Noise: Author Archive

Good films often teach you how to watch them. Upstream Color, Shane Carruth’s follow-up to his 2004’s twisty sci-fi cult fave Primer, does this more than most. And while it’s not necessarily an intuitive lesson at first, the elliptical opening reel provides excellent preparation for what lies ahead. A man scrapes the leaves of...
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Rock bands still make videos, it turns out, and we’re happy to see this one for several reasons. First, it’s a video for our favorite song from Baltimore cave-prog trio Dope Body‘s 2011 album, Nupping. Second, it was created by the folks behind Showbeast, the uncategorizable Baltimore-based video/puppetry pigpile (of which City Paper Calendar...
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News you can use: Civilian, the third album from Baltimore duo Wye Oak, is streaming in its entirety over at npr.org until its release date on March 8. You’re welcome.
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At last night’s Mobtown Modern performance of Philip Glass’ Glassworks at the Windup Space, a first-ever official collaboration with musicians from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, MM curator Brian Sacawa announced yet another trailblazing project: the Project 20 Remix. Jumping off from Project 20, the ambitious year-long 20th-anniversary arts rubric/celebration put forth by MM sponsoring...
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Long-running Baltimore guitar-pop band the Jennifers have a new video for their song “Well-Intentioned World,” directed by drummer and local indie film guru Skizz Cyzyk. It is clever and entertaining and must have been a pain in the ass to get right. Enjoy.
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This week’s Detroit Metro Times, a CP sister publication, features a fairly exhaustive feature on Negative Approach/Laughing Hyenas frontman and aggro rock legend John Brannon. (His current outfit, Easy Action, recorded a couple of albums for Baltimore’s own Reptilian Records.) If you paid any attention to ’80s hardcore or post-hardcore underground rock (i.e. the...
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As organizer of the annual High Zero Festival and the experimental hive the Red Room, the High Zero Foundation (HZF) has been an integral part of the city’s arts community for more than a decade now, and a forerunner/sparkplug of Baltimore’s current arts explosion. But the HZ folks also understand that there are plenty...
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| Image by joemaneri.com Allaboutjazz.com reports that reedsman and educator Joe Maneri died Aug. 24. He was 82. Maneri was best known for his interest in and dedicated use of microtones (simplistically put, the notes between the usual do-re-mi notes of the standard scale) in his playing and composing, though his music also included...
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George Russell | Image by vervemusicgroup.com Jazz composer/bandleader/theorist George Russell passed away Monday after a long illness. His was far from a household name even in many jazz-loving households, but cognoscenti will mourn him for a career that encompassed an influential theoretical treatment of modal playing in jazz (The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal...
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Not only did local Top 40 R&B quartet Dru Hill get back together yesterday, but it broke up again live on the radio about 10 minutes later. And you can watch the whole thing happen on video. This is not news to dedicated fans of 92Q‘s Big Phat Morning Show, where original members Woody,...
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Producer and record-label honcho Joel Dorn has died. He was 65. An old-school record man who produced dozens of classic jazz sides for Atlantic Records, Dorn may be best remembered–and missed–among Baltimoreans as the man whose circa-’90s independent label, the now-defunct 32 Records, issued a series of discs featuring jazz greats recorded live at...
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