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Noise In Brief, Nov. 20: All The Baltimore Music News That Isn't Fit To Print
By Michael Byrne | 11/20/2009
Chicago's venerable Thrill Jockey label continues its march toward a Baltimore music monopoly: Future Islands are the latest signing. The synth-pop trio is also finally getting some good national buzz--with a little help from beatscaper Jones and Beach House's Victoria LeGrand. [Pitchfork] Sonar holds a benefit show for the family of Kevin Hannigan, the drummer of Baltimore sludge band Wake Up on Fire, who passed away last week. Participating bands include Magrudergrind, Vincent Black Shadow, Pi ... [MORE]
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Know Your Product: Various Artists, Street Radio Vol. 5 (Architects Recording Studio)
By Al Shipley | 11/20/2009
Compilation mixtapes that attempt to give an overview of Baltimore hip-hop, or even simply summarize what's happening at the moment, rarely come even close to getting it right. But if there's anybody who has a fighting chance, it's Architects Recording Studio, who record a huge percentage of the city's best known rappers, and began teaming with DJ Radio for the Street Radio series in 2005. After a few dormant years with no new installments, the creation of Architects' new download web site AllB ... [MORE]
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Listen: New Beach House, "Norway" from forthcoming Teen Dreams
By Michael Byrne | 11/19/2009
Of Teen Dreams' 10 tracks, due this January on Sub Pop, this song feels like one of the more Beach House-we-know: soft maybe-programmed percussion; Victoria LeGrande singing somehow always facing away from you in that sweet, just-woke-up voice; organ; glissando, dream-state guitar. Add in some backing vocals and bring the production somewhat up from the duo's resolute underwater aesthetic, and you have the newer, more-polished Beach House that may surprise some people. Also: this is the song th ... [MORE]
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From Rave To The Skate: Lenny Gomulka and the Chicago Push at Blobs Park, Nov. 14
By Geoffrey Himes | 11/16/2009
At a rave, typically, the dancers move in place and the lights and smoke move around them to produce the trippy, disorienting feeling. At a polka hall such as Maryland's Blob's Park, there's no smoke and the lights are stationary, but the dancers spin round and round to produce a very similar sensation. Last Saturday night, after an especially vigorous version of "The You're Gonna Cry Polka," my dance partner had to lean over, hands on knees, to stop the lights inside her head from spinning. But ... [MORE]
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Out Swinging: Dena DeRose at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Nov. 15
By Geoffrey Himes | 11/16/2009
Dena DeRose opened her show at the Baltimore Museum of Art Sunday with two finger-snapping songs recorded by the late, great Shirley Horn: "Travelin' Light" and "Don't Be on the Outside." The implication was obvious: Washington D.C. native Horn always had to fight for respect as a jazz pianist, because most people couldn't see past the fact that she was also a gifted, attractive female singer—and DeRose is fighting the same battle. She made some more headway this weekend. She began "How ... [MORE]
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Q&A: Deastro On Cartoons, Apocalypse, and Salvation
By Tony Ware | 11/13/2009
The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson was once quoted as saying his most ambitious, idiosyncratic arrangements were intended as a "teenage symphony to God." Michigan's Randy Chabot could perhaps be said to have attempted something similar, but with harmonic synths instead of singers and a backdrop of outer space instead of surf and sand. His Deastro project first gained acclaim with 2008's Keepers—a collection of home dream-synth-pop recordings, some from 10 years ago when he was barely 13--then re ... [MORE]
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Dan Deacon Hospitalized, Cancels Tour
By Michael Byrne | 11/13/2009
According to a Pitchfork post, Baltimore's pop magician has been hospitalized for the painful back condition acute sciatica. All dates on his current tour, including several in New York and next Wednesday's Baltimore show, have been canceled. We wish him the best. ... [MORE]
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Q&A: White Suns On Brooklyn, Noise, and Baseball
By Raymond Cummings | 11/13/2009
Given the sulfuric dissonance, clamor, and strife present in White Suns' noise-punk tumult, it's hardly shocking that the Brooklyn trio count Sightings among their favorite bands. Performing and recording together, Kevin Barry, Rick Visser, and Dana Matthiessen blaze with a gunfire-stipled, sunspot intensity that befits their handle and recalls, at times, that acerbic outfit. (To sample the face-melt of "Don Mattingly," "Exposible Income," and other tracks, visit the White Suns' last.fm page.) A ... [MORE]
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Q&A: Max Tundra On Sappy British Music, Taking His Sweet Time, and Friendster
By Tony Ware | 11/12/2009
Max Tundra is Ben Jacobs, a British pop (but not Brit-pop) composer known for an OCD approach to spry, MIDI-sequenced melodies. It had been six years since the last album by Max Tundra when Jacobs released 2008's Parallax Error Beheads You, an album of creative tonal displacement collected under a title conjuring up an appropriately angular, perception-altering phenomenon. Now Jacobs seems to be touring constantly, bouncing between twitchy-synth funk and spastic falsetto soul hooks, all with a m ... [MORE]
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Listen: New Scottie B track with Wale, "Elevators"
By Michael Byrne | 11/11/2009
Wale started out rhyming to Washington D.C.'s go-go rhythms, so it shouldn't be a big surprise to hear him alongside a bare-bones, old-school Baltimore club track from old-school master Scottie B. Scottie B - Elevators (feat. Wale) - 320 kbps by Unruly Productions ... [MORE]
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Music's Other Pop Hits: The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Nov. 8
By Geoffrey Himes | 11/9/2009
This coming weekend Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra try to make the case for George Gershwin's place in the classical canon. This past weekend they made the case-without really meaning to-for Wolfgang Mozart's status as a pop artist. It was impossible to listen to the BSO-the strings only-play Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" without recognizing how damn catchy the piece is. It's just one pop hook after another-each one set to a buoyantly bouncy beat. Sure, some people complai ... [MORE]
