ZAK RILES, R. KEENAN LAWLER, NATHAN SALSBURG, MIKE TAMBURO, and BEN REYNOLDS at the SWAN DIVE, Tuesday, November 24

ZAK RILES (of GRAILS, from Louisville)
R. KEENAN LAWLER (from Louisville)
NATHAN SALSBURG (from Louisville)
MIKE TAMBURO (from Pittsburgh, PA; on the New American Folk Hero label)
BEN REYNOLDS (from Glasgow, Scotland; on the Tompkins Square and Strange Attractors Audio House labels)

at the SWAN DIVE
921 Swan Street
8 PM, $5, 21 and over

ZAK RILES is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist in the Important/Temporary Residence band Grails. His creative contributions to the group are immeasurable and can be heard clearly on this self-titled debut solo outing. In fact some of the pieces on this solo record have been reinterpreted into Grails favorites. Like his band Grails, ZAK RILES’ solo work is an elaborate mansion built of inspiration but with so much strength and originality that it stands firmly on its own. On these rocky shores come crashing waves of Sandy Bull, Mogolar, Deuter, Popol Vuh and the Ventures while Persian breeze drifts by wafting the melodies of Hossein Alizadeh. Essential listening for followers of Important Records who favor the likes of Grails & James Blackshaw.

R. KEENAN LAWLER is a musician and sound artist based in Louisville Kentucky. For over 25 years his musical journey has taken him from early experiments with reverb tanks, noise and tape decks to all manner of avant-garde, “new” music, psychedelia, electro-acoustic, drone, ethnic and sampler-based work. LAWLER is best known for developing a highly personal and exploratory language for the metal bodied resonator guitar which Baltimore’s John Berdnt called “Cosmic, monolithic and deeply American.” Indeed his work is informed by carnatic classical, Charles Ives, Albert Ayler, blues, minimalism and non-western trance musics. Primarily a solo performer, he is also known for collaborative work. The “Keyhole II” album he recorded with Pelt and metal worker Eric Clark is one of Pelt’s most beautiful and memorable recordings, and his guitar playing is also heard on releases by Paul K., Jack Wright, My Morning Jacket and most visibily on Matmos’ “The Civil War.” He has collaborated or performed with a wide range of forward-thinking musicians and mavericks including Rhys Chatham, John Butcher, Eliott Sharp, Charalambides, Ignaz Schick/Perlonex, Kaffe Matthews, Burning Star Core, Jason Kahn, Ut Gret, Thaniel Ion Lee, Ed Wilcox, Ramesh Srinivasan, Kevin Drumm, Arco Flute Foundation, Helena Espvall, Ian Nagoski, Connor Bell, Andy Willis, Alan Licht, Taksuya Nakatani, Tom Carter, Bhob Rainey, Aaron Rosenblum, Joe Dutkiewicz, Evergreen, Eric Carbonara and Joseph Suchy.

NATHAN SALSBURG is an archivist, producer, guitarist and writer based in Louisville, Kentucky. He has worked for the Alan Lomax Archive since 2000, for which he currently serves in the capacities of production manager, photo and video archivist, and general digital catalog editor. Since 2006 he has produced and hosted “Root Hog Or Die,” a vernacular/traditional music program on East Village Radio, and is curator of the Twos & Fews recording imprint, also a vernacular music entity, and a collaboration with Chicago’s Drag City label. Its first album, I Want to Go Where Things Are Beautiful, drew on Mike Seeger’s 1982 recordings of the late miner, union activist, and singer Nimrod Workman; its second, Ouled Bambara: Portraits of Gnawa, features 2005 recordings of several master musicians of the Gnawa, a Sufi order of trance healers, living in Marrakech, Morocco. He has recently finished the production of a tribute album to the singer/guitarist E.C. Ball, late of Rugby, Virginia, entiled Face A Frowning World, due out in December 2009 on New York’s Tompkins Square label. It features contributions from Michael Hurley, Jon Langford, Catherine Irwin, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Jolie Holland, and the Handsome Family, among others. Salsburg maintains an index of on-line vernacular music resources at his blog, roothogordie.wordpress.com, and contributes occasional music writing to the Louisville Eccentric Observer and the Other Music weekly update. His most recent musical contribution was to the third volume of Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem guitar compilations. He is currently working on an album of his own acoustic guitar compositions and arrangements.

