Noise: Archive for March, 2008

Since its mid-’90s rise and subsequent string of massive R&B radio hits, local quartet Dru Hill has been cherished as a local hero. And over the last few years of inactivity, murmurs of new solo projects or a possible reunion persisted, culminating three weeks ago in an interview on 92Q with all four original...
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This Saturday, March 29, Bernard Farley, the Washington D.C.-based electronic musician and DJ known as Outputmessage, returns to Bmore Electro‘s monthly More or Less party at the Depot for a night of melodic electrohouse obscurities. Well-known in the IDM scene, the 24-year-old self-taught musician boasts an impressive résumé of releases and production work. While...
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For me, this year’s South by Southwest festival (my first) came with a high risk of terminal illness. Over the course of the two or three days prior to getting on that 5:30 a.m. plane to Austin, every time I looked at the schedule of bands online, I thought I was going to have...
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| Image by photo courtesy of the artist Leading something of a double life–immersed in academia as a Johns Hopkins University grad student by day and DJ by night–Adam Gonzo is a regular at the Ottobar’s weekly Tensday party, where he spins tonight. Gonzo’s sets omnivorously pilfer from vintage disco and house, pop and...
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Baltimore club music is, in many ways, an old man’s game. Veterans of the genre’s ’80s and ’90s heyday still run the scene, and often when a new name shows up on our radar as an up-and-comer to watch, he turns out to be pushing 30 with a decade-long réesumé. So it was a...
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Because this pretty much defies commentary, we’ll just offer some context. Pastor Manning is an obscenely racist preacher in Harlem who has been railing against Barack Obama in sermons for reasons that are hard to pick out through waves of vitriolic pulpit abuse. Something about his whiteness. Making it into a joke à la...
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While the bludgeoning chorus claims “We want some Pu-Pu-ssaaaay,” everything about the ridiculously NSFW video for “Pu$$y”–from Spank Rock’s Bangers and Cash side project–seeks to negate this. For a bootie rap, the crudely animated images of disembodied vajayjays–quite literally hammered and bitch-slapped–look, well, thoroughly unsexy. Repulsive even, and maybe that’s the point. Lyrically, the...
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| Image by joshsisk.com In principle, the South by Southwest festival is as much a trade show as New York’s massive CMJ Music Marathon, which sort of made us throw up in our mouths a little last fall. The difference is that SXSW is cloaked in the best/biggest party any lover of music, Tex-Mex...
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| Image by Artist’s Rendition In anticipation of Music Editor Michael Byrne’s being kidnapped, drunk, and/or horribly lost during at least part of SXSW, we also had City Paper contributor Mike McGonigal combing the streets of Austin for the week to hunt out the best and worst of the nation’s largest music debauch. His...
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I enjoyed last year’s “Show Me What You Got” MC competition at Sonar enough that I’d been planning to catch the second edition of the tournament, this time at Fletcher’s, even before the event’s promoter, Steez, asked me to be a judge. And since the only drawback to reviewing concerts in print is that...
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Raving in action The folks at Steez Promotions just released the lineup to their hippy-rock to rave-out to hip-hop Starscape all-nighter at Armistead Park and, yeah, it looks likes a good weird time verging on a great weird time depending on how much you’re into either drum ‘n’ bass and/or the Disco Biscuits. Not...
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| Image by Sexy Fitsum/iLLIMETER Taxlo fixture DJ Dave Nada has been busy spreading his rowdy blend of Baltimore club and hip-hop far beyond the East Coast. Despite a gnarly cold, Nada was kind enough to check in with Noise during a lull between touring, to discuss recent shows in California and Canada, his...
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For math buffs, March 14 is Pi Day, a chance to celebrate the numerical value of π (3.14159 . . . ). For history and Shakespeare buffs, March 15 is the Ides of March, the date of Julius Ceasar’s death that has become a signifier for impending doom. And for the Baltimore band Perverse...
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The Metro Gallery’s tentative planned bar and stage renovations. The Metro Gallery, an arts and live music space in the Station North Arts District, plans to add a bar this spring thanks to its recently acquired liquor license. Noise sat down with Metro Gallery owner Sarah Williams earlier this week to discuss what the...
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Lambs Eat Ivy A March 4 Sun piece titled “Baltimore: A Muse for Many” offered what felt like a keyword search-generated list of songs with “Baltimore” in the title. What, if anything, these songs have anything to do with the city is beyond our ken. You know what we’re talking about here: Music–a song,...
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As far as the history books are concerned, Jonathan Richman’s contributions to music might as well begin and end with the Modern Lovers, the protopunk band that landed right in an early-’70s sweet spot that allowed the band to be both directly influenced by the Velvet Underground and covered by the Sex Pistols. But...
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Not only did local Top 40 R&B quartet Dru Hill get back together yesterday, but it broke up again live on the radio about 10 minutes later. And you can watch the whole thing happen on video. This is not news to dedicated fans of 92Q‘s Big Phat Morning Show, where original members Woody,...
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This past Tuesday, word was that Rolling Stone was in town. During the day, its envoy had been spotted at Hampden’s Golden West Café and Normals Books and Records. Later that night, the mag’s representatives headed over to the Floristree warehouse space for a lineup of hometown acts Ecstatic Sunshine and Double Dagger, along...
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Intrigued by sound artist Alessandro Bosetti‘s descriptions of Mask Mirror–his talking computer program–during a recent interview, Noise headed out to his Saturday performance at the Red Room at Normals Books and Records imagining some next-level, avant-garde Speak n’ Spell. Turns out, this thought was not too far off the mark, though Mask Mirror was...
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A few years ago, the big novelty in the touring industry was instant live albums, CD recordings of a concert that were available almost immediately after the show was over. And it would make sense that instant concert DVDs would follow, but surprisingly, the first we’ve ever heard of anyone taking on the enterprising...
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