Noise: Author Archive

Barely a minute and a half into “Road Dog,” the second track on Dope Body’s Drag City debut Natural History, and guitarist Zachary Utz has already unleashed a handful of different guitar sounds. There’s the squelching scratches that mark the opening chug of the song’s first 30 or so seconds. There’s the zig-zag streaks...
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On Sunday night the latest experimental music endeavor with firm Baltimore roots makes it local debut. Co-organized and -founded by local composer and musician David Smooke, the League of the Unsound Sound is a loose ensemble dedicated not only to exploring new composed music and improvisation, but to advocating for both of those camps...
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Indie-rock fans of a certain generation might recognize the name Amy Domingues. Yes, the longtime Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia cellist was one half of the dreamy chamber pop duo Garland of Hours and the bombastic trio Telegraph Melts with Bob Massey, an erstwhile City Paper contributor, but she’s also been the go-to cellist for regional...
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One great reason to catch the Todd Marcus Jazz Orchestra when it performs Jan. 7 at An die Musik: The bass clarinetist’s original tunes and the top-notch, lively musicians in the orchestra deliver one of the most satisfying big-band sounds in the region. Another great reason: The orchestra’s two sets will be recorded for...
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Local improvisation organization Out of Your Head Collective just launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funding for a guest-artist series in anticipation of its two-year anniversary in March (see fundraising video, above). The collective, founded by Quartet Offensive bassist Adam Hopkins and guitarist Matt Frazao, has put on weekly Tuesday night concerts at the...
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The Red Room Collective kicks off a new series tonight dedicated to four-channel sound works. Titled “130% Surround Sound” and curated by musical chameleon Tom Boram, the series capitalizes on the Red Room’s recent upgrades and refurbishment. “The Red Room bought a new PA last year and we decided to keep the old one,”...
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Back in February local out-sounds label Ehse Records organized one of the best things to put on ice since whiskey. The inaugural Ehse on Ice party hit the Dominic “Mimi” DiPietro Skating Rink at Patterson Park Feb. 26 and featured performances by Sky Crab, Secret Secrets, and a mirthfully bonkers set from the always...
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For good and bad, Courtney Love the public figure can’t take a backseat to her band Hole’s comeback third–or fourth–act. Since a not embarrassing appearance at SXSW and the uniformly unimpressed response to the new album, the media’s love affair with Love the walking entertainment blog fodder has kept her almost continuously in the...
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One totally hairless gold man is supporting another hairless gold man entirely with his neck. No joke: Atop a platform placed front and center on the Meyerhoff stage, two male acrobats clad in goldish trunks and tinted with golden body paint, slowly move through a series of poses that this writer couldn’t pull off...
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Here at Baltimore’s Most Continuing-2009′s-Furlough-Days-in-the-Twenty-Ten Alternative Weekly, production weeks abridged due to holidays or furlough days or furloughed holidays, such as Martin Luther King Jr. day Jan. 18, means sometimes shows/events announced late in the production cycle sadly get overlooked by the print edition—such as this Friday, Jan. 22 show at the Hexagon. The...
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For four years and two albums Nashville’s Be Your Own Pet tore through garage punk with the sort of brashness that only teenagers can deliver. The quartet delivered everything at the frenetic clip of young people trying to live before they got old or the Jolt cola ran out—whichever came first. The blonde-haired personality...
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| Image by Josh Sisk Guitars are rock’s phallic object, but volume remains its big dick. Ever since the Who hit 126 dB in the late 1970s, the loudness = greatness paradigm is both a joke and operating cliché, as pushing decibel levels became metal’s concert Everest even though “softer” bands–see: My Blood Valentine,...
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Four songs. That’s the problem with beguiling songstress Abby Mott’s new EP Go West! Get East!: it’s only four songs. Yes, a mere four tracks that don’t even crack the 20-minute mark in total running time from the supercute vixen with the golden pipes who wrote and recorded her 2007 debut Hearts a’Flutter all...
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| Image by Frank Hamilton “I AM…YOURS”: these were the last words to leave the mouth of Beyoncé Knowles Tuesday night at the 1st Mariner Arena, and the final message projected onto the gigantic video screen behind the band. It was both a gracious thank you to her fans, whom she left screaming as...
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| Image by from myspace.com/msmalachi Early deadlines for this week’s Sizzlin’ Summer issue meant that info e-mailed to us early this week didn’t make the print edition—such as this bill of spoken word and hip-hop. Hard-working spoken-word poet Talaam Acey comes to town, sharing a bill with Indelible’s David James, Carolyn Malachi, Labtekwon, Channel...
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| Image by myspace.com/thebellevederes Noise caught local combo the Bellevederes’ first show back on March 7 at the Windup Space, the words “soul revue” getting us out of the house on one of those rare Saturday evenings when the evening’s schedule wasn’t already overrun with art openings and/or non-work obligations. And once this ensemble...
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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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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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Leave it to Normals Books and Records to assemble one of those days that remind you how great it is to live in Baltimore. On the Sunday prior to the “official” pagan-Christian-commercialism December holiday, Daniel Higgs put together his own celebration for Normals’ third annual Christmaseastermass, and this casual event was the perfect antidote...
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M.C. Schmidt | Image by www.highzero.org True Vine majordomo Jason Willett sent out an e-mail last night clueing Noise into this wonderful fact: Matmos’ M.C. Schmidt and longtime friend of Matmos J Lesser perform at the Hampden record treasury tonight, Dec. 11, at 5 p.m., or as Willett put it: martin “matmos” schmidt &...
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