MIKE TAMBURO is a 21st century Renaissance man who has forged his way into the consciousness of the American underground music community. For the past 13 years, Tamburo has been relentlessly releasing records (31 releases and counting) under different monikers and projects including Meisha, Arco Flute Foundation & various imprints under his own name. He has performed over 500 shows all over the United States, traveling to every nook and cranny, searching for some kind of an understanding of what America truly is. Though always considering himself a multi-instrumentalist, he gained fame and notoriety with his fingerstyle guitar playing and his idiosyncratic use of effects; only to swear himself off of the acoustic guitar, eventually setting it on fire and hurling it off of Pittsburgh’s 40th Street Bridge. His effects soon followed. Tamburo is a man who continues to reinvent himself, recently finding his new musical passion in the hammered dulcimer; building upon his own unique compositional stylings, he has developed a voice for the instrument that is very much his own. He is greatly inspired by American folk and minimalist music traditions as well as Indian classical music, but often expands outward to include influences from avant-garde to noise to modern compositional music. A Tamburo performance is always a very transportive experience. Tamburo is also an artist, film maker, writer, instrument builder, curator of the Fantastic Voyagers Festivals, Kundalini Yoga and Pranayama devotee, and inner state researcher; exploring alpha and theta states, floatation tanks, ethnobotany, orgone energy, and ecstatic states of being. He also runs the New American Folk Hero label, which continues to release an eclectic roster of creative and experimental musics.

BEN REYNOLDS is a songwriter, solo steel string guitarist and improviser. He has released two proper solo albums, How Day Earnt Its Night (on the Tompkins Square label) and Two Wings (on the Strange Attractors Audio House label). Outside of solo concerns he has been a collaborator/contributor to various musical projects including Motor Ghost (a duo with Alex Neilson), Baby Dee, Ashtray Navigations, Nalle, and Directing Hand amongst others. Ben is also a member of Trembling Bells, a band featuring Alex Neilson, Lavinia Blackwall, Simon Shaw and sometimes George Murray and Aby Vulliamy. Their debut album Carbeth was released in April, 2009 by Honest Jon’s to glowing reports from the likes of Will Oldham and Joe Boyd.

Check out the Facebook invitation here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=178814326944.

For more information, check http://othersideoflife.wordpress.com/upcoming-events. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

SHEDDING, TALK NORMAL, TINY FIGHTS at SKULL ALLEY, Wednesday December 2nd

SHEDDING (from Louisville)
TALK NORMAL (from Brooklyn, New York)
TINY FIGHTS (from Lexington/Louisville)

Wednesday, December 2nd
at SKULL ALLEY
1017 E. Broadway
$5, 7 PM, ALL AGES

SHEDDING has been a solo project for Connor Bell since 2001, though in 2009 Tim Furnish (Parlour, Crain, Papa M, The For Carnation) and Joey Yates (The Loved, Parlour, Sapat) joined as the rhythm section in SHEDDING’s new lineup. Solo, SHEDDING has already released a few albums, and the new band lineup plans to release a 7″ or 2 over the winter and spring of 2009-2010.

