Noise: Archive for May, 2008

Mutek is the North American electronic-music wet dream: five days and four very long nights in a handful of clubs/galleries in the center of Montreal with some of the most fawned-upon producers, DJs, and visual artists on the planet. (Though it helps to not be “electro” anything or mix with breakbeats.) While you’d think...
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Microkingdom | Image by Raven Baker While the likes of Rolling Stone and New York magazine have christened the Golden West Café as Baltimore’s premiere post-show hangout–a rather perplexing claim as it closes by midnight–the restaurant’s own events have been overlooked. This past Saturday, during the slothful frenzy of Memorial Day weekend, Golden West...
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At this point, I’m developing fatigue from appearing on judging panels for various MC battles and talent competitions and should probably learn to say “no,” at least some of the time. But I definitely couldn’t turn down at least one more request, from local rap duo the Unstoppable Nuklehidz, to participate in their Battle...
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This year’s lineup for Wham City’s annual music festival was announced via MySpace bulletin this morning and, good g-d, kittens, roller coasters, and gin don’t have jack on a good time like this. Whartscape 2008 runs July 17-20, at “locations throughout Baltimore,” Black Dice, Matmos, Celebration, Beach House, Dan Deacon, Parts and Labor, Bird...
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| Image by Frank Hamilton It’s not that the Black Kids are a bad band. They are not unfun, poor musicians, or without some charisma. (Though onstage, they do look genuinely a little awkward and shy.) Especially for being so very young and so very new to the game, they do what they do...
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It’s a little odd going to Floristree for just another night of Baltimore indie weirdness mere weeks after the ostensibly “secret” venue was the focal point of “scene” profiles in both Rolling Stone and Blender magzines. We remember going to the place when it was just “the H&H Building,” and nothing much about the...
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As previously reported, the Talking Head recently left it’s longtime Davis Street location for new digs inside Sonar. Earlier this week, a couple shows were held in Sonar’s smaller-stage Club room, but Wednesday’s show went down in the space’s former lounge, the Talking Head’s official new home. Upon arriving at Sonar, the only notice...
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Yesterday, independent music radio heavy WFMU put up a blog post with a list of Baltimore artists destined to be in the station’s forthcoming Free Music Archive, “an online digital library of music that will allow music fans, webcasters and podcasters to listen, download, and stream for free, with no restrictions, registration or fees.”...
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As we predicted earlier, at least one of the five semifinalist bands to play on the Saturn Stage in Artscape’s Sound Off! competition is mobilizing its troops, or trying in a kinda sad way to recruit them. From a post on the Mobtown Shank: XX. SHANK CLASSIFIEDS================== PULASKI NEEDS YOUR HELP We need your...
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Last Monday at Fletcher’s, one person stood out of the crowd well before he took the stage to perform. The tall black man covered in tattoos–with a stripe of white paint across his face, a fluffy boa, and fingerless gloves–turned out to be Symbol, the frontman for local band the Hot Magic. The singer’s...
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The space at 203 Davis Street is once again empty. Noise just got off the phone with Talking Head booker/manager Adam Savage, and official word is that the club is moving posthaste around the corner into Sonar’s lounge space. Details were unclear as to why, but whatever the reason, the move is sudden–Savage was...
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OK, me and two other jurors did the hard, painful work, preening through some 40-odd bands–many of whom brought me to the edge of absolute despair–to come up with five semifinalists for you to vote onto Artscape’s Saturn Stage. Yep, you get to make the final cut. Not much to it: Click on this...
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The downstairs performance area at the Charm City Art Space is essentially a wood-paneled basement, which makes shows there feel more like a suburban house party than a rock show in the heart of the city. That might explain why the atmosphere was so relaxed last Thursday–even when the bands seemed to be constantly...
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