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Noise In Brief, Nov. 6: All the Baltimore Music News That Isn't Fit to Print
By Michael Byrne | 11/6/2009
The Talking Head is kinda sorta going away. Booker-in-chief Adam Savage assures us, however, that "Talking Head will never die." The Live Entertainment Bill passes a City Council vote; formerly hysterical DIY folks sleep in. The ever-prolific MC Wordsmith is circulating a new single, "Braggin' Rights." Grab it here. [Government Names] The forthcoming Beach House album on Sub Pop, Teen Dreams, is coming with a DVD of videos for each song, a la Liars' Drums Not Dead. Here's a preview (pictured ... [MORE]
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Ecstatic Sunshine Record Release, Nov. 7 at Open Space
By Michael Byrne | 11/6/2009
Apologies for not getting this in the print edition of City Paper, but there's an especially notable show Saturday night, Nov. 7. Ecstatic Sunshine, now a rotating cast revolving around co-founder Matt Papich, releases its first full-length record, Yesterday's Work (Hoss)—a set of sunny, pastoral electronically reimagined psychedelic folk—since early 2007 next week, with an unveiling/performance at Remington's Open Space. Cex (erstwhile CP contributor Rjyan Kidwell), Shave, Bear and ... [MORE]
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Jemina Pearl at the G-Spot Nov. 2
By Bret McCabe | 10/30/2009
For four years and two albums Nashville's Be Your Own Pet tore through garage punk with the sort of brashness that only teenagers can deliver. The quartet delivered everything at the frenetic clip of young people trying to live before they got old or the Jolt cola ran out—whichever came first. The blonde-haired personality at the eye of this tornado was the howling Jemina Pearl, 200 lbs. of don't-give-a-shit strained into what looked like a 90-lbs. soaking-wet package of flailing energy. S ... [MORE]
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Q&A: Twig Harper on Baltimore's Dreamworld Portals, Tape Loops, and the Human Instrument
By Raymond Cummings | 10/29/2009
When we chewed the fat with sonic collagist James "Twig" Harper about his latest compositions recently, the Nautical Almanac co-captain and HereSee co-operator had a great deal to tell us-more than we could cram into the print version of our recent story. In the full-length interview below, Harper clues us in on his unusual recording methodology, the state of Nautical Almanac, an unlikely inspiration, what Max Eisenberg is up to these days, and much, much more. City Paper: In an earlier e-mail, ... [MORE]
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A Baltimore Jazz Homecoming: the Josh Ginsburg Quartet at An die Musik, Oct. 23
By Geoffrey Himes | 10/28/2009
Josh Ginsburg was just a skinny, fledgling musician when he started playing bass as a teenager around his Baltimore hometown in the early '90s. On Friday he returned home for a concert at An Die Musik as the 32-year-old leader of the Josh Ginsburg Quartet. He brought along three top colleagues from New York, where he currently lives and where he works as a member of the Metta Quintet and an in-demand jazz bassist. It's a familiar story: a Baltimore jazz musician gets a good start in his home ... [MORE]
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Show the Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad Your Boobs (Also, Buy Them A Beer)
By Al Shipley | 10/20/2009
The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad put on what has to be, by some distance, one of the oddest rock shows in Baltimore. Its members don outfits, such as a Mexican wrestling mask and a paper-mâché horse head, and perform under names such as Captain Mediocrity and Prof. Doktor Von Science, which are just the kind of stunts that made them an unpredictable favorite on the reality show The Next Great American Band. But like many costumed spectacles in rock history, from Kiss to Gwar, one thing ... [MORE]
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Noise In Brief, Oct. 16: All The Baltimore Music News That Isn't Fit To Print
By Michael Byrne | 10/16/2009
Ace Baltimore MC E Major is hyping a new scratch-happy track off his forthcoming mixtape. Listen to "You Send Me" here. Under Sound Music, E Major's label/collective, also has a new weekly event Tuesdays at Red Maple. Aural States is hosting/releasing a remix album from MC Height with new takes of last summer's Baltimore Highlands. Grab it here, and see Height with AK Slaughter at the Zodiac Windup Space tonight. Wham City's Mark Brown and DJ Schwarz have a new party, Deep in the Game-expect pl ... [MORE]
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The Third Man Reigns: Han Bennink at the Windup Space, Oct. 14
By Geoffrey Himes | 10/16/2009
Avant-garde jazz can sometimes be a dour, cerebral exercise but not when Han Bennink plays it. The Dutch drummer may be 67, his hair gone silver beneath his bright red headband, his Amsterdam home full of Europe's top jazz prizes, but at the Windup Space on Wednesday, he played with sheer abandon and infectious joy of an 11-year-old boy. The tall, lanky percussionist had only a single snare drum at his disposal, but that's all he needed to fill the Third Man Trio with rhythms that were ever surp ... [MORE]
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Not With a Bang, Not With a Whimper: Big Bang Party
By Brandon Soderburg | 10/14/2009
Booked at the Depot, but moved at the last minute to after-hours spot 1722 a couple of doors down, and then ended early by 1722, this past Saturday's installment of Senari's Big Bang was all about keeping everybody, from those in attendance to the talent to promoter Puja Patel herself, off-balance. At least part of the off-balance feeling, though, was intentional. Unpredictability is one of the most rewarding aspects of many of Patel's shows, especially past Big Bangs: DJ Booman at the Hexago ... [MORE]
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Baltimore City Paper's online forum for everything music, kinda music, anti-music, or somehow involving sound in one way or another.
If you have something you want to blast into our ear, email Michael Byrne at Noise
Music blogs and sites we read.
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Brightest Young Things
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Dirty Nation
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soft graffiti
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