Sarah Register and Andrya Ambro allied as TALK NORMAL in 2007, after years of friendship, and haven’t stopped moving. Since their lightning-strike first appearance, TALK NORMAL’s sound has stormed upward and outward, referencing few and relating to many, a jarringly songful gale of rhythm and noise supporting pleas and plaints, signal-calls and marching orders. Each show builds on past ones: up-to-the-moment updates of ideas previously stated, new phrasings of old upheavals delivered with increasing focus and joy. Darkness and light; fury, silence, space and sound. ”Brooklyn-based duo TALK NORMAL create a nice racket that does a deft job of splitting the difference between harsh sonics and the essential song-oriented structures required of noise rock. Neither a band in which noise is merely a bi-product of a savage attack nor an overtly experimental outfit steeped in this or that high concept, TALK NORMAL come off as an organic self-contained unit that extracts as much as they can from their explicitly minimal approach. Sure, there are some obvious touchstones here – Sonic Youth, Magik Markers, Ut, Teenage Jesus – but the songs never feel derivative. Though various sorts of processed sounds work their way in and out of the picture, the bands aesthetic is built on a basic foundation of guitars, drums and vocals. They can sound both hyper and dirgey, calling to mind heat-soaked basement shows and cold moldy practice spaces alike… TALK NORMAL are making their music amidst an increasingly cluttered underground landscape, and the duo’s seeming intrepidness in the face of that fact shines through. They’ve cultivated their own voice that, when combined with that strange festering energy, should make for solid stuff with each successive release.” – Nate Knaebel/Dusted

TINY FIGHTS is an up-and-coming band with members from both Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky. Their recent performance at the Boomslang Festival in Lexington was astounding, and it’s quite possible that this show may be their Louisville debut. Not really sure about that, but either way, they’re definitely not to be missed!

Check out the Facebook invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=332581415433.

For more information, check http://othersideoflife.wordpress.com/upcoming-events. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

Group Doueh, Treeg Salaam (Sublime Frequencies)

LEO Weekly ran my review of Group Doueh’s Treeg Salaam today:

Released in conjunction with their first-ever European tour this past June (the first time that audiences outside of Western Sahara saw them perform), Group Doueh’s second album, Treeg Salaam, on the always-intriguing Sublime Frequencies label, is an achievement. Discovered by label founders Alan Bishop and Hisham Mayet in 2005, the group is built around the relentless, driving electric guitar of main man Doueh, joined by his relatives on various other instruments (some of which are homemade). Fans familiar with the Mali “dry guitar” style propagated by Ali Farka Toure will hear some similarities in Doueh’s technique, but will be blown away by his amazingly fast fretwork and the distorted nature of the group’s DIY recordings. Yet on Treeg Salaam Doueh occasionally showcases a mellower form of his guitar heroics, and the album’s side-long ender “Tazit Kalifa” displays an almost-tender lyricism otherwise rare in Doueh’s desert music.

Buy the CD here from Sublime Frequencies (the LP sold out ages ago).

Jerry Fuchs, R.I.P.

(Image of Jerry Fuchs from the New York Times.)

By now, the unfortunate and tragic death of Jerry Fuchs on Saturday night is common knowledge. However, I felt I had to write some sort of obituary, though late, if only to acknowledge how great a friend Jerry was to me.

Maserati, one of Jerry’s main music concerns, played here in Louisville at the Zanzabar back in September, and I was lucky enough to be able to DJ the gig. Doing so meant a lot to me, as Jerry and I had been friends since I lived in Brooklyn in the middle part of this decade. Unfortunately, I hadn’t talked with Jerry since I left Brooklyn to come home to Louisville in October, 2007, but the minute Maserati’s van pulled up to the Zanzabar, it was like only a few days had gone by since we’d last seen each other. We partied on into the night, then lunched at Zanzabar the next day, then Jerry and his compatriots were nice enough to drive me back to work for my double shift.

Strangely enough, we didn’t meet originally through music, but through football: we both used to watch Steelers games over at Doug Mosurock’s apartment. It only dawned on me later that Jerry missed a week or two of games here and there because he was on tour. But, again, when we’d run into each other on the street, at a party, at Daddy’s or Sal’s Pizza or wherever, it always seemed that time hadn’t passed at all, due to Jerry’s generosity of spirit.

