Noise: Archive for January, 2009

| Image by John Ryan Hours before the inauguration of President Barack Obama, musicians and crew are scrambling backstage to catch their bus after the Big Shoulders Ball, at Washington’s Black Cat. Jon Langford, of the Mekons and the Waco Brothers, who played a blistering set tonight, talks with City Paper about the historic...
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Baltimore String Felons | Image by City Paper Digi-Cam Wednesday was the kind of frigid January night that makes it hard to picture anybody voluntarily going out. So it was a little surprising to walk into the Sidebar and find a decent sized audience whooping appreciatively for local band Spoke Ensemble‘s eccentric folk music....
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It’s worth clicking on the video below for one of the biggest WTF? moments in local music this month–squealcore quartet Ponytail making a cameo on the MTV show Detox (a program that appears to have something to do with bisexual twins). The interminably creepy John Norris also has a mid-length piece about the band...
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The Aural States blog launched a year ago this month, starting small and growing to a cast of roughly a half dozen writers providing some of the more thoughtful and broad online music coverage in Baltimore. This weekend, the blog goes balls-out in celebration of its one year anniversary, throwing together more top-tier local...
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The Water | Image by City Paper Digi-Cam Sometimes you can tell a band is going to be awesome just by watching it set up its gear. At the Ottobar on Wednesday night, a local band called the Water instantly piqued interest with the mountain of equipment it squeezed onstage, including a couple of...
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The “sound track” designation usually means a handful of songs–and maybe some dialog clips–that appeared in a movie or were “inspired” by a movie, whatever that means. The accompaniment to local indie movie Proud Flesh, an arthouse Western done on a shoestring budget by a broad crew of Baltimore weirdos (and some of their...
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Roughly two minutes and 45 seconds into “Aeon,” Antony Hegarty repeats a verse ending line with such an emphatic purpose that the breath halts just thinking about it. The first time Hegarty, the lead singer and doughty focal point of New York’s dour-mood unit Antony and the Johnsons, digs into “Hold that man I...
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Blaq Starr’s dead-set on respectfully wrecking his hometown genre’s trappings, but late 2008′s cloying cover of The Wire theme (featuring M.I.A) and “Bang Hard,” an affecting slow burner that, nonetheless, was on some “fame’s gettin’ to me” business, felt calculated weird–not Blaq Starr weird. “Get Off,” a new single released through Mad Decent–on pink...
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Height With Friends This week Baltimore rapper Height dropped his fourth full-length, Baltimore Highlands, one of the first releases from the Wham City label. In light of the new record, the release party at Zodiac this Friday, and my review in this week’s paper, I sat down with Height in his Hampden rowhouse to...
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| Image by Courtesy Ben H. Allen Record production work has ping ponged Ben Allen all over the world–from his native New Mexico to New York to the Bahamas to Georgia, where he now resides and runs a label, Make Records Not Bombs. Along the way, he has had a behind-the-decks hand in recordings...
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So, Deacon’s new album, Bromst, is a composition written for 15 or so people, and the plan is to distribute sheet music online along his tour route ahead of time so interested players can participate in shows. Cool, right? For this, he needs help from people with a certain specific skill set. And he...
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Electric Possible is an ongoing performance series curated by Tone Ghosting’s Jeff Bagato, a Washington D.C.-based musician who also operates out/noise/experimental label Panic Research Audio. Most of the musicians who appear on Live at Electric Possible issue CD-Rs via Panic. Jon Simler and Sam Lohman record together as go-go noiseniks Cash $lave Clique, while...
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Clever 1 | Image by City Paper Digi-Cam™ In a year that had already seen the deaths of such notable figures as Mr. Wilson and DJ K-Swift, Baltimore hip-hop experienced yet another loss toward the end of 2008. The little known but beloved rapper Eddie “Sonny Gunnz” Woods was shot in the back of...
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Ms. Sara | Image by City Paper Digi-Cam™ Though we’ve seen a pretty wide range of bands at 98 Rock’s “Noise In The Basement” showcase at Fletcher’s over the past few years, there’s an unmistakable tendency for it to feature, well, the kinds of bands that would appeal to 98 Rock listeners. But this...
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City Paper contributor Ray Cummings has a nice, quick e-mail interview with MT6 Records bossman Alex Strama up on his blog, Voguing To Danzig, today you’d be wise to check out. A sampling of facts learned: the name MT6 is in fact a beer reference; Nautical Almanac moving to Baltimore changed everything for Strama...
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| Image by Greg Szeto Maybe it goes without saying, but Thank You‘s awesomely free show Friday night at the Windup Space was packed. As such, we realized another sort of cool/weird thing about the North Avenue venue/bar/etc.–it may be a weird spatial mind trick, but the Windup Space is huge. Pretty sure that...
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Dan Deacon’s follow-up his 2006 grand splash Spiderman Of The Rings now has a release date and an eerie, very cool cover. (Disclosure: said cover was shot by City Paper production staffer Frank Hamilton as a freelance project not affiliated with CP.) The record, Bromst, comes out March 24 on Carpark Records, the label...
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King Tutt 2008 was a memorable and important year in the history of Baltimore club music, but not entirely in a good way. The shocking death of club’s most popular DJ, Khia “K-Swift” Edgerton, cast a dark shadow over the second half of the year, and it feels like things still haven’t returned to...
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