vital weekly Red Room performance series at Normals Books and Records, which since 1996 has presented roughly 800 concerts of experimental music in Baltimore, making it one of the longest running series of its kind in the country.

“Some of the most intense new music being made anywhere, on everything from oboes and one-of-a-kind instruments to the human body itself… unforgettable performances.” - The Washington Post

“So highly singular that it corresponds to nothing that has been heard before.” - Maryland Public Television

The eleventh annual High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music will take place at Theatre Project in Baltimore, MD this September 10th - 13th, 2009. The press is invited to inquire regarding interviews and special announcements.

2009 Festival Musicians:

From afar:

Martin Blažíček (projection)
Prague

Chris Cooper (guitar)
Massachusetts

Michael Evans (drums)
NYC

Margarida Garcia (bass)
NYC

Hans Grüsel (electronics)
San Francisco

Killick (harpeggione)
Athens, GA

Miya Masaoka (koto, electronics)
NYC

Ava Mendoza (electric guitar)
San Francisco

Kenta Nagai (fretless guitar, shamisen)
NYC

Andrea Neumann (inner piano)
Berlin

Morten Olson (drums / supercollider 3)
Norway

Christofer Varner (trombone)
Munich, Germany

Raed Yassin (bass)
Amsterdam, Netherlands

From Baltimore:

Dave Ballou (trumpet)

Nick Becker (moog/electric guitar)

Shelly Blake-Plock (guitar)

Tom Boram (electronics, voice)

Rose Burt (reeds)

Samuel Burt (clarinets, electronics)

Max Eilbacher (sax, vln, electronics)

Twig Harper (electronics)

Jorge Martins (guitar, wild wave)

Melissa Moore (electronics)

Stewart Mostofsky (electronics)

Paul Neidhardt (percussion, friction)

Kate Porter (cello)

Will Redman (drums)

For more information contact:
High Zero Foundation, Inc.
General Contact: info@redroom.org
Press Inquiries: blakeplock@gmail.com
Tele: press: 410-493-0912 / general: 443-414-5414
Website: www.highzero.org
Twitter Hashtag: #HZF2009
PR Updates: http://diymummy.blogspot.com

Documentation of the 2008 High Zero Festival can now be found at: http://www.highzero.org/2008_documentation/

###

Peeping Tom: Touring Autumn 2009

2009-07-13T20:56:00.004-04:00

Peeping Tom

Pierre-Antoine Badaroux - Saxophone
Joel Grip - Double Bass
Antonin Gerbal - percussion

This french-swedish trio peeps back in time, deeply inspired by the energies of be-boppers like C. Parker, B. Powell and D. Gillespie. And by giving an up-to-date attention to their compositions, Peeping Tom tear jazz down to its bare bones and re-furnish it with the new blossom of be-bop.

***

Here's the Peeping Tom tour, as it looks now:

0ctober 29th, 8pm
Elastic, Chicago

October 31st, 8pm
Kresge Theater, Pittsburgh

November 1st, 8pm
Sci*Fi @ Gojjo, Philadelphia

November 4th, 8pm
Pyramid Atlantic, Sonic Circuits, DC

November 5th, 8pm
The Windup Space, Baltimore

November 6th
Downtown Music Gallery, NYC

November 7th, 8pm
Douglas Street Music Collective, NYC

For more info check out Peeping Tom's page at Umlaut Records and check out tracks on MySpace.

Ehse Records releases: new SEJAYNO LP 'QUANTUS'

2009-05-31T23:30:00.001-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SEJAYNO bring you QUANTUS, their third official album, which finds the trio delving further into the nebulous realms of INDUSTRY NOISE POP. Much of what you have come to love about Sejayno is still present: ancient-futurism, odd tunings, elegant theosophical ramble poetry, the gonzo, the stoned serene. However, with QUANTUS Sejayno have brazenly added new 21st century stylistics: slammed pop tunes derived from neo-conservative country music, Beck, new age retreat centers, and most glaringly, corporate globalism. QUANTUS begins Sejayno’s foray into REVERSE TIME MARKETING, which is an appropriation of corporate identities, logos, sigils, and techniques used by multinational brands. Their hit single, “ALIEN EYES” is a perfect example of Sejayno’s rebranding of SCION as it applies to SCI-AN-YO and the Priory of Sion, a French illuminati group from the Rennaisance period. To find out more about REVERSE TIME MARKETING, check out Sejayno on YouTube.