A number of Jerry’s friends have written some fantastic remembrances of him, and for a wonderfully detailed portait of an excellent person, please read Henry Owings’ entry over at Chunklet. I don’t have much more to add, other than I miss my friend very much.

UPDATE: If you’re in New York City, there will be a memorial service for Jerry at Enid’s in Greenpoint, Brooklyn this Thursday, November 12th, between 7 and 11 PM. Enid’s is located, of course, at 560 Manhattan Avenue, at the corner of Driggs, right by the park. Wish I could be there.

EGRET, CURSILLISTAS, LITTLE GOLD at the SWAN DIVE, Friday November 13

EGRET (from Louisville)
CURSILLISTAS (from Portland, Maine; on Time-Lag and Digitalis)
LITTLE GOLD (from NYC)

at the SWAN DIVE
Friday, November 13th
921 Swan Street
9 PM, $5, 21-and-over

EGRET is a newer Louisville band composed of Greta Smith on vocals, autoharp, and guitar; Paul Rushford on lap steel and guitar; Chet Gray on cello, guitar, kazoo; and Chris Martin on drums, and percussion. They recently played the Swan Dive with eremy Jirvin & the Free=Ends, and are currently recording their first album.

CURSILLISTAS are a fantastic collective of mysterious origins, having released one excellent record on their own L’Animaux Tryst imprint, Les Biches (which was recently re-issued by Time-Lag). Norman Records had this to say about it: “[it's] meandering space drone & cracked acid-fried freestyle folk. …The fourth track and is totally amazing, like one of those blinding Animal Collective harmony drenched space pop experiments. Then there’s some fun to be had with xylophones and bent shards of heavily manipulated guitar whilst vocals drift drowsily all over the shop like drunken clouds.” Their new 12″, entitled Joint Chiefs, will soon be released by Digitalis. This show will be their Louisville debut.

New York’s LITTLE GOLD presents mellow country rock born from years of playing basement punk shows. Christian DeRoeck spent a good chunk of the past decade leaning on the whammy bar in Meneguar, and was one of the two founding songwriters in Woods. Following the trio’s ecstatic appearance at the Swan Dive back in September (with DR Country and WAND), LITTLE GOLD mainman Christian will be performing solo on Friday the 13th.

Check out the Facebook invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=161889294473.

For more information, check http://othersideoflife.wordpress.com/upcoming-events. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

Maryanne Amacher, R.I.P.

Unfortunately, I’m seeing unconfirmed reports that Maryanne Amacher, one of America’s most important sound artists, has died today. Though we never met (she taught at Bard, though well after I graduated), one of my favorite concert experiences of all time has to be seeing Amacher “live” in Chicago (she generally declined to “perform,” preferring sound installation work, but did actually perform in Chicago at 6ODUM when it was a functioning venue, as part of the LAMPO series). Her few releases, for John Zorn’s Tzadik label, are absolute masterpieces of pure sound and volume.

BLUES CONTROL with SAPAT, SOFTCHEQUE and RAW THUG at Lisa’s Oak Street Lounge, Friday, October 23

It’s flying a little bit under-the-radar, but this Friday Kris Abplanalp aka Kaptain Molasses is bringing another fantastic show to Louisville. Siltbreeze recording artists (and good friends) BLUES CONTROL are returning to Louisville to play Lisa’s Oak Street Lounge (at the corner of Oak and Swan Streets in Germantown) this Friday, October 23rd, with support from our local favorites SAPAT, SOFTCHEQUE, and RAW THUG. Should be a doozy of a good time. I could be wrong, but I think it starts around 10 PM, and costs $5.

BODY MORPH to join REGRESSION, SPYKES, NZAMBI and DOG LADY at ZANZABAR, Saturday October 24

(REGRESSION/SPYKES/BODY MORPH/DOG LADY tour poster by John Olson.)

