Noise: Author Archive

A confession is in order: I just couldn’t hack AIDS Wolf, the opener for Monday’s Times New Viking and Deerhunter show at the Ottobar. In full weenie-mode, I scuttled upstairs in favor of the comparative tranquility of an all-metal DJ night. Before planting a defeated tail firmly between legs and slinking off, I did...
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Nathan Bell Performing At 2640 | Image by Raven Baker Nathan Bell @ 2640 is a brief but haunting release from West Main Development, a local label specializing in live recordings and one-time collaborations, with a penchant for tapping Lungfish members (a previous release features Dan Higgs). The label’s latest, four untitled tracks clocking...
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Los Solos is a new monthly performance series featuring–you guessed it–solo performances. The twist here is that the series presents only women, pairing a local and an out-of-town artist on each bill. Pulling from the experimental undergrounds of dance, music, theater, and, video, Los Solos is programmed by curators-cum-artists Jackie Milad and Bonnie Jones....
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Now that the heat wave has kind of subsided, you can relive the last week of Code Red swamp weather with a sweaty warehouse show. Teenage noise foursome Needle Gun shares a bill tonight at the Copy Cat with Mr. Moccasin (which includes City Paper contributor Jared Fischer), Aghost, Birthing Nets, and St. Louis’...
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Microkingdom | Image by Raven Baker While the likes of Rolling Stone and New York magazine have christened the Golden West Café as Baltimore’s premiere post-show hangout–a rather perplexing claim as it closes by midnight–the restaurant’s own events have been overlooked. This past Saturday, during the slothful frenzy of Memorial Day weekend, Golden West...
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As previously reported, the Talking Head recently left it’s longtime Davis Street location for new digs inside Sonar. Earlier this week, a couple shows were held in Sonar’s smaller-stage Club room, but Wednesday’s show went down in the space’s former lounge, the Talking Head’s official new home. Upon arriving at Sonar, the only notice...
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Tuesday morning, in a blog post titled “Retiretard,” garage-punker Jay Reatard announced that he is quitting music. While later admitting it was a joke, the post made reference to Reatard’s recent fracas, centered on an incident earlier this month in Toronto, when he punched a fan in the face. Of course, it was all...
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“YELL AT ME IT’LL BE FUN AND EASY THANK YOU” Though it sounds like a kinky personal ad, the above enticement is lifted from a recent Lexie Mountain promotional e-mail. Another caps-heavy missive described her then-upcoming recording session, held last Monday at the Red Room at Normals Books and Records, as “HECKLE TIME USA.”...
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Last Saturday, Baltimore hosted a wonderfully unlikely event that meshed music, art, and a gorgeous view of the city at twilight. 387 Feet Above, part of the Festival of Maps mania that has swept the city, is an art exhibit curated by Gary Kachadourian and hosted at the Top of the World observation level...
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Last spring, Baltimore introspective indie-pop outfit Thrushes rose out the internet ether when “Hearbeats,” the lead single off their then just-released debut album, Sun Come Undone, became the No. 1 downloaded song for the week of March 30. In light of this success, the band offered a remix contest, intending to release its favorite...
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The new Wham City space could be any nondescript, ramshackle ghost of industry in the outskirts of the Station North Arts District. The only indication that a show was going on early last Saturday evening–the space’s first–were a man and woman standing outside and politely hurrying people in. Later, though, when the space was...
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This Saturday, March 29, Bernard Farley, the Washington D.C.-based electronic musician and DJ known as Outputmessage, returns to Bmore Electro‘s monthly More or Less party at the Depot for a night of melodic electrohouse obscurities. Well-known in the IDM scene, the 24-year-old self-taught musician boasts an impressive résumé of releases and production work. While...
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| Image by photo courtesy of the artist Leading something of a double life–immersed in academia as a Johns Hopkins University grad student by day and DJ by night–Adam Gonzo is a regular at the Ottobar’s weekly Tensday party, where he spins tonight. Gonzo’s sets omnivorously pilfer from vintage disco and house, pop and...
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While the bludgeoning chorus claims “We want some Pu-Pu-ssaaaay,” everything about the ridiculously NSFW video for “Pu$$y”–from Spank Rock’s Bangers and Cash side project–seeks to negate this. For a bootie rap, the crudely animated images of disembodied vajayjays–quite literally hammered and bitch-slapped–look, well, thoroughly unsexy. Repulsive even, and maybe that’s the point. Lyrically, the...
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| Image by Sexy Fitsum/iLLIMETER Taxlo fixture DJ Dave Nada has been busy spreading his rowdy blend of Baltimore club and hip-hop far beyond the East Coast. Despite a gnarly cold, Nada was kind enough to check in with Noise during a lull between touring, to discuss recent shows in California and Canada, his...
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This past Tuesday, word was that Rolling Stone was in town. During the day, its envoy had been spotted at Hampden’s Golden West Café and Normals Books and Records. Later that night, the mag’s representatives headed over to the Floristree warehouse space for a lineup of hometown acts Ecstatic Sunshine and Double Dagger, along...
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Intrigued by sound artist Alessandro Bosetti‘s descriptions of Mask Mirror–his talking computer program–during a recent interview, Noise headed out to his Saturday performance at the Red Room at Normals Books and Records imagining some next-level, avant-garde Speak n’ Spell. Turns out, this thought was not too far off the mark, though Mask Mirror was...
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Alessandro Bosetti is a composer and sound artist splitting his time between Baltimore, Berlin, and Milan. In November of last year, Bosetti released African Feedback with the European publishing house Errant Bodies. It’s an audio project and accompanying book that explores the response of the Dogon villagers of West Africa to Bosetti’s favorite experimental,...
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Noise caught up with the ever-touring Dan Deacon, currently warping young minds in Australia, and psychotronic DJ/video artist Mark Brown for the scoop on Wham City’s latest venture. The collective’s brand-new, more-than-just-music label debuted earlier this month with Wham City Box #1, a multimedia compilation featuring a CD and DVD, along with hawt-couture goodies...
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For the past few months, rakish electronic musicians and recent Bmore transplants, Matmos have been busy settling into their new digs and wrapping up their all-synth album Supreme Balloon. Slated for a May 6th release on Matador Records, Supreme Balloon uses an array of vintage synthesizers, some quite rare, and features guest collaborators including...
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