Noise: Archive for November, 2009

According to a post on the Buzzlife message board, last weekend’s Fall Massive party, a suitably ginormous drum ‘n’ bass, house, techno, and more dance party, packed ‘em into Paradox a little too tight Saturday night. Actually, make that a lot too tight: the promoter reported ticket sales hitting the 1,500 mark, putting the...
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| Image by City Paper Digi-Cam The historic early hip-hop trio Sugarhill Gang are currently on a 30th anniversary tour, commemorating a career that began with the release of the watershed single “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979. And that might feel like more of a momentous occasion if not for the fact that it feels...
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About an hour ago, Fox News tweeted that Jeff Mewbourn, known throughout Baltimore’s music-making community as “the Baltimore Taper,” is wanted for a domestic shooting. According to a related report at foxbaltimore.com, Mewbourn has two children with the victim; as of the report, the schools they attend, Halstead Academy and Parkville High School, have...
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| Image by Frank Hamilton Bruce Springsteen opened his show at Baltimore’s First Mariner Arena Friday night with “Wrecking Ball,” which may well be the best song he’s written in 22 years. Wearing a black vest over a tight gray T-shirt, the short, muscular singer bellowed, “I was raised out of steel here in...
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Height cover 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. Sonar holds a benefit show for the family of Kevin...
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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...
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| Image by Jason Nocito 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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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| Image by Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez: 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.
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| Image by Chester 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...
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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...
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| Image by Good Bully 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
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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”...
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Beach House gets cute 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...
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| Image by Frank Hamilton 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...
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