Here’s an update on the upcoming REGRESSION, SPYKES, NZAMBI, and DOG LADY show at ZANZABAR on Saturday, October 24th:

Unfortunately, Sick Llama had to bow out of the tour with REGRESSION, SPYKES and DOG LADY. Playing in his place now is BODY MORPH, also of Michigan. BODY MORPH is Dan D., who has recorded for both Aaron Dilloway’s Hanson Records label and John Olson’s American Tapes label. He is also one-half of the band Uneven Universe.

Thanks, and we apologize for any confusion.

Rusted Shut, Dead (Load)

LEO Weekly ran my review of Rusted Shut’s latest album, Dead, on the excellent Load Records label:

You’d be excused for wondering whether the Houston-based Rusted Shut were much of a band, considering over the course of what couldn’t even arguably be called a “career” beginning way back in 1986, they’ve only released a small handful of titles. That is, before this year’s release Dead on Load, Rusted Shut had only released one LP, one CD (compiling the LP and some extra tracks) and one 12” EP (last year’s excellent Hot Sex on Dull Knife). And as true, punk-rock lifers, Rusted Shut apparently could not care less for such niceties as melodies or high production values. While their sludge-and-scream aesthetic may be off-putting to most, courageous listeners who like Flipper, Chrome or Brainbombs should revel that Rusted Shut aren’t quite dead just yet.

Buy it directly from Load here: http://www.loadrecords.com/bands/rustedshut.html.

REGRESSION, SPYKES, NZAMBI, BODY MORPH, DOG LADY at Zanzabar Saturday, October 24th

REGRESSION (Nate Young of WOLF EYES)
SPYKES (John Olson of WOLF EYES)
NZAMBI (Christopher Cprek of PAX TITANIA)
SICK LLAMA (from Michigan)
BODY MORPH (from Michigan?)
DOG LADY (from Detroit, Michigan)

Saturday, October 24th
at ZANZABAR
2100 S. Preston Street
9 PM, $5, 21 and over

From BOOMKAT: “WOLF EYES founding member NATE YOUNG has taken the noise levels down several notches for his new solo outing as REGRESSION, although the air of implicit, floating darkness cast over the whole affair is very much within his established oeuvre. You could neither classify REGRESSION’s self-titled LP as a noise record or a death ambient record, instead the analog synth dissections and tape treatments more closely reference library music, horror soundtracks, or in its more austere moments, early electronic music. REGRESSION is an outstanding album, proving to be more delicate than a WOLF EYES full-length has ever been, yet it’s able to match the group’s sonic gravitas – and their uncanny ability to make the extremes of music sound so incredibly seductive.”

SPYKES is one of John Olson of Wolf Eyes’ many projects, along with running the American Tapes label and playing in Dead Machines and Birth Refusal.

NZAMBI is the new synth project from Christopher Cprek, also known as PAX TITANIA. Christopher uses an arsenal of DIY modular synthesizers. His former projects include Darker Florida with Irene Moon, Auk Theatre with Irene Moon, and as a member of Warmer Milks a few years back.

DOG LADY is one Mike Collino of Detroit, Michigan on violin and modified electronics. DOG LADY has played shows with incredible acts including Aaron Dilloway, Andrew Coltrane, and Caroliner. DOG LADY has released a number of tapes on his own label, as well as a recent release on Trilogy Tapes, and one coming up on Rampart Tapes (label run by Trevor Tremaine of Hair Police). Before DOG LADY, Mike played under various names, including Cannibal Scab and Gamble Gore. Mike used to organize Guerrilla SkatePark in Detroit, whereby abandoned buildings would be transformed into makeshift Saturday night skateparks and bands would play. Mike’s other projects are Waste Ground and Pool Water and Gloria (with Wyatt Howland of Skin Graft).

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=151239554556.

For more information, check http://othersideoflife.wordpress.com/upcoming-events. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.