Noise: Archive for March, 2009

Thrushes | Image by City Paper Digi-Cam New York’s Asobi Seksu and Baltimore’s Thrushes have a lot in common, from shoegaze guitar sounds to ethereal female vocals. But more than that, I remember Thrushes guitarist Casey Harvey wearing an Asobi Seksu shirt the first time I saw the band a couple years ago, so...
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Tara Jane O’Neil | Image by Josh Sisk An effect of the sheer hugeness of South By Southwest is that it becomes an individual experience. General admission festivals such as Coachella or Virgin Fest-which offer a few stages, some really big names, and maybe some giant projection screens-feel like they have a collective narrative....
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The great advantage of any music conference or festival is the presence of so many musicians in one place, for this concentration raises the possibility of musical combinations you’ll never see when the same musicians tour through your local clubs. This year’s South by Southwest music conference was a perfect example. Where else could...
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Last September, local hip-hop promoter Tay Tay put on the first Queen of the Mic competition for female rappers at Sonar where Shy, of Money In Da Bank Entertainment, took home the prize. Just a few months later, Tayland Promotions brought back the popular show for Queen of the Mic 2 on Friday night,...
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Nathan Williams’ passport is getting a serious workout these days. February and March found the 22-year old San Diego resident and Wavves nucleus blazing a whirlwind noise-pop path through Europe, hitting Prague, Hamburg, Paris, and Leeds, among other cities. Over the past couple weeks, he’s rocked South By Southwest and issued sophomore disc Wavvves...
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Pygmy Lush | Image by
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The theme of this year’s South By Southwest festival is, uh, Twitter. Apparently. On the shuttle ride in from the airport, a middle-aged scenester with a smoking-wrecked voice that sounds like the surface of the planet Mercury can’t stop talking about it—and how Myspace is so “out”—and it’s enough to make you want to...
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Back in December, I attended the first “micro-show” at Mobtown Studios, a series of intimate free shows at the Charles Village recording space (full disclosure, as before: the owners are friends, and I blog on the studio’s web site). Since then, the series has continued to move forward with further installments, and the third,...
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If the meeting last night at the Hexagon space on North Charles Street could qualify as entertainment under the proposed city council Live Entertainment bill—and given the presence of some 30 musicians, promoters, concert-goers, and people generally in favor of live entertainment, it is possible that it should—then anyone who lived within 10 blocks...
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It was hard to know what to expect when the Sidebar held something called the Awesome Fest on Saturday—whether it would be any kind of special outdoor springtime event or just a show in the club that happened to go all day. But since it was cool and rainy out, it ended up being...
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The birth of house music was one of the biggest musical moments in the last 30 years. That’s not really a point to be argued but, like anything else in art, you can argue plenty about who started it. The name that comes up most often with house is Frankie Knuckles, who, in the...
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The misguided beast that is Baltimore’s City Council Bill #08-0163, aka the Live Entertainment – Licensing and Regulation bill, is once again rearing its head. Last Wednesday, March 4, the council held a formal hearing on the proposal, which would eliminate live-entertainment zoning in favor of annual live-entertainment licensing. Over the next several weeks...
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Marginal Man’s Identity | Image by dischord.com Fellow vinyl junkies: last week Dischord Records posted a little bulletin about its ongoing vinyl re-mastering of its back catalog and links to its re-mastering process. For the fan/consumer, all this means is that a great wealth of Dischord vinyl is available again, including Fugazi’s Red Medicine...
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The Jokers | Image by City Paper Digi-Cam The open mic at the 8X10 has always been unique and worth checking out for its emphasis on bands, rather than solo performers. Drums and amps are set up for anyone who wants to plug in guitars and play, and frequently bands who start at the...
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So, the Zodiac is booking some really good shows–Wavves is coming up, Dan Higgs, Double Dagger. Most of the shows are free, which is rad, and it has creepy-clown mannequins. Surprisingly nice sound, too. The rub with Zodiac is that it’s damn small and if you’re claustrophobic, uncomfortable when the Club Charles adjunct performance/board...
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While the freak-pop phenomenon known as Animal Collective isn’t quite a stadium band, yet, we sure as hell didn’t expect to see an Ottobar show pop up on its tour schedule. But here it is: Sunday, May 10 at 7 p.m. Tickets are available only at the venue (2549 N Howard St.) for cash-only...
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The taut, tense guitars lash out with gut jabs and, with the drums slamming along in time, it’s as though the instruments have been coiled and waiting forever for their chance to strike. Yet now that they’re free to do so, they’re determined to unfurl in as surgical a manner as possible: gray-black polygraph...
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This is kinda funny: Washington D.C./Baltimore deep house/disco/old-school DJ Chris Burns gets tapped by the television show Nightline for a few words about the vinyl revival. There’s nothing new in the segment in particular–vinyl is popular again, isn’t that weird?–but watching Terry Moran bobbing around Crooked Beat Records wearing headphones is cute. ABC doesn’t...
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So, I saw Celebration play a couple of weeks ago at the Windup Space and couldn’t get much of a bead on the band’s new stuff because the sound was kinda funky. I was in the back of the room, so maybe it was better close up. In any case, two new tracks are...
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Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis may be one of indie rock’s greatest guitar heroes, but it’s often forgotten that he’s equally impressive as a drummer–he ably proved it on the band’s ’90s albums for which he laid the rhythm tracks. So it’s fortunate that in recent years, as Dinosaur’s original lineup has reformed and Murph...
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