Sejayno is: Peter B, Carson Garhart, Severiano Martinez

Track List:

Opening Prayer
Internation Harvester I
Symposium
Assateague
Incantation Heterodyne
Monoteeth
International Harvester II
Alien Eyes
Alien Miles
The Spirit of the Mulberry

LP available. $15 USD, postage paid.

CD-R's with high resolution files available at Ehse Records for $7.

John Berndt "Ecstatic Thought Experiments" opens big at Emily Harvey, Soho, NYC

2009-04-21T19:13:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to John Berndt and the Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery on the very successful opening of "Ecstatic Thought Experiments, 1989 - 2009".

Opening night saw over 500 people fill the gallery for music and art!

The show continues throughout this week with more music on Friday and Saturday.

Friday April 24th, 7PM-9PM, $6
A night of music by John Berndt and THUS, his 17-year long project with Neil Feather to invent a new idiom of music on original experimental instruments, with special guests.

John Berndt — solo acoustic and electronic saxophone
THUS (John Berndt and Neil Feather) — original music on original instruments
THUS with Michael Evans (drums) and special guests

Saturday April 25th, 7PM-9PM, $6
A night of solo and orchestral music featuring SECOND NATURE, a 15-person ensemble of virtuoso improvisers directed by Berndt, dedicated to the development of a new free improvisation musical ethic and aesthetic for the large group.

John Berndt — new electronic music compositions
Second Nature — improvised music, orchestral scale

Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery
537 Broadway at Spring Street - 2nd floor
New York, NY 10012
www.emilyharveyfoundation.org

John Berndt exhibition is Editors' Pick

2009-04-15T00:11:00.002-04:00

John Berndt "Ecstatic Thought Experiments, 1989 - 2009" at The Emily Harvey Foundation is an EDITORS' PICK on Artcards NYC for Friday, April 17, 2009.

April 15 - April 30, John Berndt, Ecstatic Thought Experiments, 1989 - 2009

2009-04-13T21:12:00.005-04:00

Official announcement from Emily Harvey Gallery:

April 15 - April 30, John Berndt, Ecstatic Thought Experiments, 1989 - 2009

Opening Reception and free concert: April 17, 7 - 10 pm
Performance Nights: April 24 & 25, 7 to 9 pm ($6 admission for each night)

This April, the Emily Harvey Foundation presents the first major retrospective of works by John Berndt (b. 1967). Berndt's vital and idiosyncratic cultural activity over the last thirty years has touched nearly every aspect of experimental culture. Best known to the public as a prolific musician, composer and improviser and as a key organizer in the scene around the international High Zero festival, Berndt's work from the very beginning also involved the creation of coherent novelties in a broader range of media, including personal behavior, film, visual art, text, installation and a variety of non-musical performance genres. Driven by his unique philosophy and collaborations, his panoramic sensibility is the subject of the show.

Hours: Tues - Sat. 2 - 6 pm

A series of performances by the artist, film-maker, writer, musician and second wave Neoist John Berndt, to coincide with his first retrospective exhibition. Berndt will be improvising with Elliot Sharp, Lukas Legetti, and Peter Zummo & Katt Hernandez amongst others. Events take place between 17 - 25 April. from Wire Magazine

More coverage in Networked Music Review.

John Berndt NYC Experimental Concert Series

2009-03-24T23:19:00.000-04:00

John Berndt NYC Experimental Concert Series

Three nights of music in Soho as part of the first retrospective gallery exhibition of works by the improviser, experimental composer, film-maker, writer, and installation artist John Berndt.

All taking place at:
Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery
537 Broadway at Spring Street - 2nd floor
New York, NY 10012
www.emilyharveyfoundation.org

Friday April 17th, 7PM-10PM, free
Opening reception and free concert. three very different collaborations between John Berndt and four legendary experimental improvisers.

John Berndt and Elliot Sharp — string delirium
John Berndt and Lukas Legetti — polymetric kaleidoscope syncopation
John Berndt, Peter Zummo, and Katt Hernandez — paradoxical dispersal music

Friday April 24th, 7PM-9PM, $6
A night of music by John Berndt and THUS, his 17-year long project with Neil Feather to invent a new idiom of music on original experimental instruments, with special guests.

John Berndt — solo acoustic and electronic saxophone
THUS (John Berndt and Neil Feather) — original music on original instruments
THUS with Michael Evans (drums) and special guests

Saturday April 25th, 7PM-9PM, $6
A night of solo and orchestral music featuring SECOND NATURE, a 15-person ensemble of virtuoso improvisers directed by Berndt, dedicated to the development of a new free improvisation musical ethic and aesthetic for the large group.

John Berndt — new electronic music compositions
Second Nature — improvised music, orchestral scale

About John Berndt

One of the more active experimental music performers on the East Coast for the past decade, John Berndt began his musical career by composing wildly abstract electro-acoustic and conceptual tape music in 1978 at the tender age of 11. His first compositions in this mode premiered on the radio at age 14, and by his late teens, he was active in an international cultural scene that included some of the most radical cultural activists of the 80's and 90's. From the beginning his work was singular, ranging over the disjoint subcultures of sound art, improvised music, industrial, musical instrument design, and language experimentation. His solo CDs are available on Stereosupremo (Italy), HereSee (Baltimore), Abstract On Black (Pittsburgh) and he has many published recordings of collaborations.

Berndt began as a composer with a distinctly "inhuman" style and severe set of conceptual preoccupations, but in an unusual development process expanded his sensibility in a variety of contradictory directions, such that his work today is so aesthetically varied as to seem the work of a number of unrelated artists. In 1991 Berndt had heard saxophonist Jack Wright, who became his saxophone teacher, and as a result began to focus on developing his abilities in spontaneous instrumental performance to a high degree. His rigorously strange aesthetic then broadened to incorporate lessons from a variety of clashing modalities: jazz, Indian and African music, and extreme modernist instrumental technique. In this transformation, he was also highly influenced by another collaborator and teacher, the philosopher Henry Flynt, whose critique of the western computational mind-set greatly enabled Berndt's own critical path.

Berndt has always had a wide range of intensive ensemble projects, many of which are only now receiving attention outside of Baltimore. Since 1992, his duo THUS with Neil Feather has produced an entirely unique idiom of "very strange" music on an orchestra of original instruments they invent. As a part of THAT NOTHING IS KNOWN, a quartet with Jack Wright, Michael Zerang, and Bob Marsh, Berndt participated in some of the most inspired "fast" free improvised music of the 90's. Today, he performs regularly with his groups DEATH IN THE MAZE (a post-reductionist chamber improvisation ensemble), GEODESIC GNOME (a super-group performing Berndt's "Impossible" conceptual compositions), directs SECOND NATURE (Baltimore's 16 performer free improvisation orchestra) and recently participated in EXPLODING GARDENS (a post-jazz composers collective with Katt Hernandez, Gordon Beeferman, and Will Redman). He is also a hired gun performer occasionally with the well known electronic group MATMOS.

Ehse Records set to release new LP by Baltimore’s Needle Gun

2009-03-19T22:14:00.001-04:00

Ehse Records set to release new LP by Baltimore’s Needle Gun

Hailing from Baltimore, MD, Needle Gun is an avant-free-noise-punkish outfit equal parts Jack Patterson, Max Eilbacher, Gram Hummell, and Mike Allison.

The group has been playing since the summer of 2006 and has released several platters on local and DIY labels. The latest release -- an energetic, noisy, and challenging full-length LP on Ehse Records (Harrius, Snacks, Little Howlin’ Wolf, Blaster Al Ackerman) -- was recorded at Diamond Eyes Studio and was produced by Twig Harper of Nautical Almanac.

Harrius' 'Proud Flesh' NOW AVAILABLE from Ehse Records

2009-02-24T17:35:00.003-05:00

Harrius' 'Proud Flesh' Soundtrack now available in LP format from Ehse Records.

"Some amazing tweaking of the idea of the Western film and, by extension, America itself." -- Arthur Magazine

Jenny Graf Sheppard and Chiara Giovando release the soundtrack for their experimental Western featuring a 70-year old female gunslinger seeking redemption.

"...discrete passages that vary between ominous guitar drone, suggesting rumbling thunder, drizzled with piano melody; solemn monastic chant; cryptic tape manipulation; and H0 scale clatter. This is just in the record's first 10 minutes." -- City Paper

Retrospective of Works by John Berndt at Emily Harvey Foundation, Soho NYC

2009-02-24T15:27:00.000-05:00

Ecstatic Thought Experiments, 1989 – 2009
A Retrospective of Auditory, Visual, Tactile and Language Works by John Berndt

Wednesday April 15th – Thursday April 30th
Open Tuesday – Saturday, 2PM – 6PM

Opening reception and free concert: Friday April 17th, 7PM-10PM
Performance Nights: Friday April 24th and Saturday April 25th, 7PM-9PM
($6 admission for each night)

Emily Harvey Foundation (Gallery)
537 Broadway at Spring Street - 2nd floor
New York, NY 10012
www.emilyharveyfoundation.org

The Emily Harvey Foundation presents the first major retrospective of works by John Berndt (b. 1967). Best known as a prolific musician, composer, and improviser as well as a key organizer in the scene surrounding the international High Zero festival, from the very beginning Berndt’s work also has involved the creation of coherent novelties in a broader range of media, including personal behavior, film, visual art, text, installation and a variety of non-musical performance genres. This panoramic sensibility is the subject of the show.

As a teenager in the mid-80s, Berndt became the youngest member of the international Neoist movement, contributing as a core member to the development of its philosophy adopting falsehoods, mythologies, mind games, and hoaxes. In the early 90’s, Berndt became a student of Henry Flynt, the visionary philosopher and original author of “Concept Art”. This relationship, which has recently deepened into collaboration, had a huge effect on the clarification of Berndt’s thought, and led to an increased emphasis on writing sincere philosophy, and framing his varied activities as manifestations of a unified, radical sensibility of consciousness. At the same time, Berndt became a student of world-renowned avant-garde saxophonist Jack Wright and of experimental instrument inventor Neil Feather. Through these relationships, he dramatically broadened his approach, developing extended technical ability on a variety of instruments, and developing novel approaches to sound production becoming an advocate of non-idiomatic, freely improvised music and performing in hundreds of freely improvised concerts and on many recordings, including collaborations with leading figures.

In Ecstatic Thought Experiments, 1989 – 2009, the Emily Harvey Foundation brings together the dimensions of Berndt’s work over a twenty year period, ranging from micro- to macro- experiences. A large installation submerges visitors in a uniquely disorienting visual space. A small book, made especially for the exhibit, contains descriptions of impossible objects. Novel optical illusions give the visitor new experiences. A dance solo continues fluidly forever without repeating. Original instruments expose new aesthetics and performance possibilities. Theoretical texts frame lived experience in ways that are destabilizing to faith in conventional knowledge.

The exhibit is also enriched by three nights of concerts, covering a broad range of Berndt’s solo and collaborative projects, starting with an opening concert on Friday April 17th, and continuing with two nights on April 24th and 25th.

Blast from the Past: Review of Harrius' 'Enter the Cotton Ring' (2007) from KFJC FM

2009-02-23T12:09:00.003-05:00

Harrius - “Enter The Cotton Ring ” - [Ehse]

Jenny Graf Sheppard (Metalux) and Chiara Giovando are the mistressminds behind Harrius. This is a bizarre dream of a record, indeed “Ringer’s Glove” sort of reminded me of the sleep sequences from the outstanding film, “The Manuscript Found At Saragoss.” Something about the succubus sounds and the tick-tock plunking percussion re-conjured up images of drinking from a skull. Indeed the music here is allegedly from an unsound soundtrack to a “psychedelic Western recently shot in the Badlands” (and that’s straight out of the horse’s web site). The title track is a sort of ladies lost in the canyon free-fall-folk ditty. “The Wedding Ring” has many bands, chopped and wobbly bands of sound. “L’OK” feels like a small slice of Fursaxa heaven. “Ebolatime” has a low rumble guitar and more voice-acting song could be a cross between Obuh records and Mauve Sideshow… but really this is willfully weirdly its own brand of wonder! “Proud Flesh” works a deep subconscious rupture…like a blood vessel mic’d up to volcano level? Lastly “Uppera” is another oddly divine number, like angels pacing back and forth in some scrambled universe. And then a very faint looked groove at the end! This is a fantastic twisted, yet intricately so, release! Do not miss!

- Thurston Hunger

Harrius' 'Proud Flesh' Movie Trailer

2009-02-22T22:57:00.002-05:00

It is 1886 in South Dakota, and Harrius, a 70-year old wounded wanderer, seeks redemption. Through her encounters with a parched landscape and beings both physical and metaphysical (including a virtual labyrinth of mounds, geisha dancers and her pious lace-maker double, Alma), Proud Flesh is no mere re-visioning of the American Western. It is a meditation on the iconography and gestures contained within the genre itself. -- Jenny Graf Sheppard / IMDb

Harrius' 'Proud Flesh' reviewed in Arthur / Feb 09

2009-02-19T15:35:00.003-05:00

Harrius' 'Proud Flesh' reviewed in Arthur.

It’s a beautiful thing, made from a private, internal symbolic system and some amazing tweaking of the idea of the Western film and, by extension, America itself.

Harrius' 'Proud Flesh' reviewed in City Paper / Jan 09

2009-02-19T15:30:00.001-05:00

City Paper review of Harrius' 'Proud Flesh' Soundtrack

Knowing that the score's creator, Harrius (Jenny Graf Sheppard and Chiara Giovando), is the main duo behind the movie helps explain why this record makes so much sense, why it feels so, well, cinematic, functioning as its own taut, affecting narrative. It starts in quick successions of beeps/squeaks, like a computer rendered chew toy. It gives way to a brief, lovely verse of traditional vocal folk , which is abruptly cut off by a percussive blast (gunshot, perhaps). Those vocals return throughout the 35 minute composition, breaking up discrete passages that vary between ominous guitar drone, suggesting rumbling thunder, drizzled with piano melody; solemn monastic chant; cryptic tape manipulation; and H0 scale clatter. This is just in the record's first 10 minutes.

Harrius: 'Proud Flesh' -- New LP Release on Ehse Records

2009-02-09T17:18:00.003-05:00

Harrius -- the musical duo comprised of artists Jenny Gräf Sheppard (of Metalux) and Chiara Giovando -- has recorded a sound program for the film 'Proud Flesh', also directed and produced by the pair. It will be released on February 24, 2009 by Baltimore’s Ehse Records (www.ehserecords.com ).

“'Proud Flesh' is the sound program to a movie of the same name by Chiara Giovando and Jenny Graf Sheppard. The film was shot largely in the South Dakota Badlands and stars the artists' mothers. An introspective study of the balance between wilderness and civilization within individuals and groups, it is comprised of a set of personal symbols, textural, behavioral, topographic, and through the casting of friends and family members who make up the cast, both archetypal in a way that is drawn from direct human relationships. Like the film, the sound that adjoins it is a gauzy world of private experiences interwoven into a taut narrative, something far more alien and beautiful than you're used to hearing on a record. There are references to American-ness; there are unexpected and intuitive structural leaps; there is the strong sense of something awry and rebalanced by the anxiety which results from it; there is a sense of vast and difficult terrain, through the sheer variety of sounds of styles of ordering them. But it's all finely wrought with lacemakers’ hands, and the result is something stunning that I don't quite have a handle on, and for the sake of a respect for wonder, I'll keep it that way.”
-Ian Nagoski, Baltimore

“Consider it 'Persona' by way of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Sergio Corbucci, scored to hybridized folk music that bleeds into disorienting drones.” - City Paper