by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: City Center - Teardrop Children (edit) (MP3)

Here's an exclusive look at the upcoming new record from City Center, the project of Brooklyn-Michigan duo Fred Thomas (of Saturday Still Looks Good to Me) and Ryan Howard. The group been playing for a few years now, initially as just Fred, and their self-titled debut, a swirling collage of buried melodies, came out last year on Type Records.

I saw them last fall, shortly after their debut's release, and they were already moving toward a less-murky, more guitar-based sound. Fred says that this record expands in that direction. The album, tentatively titled See My Skeleton, doesn't have a label yet, but Fred hopes to have it out this September. A first look - an edited version of the song "Teardrop Children" - is above.

Their upcoming tour kicks off with a Monday, March 29th show at Death By Audio (with Soft Circle, Drawlings and Love of Everything). Full dates are below...

Continue reading "City Center - new record (MP3) & 2010 Tour Dates "

photos by Tim Griffin, words by Andrew Frisicano

You Are Here (The Maze) is underway at Death By Audio. Last Friday (9/11) featured music from A Place to Bury Strangers, The Sian Alice Group, Nine 11 Thesaurus (pictured above and below), Experimental Dental School and Reading Rainbow. Tim stopped by early, before heading to Wild Beasts at Union Pool followed by The Intelligence at Market Hotel. Tim liked Nine 11 Thesaurus and appreciated the art, but wasn't a huge fan of The Maze from the point of view of someone actually wanting to see the bands who are playing. As you can sort of see in the picture above, you walk through a maze which ends at the stage where just a few handfuls of people can actually see what's going on... but maybe that's the point.

You can see more of the new setup in the pics below, or you can head over there yourself. Tonight (9/14) features music from a collection of K Records artists - label founder Calvin Johnson, Arrington de Dionyso and Desolation Wildnerness - with Regattas and City Center (who, with Desolation Wilderness, played at Cake Shop Sunday with the Intelligence). City Center, re-figured somewhat recently into a duo, is on tour (dates below).

Arrington de Dionyso, whose new record ,Malaikat dan Singa, comes out on the label November 3rd, plays two sets at Bowery Poetry Club's ESP Disk Live, with Calvin Johnson doing the other, on September 15th. He's also at Santos's Musicka Mystica Maxima Fest on September 21st and returns to DBA for a collaboration with co-curator Sam Hillmer on September 24th (full Maze schedule).

More pictures and tour dates are below...

Continue reading "The Maze is happening (pics) - continues w/ K Records crew ++ Calvin Johnson, Arrington de Dionyso & City Center dates"

Sam Hillmer (left) playing with Zs @ the Yard (more by Sarahana)

You Are Here (The Maze) is a performance festival in a sculptural maze taking place at Williamsburg's Death By Audio from September 10 - October 2, 2009. Emphasizing the sprawling and interconnected nature of New York's underground, a trip through the maze offers a peak inside NYC's diy art/music scene. A meditation on passage and desire, You Are Here engulfs the space and presents beckoning inhabitants, dead ends, and uplifting epitaphs. Medium and genre vary and overlapping and simultaneous performances are frequent, each performer establishing a different corner or dead end as his or hers.

The lineup and installation is being put together by TROUBLE (Sam Hillmer & Laura Paris). Acts in the three-week schedule include Calvin Johnson, Screaming Females, Mick Barr, Ty Segal, Grooms, Extra Life and others.

Skeletons kick off the first night of the festival on September 10th as the Skeletons Big Band, a 12-piece band (expanded from their usual four) that's also playing September 7-9th at Roulette. There they'll be performing "New Works for a Larger Ensemble" which includes "excerpts and new arrangements from their record in progress "PEOPLE," a long form piece based around conversations in Greyhound busses and stations, and beyond..."

The full schedule for the Maze (and the lineup for Skeletons Big Band) is below...

Continue reading "Death By Audio's The Maze - schedule (includes 1 of 4 upcoming Skeletons Big Band shows & much more) "

by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: City Center - Open House (MP3)

City Center @ Nakamura House Party 3/14/09...

[Fred Thomas of City Center/Saturday Looks Good To Me]:

I leave tomorrow morning for Olympia to get it together for 2 months or so of touring with The Hive Dwellers and Chain & The Gang. Hive Dwellers is Calvin Johnson's new band/new songs and I play drums for the band. C&TG is Ian Svenonius' (Make Up/Weird War/Soft Focus talk show) new jam. I play bass in that one. After the last two months of playing lots of shows, recording all the time and hanging so hard with Ryan all in the name of playing some fucked up music with City Center, I'm really sad to be taking off for so long and putting the CC on hold. Luckily we're gonna play a few shows on this tour, and we also have a ton of things we're working on that will come to light soon... [City Center blog, 4.1.09]

One of those "things we're working on" (or maybe "worked on") is most definitely the forthcoming self-titled debut record from City Center. Fred announced the disc, to be released by Type Records, on his blog a week earlier: "The record will be released on LP and CD, with a UK release date of May 25th and a US release date of June 8. It will be distributed by Forced Exposure and available directly from Type or by getting in touch with us directly here or on Myspace, etc. There will be some sort of digital media for it as well, just not sure what yet." New track "Open House" is available for download above.

The Hive Dwellers + Chain & the Gang tour dates mentioned above include two NYC shows: Friday, April 17th at 92YTribeca and Sunday, April 26th at the Market Hotel. Tickets are available for the 92YTribeca show, which also includes City Center on the bill.

Svenonius-led Chain & the Gang's debut Down With Liberty... Up With Chains! is coming out via Calvin Johnson's K Records on April 7th. Art and press release for that album below.

All tour dates, and City Center art and track list - also below...

Continue reading "The Hive Dwellers (Calvin Johnson), Chain & The Gang (Ian Svenonius) tour + City Center dates, new albums, MP3"

Liz Harris - a.k.a. Grouper - creates pop songs where the structure is merely hinted at, making it difficult to decide whether her amorphous drones resemble songs or visa versa. On earlier releases, she was awash in reverb, disguising much of her tunes' shapes, hiding melody in trance. [Grouper's 2008 release] Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill continues the minimal whisperings of past LPs, but also features strummed acoustic guitar. Lots of it." [Dusted]

Grouper also recently released a split 7" with City Center. Not surprisingly, City Center is who Grouper played with at Silent Barn in Brooklyn on Sunday. In town from Portland, Grouper plays one more NYC show tonight/Monday at Knitting Factory - it's the WNYU party that Pylon is headlining.

Grouper will also be back in town to play the New Museum on February 13th. Stay tuned for more details. WNYU flyer and a video below...

Continue reading "Grouper - an album & video, KF tonight, New Museum later"

by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: Saturday Looks Good To Me - Whitey Hands (High Places Remix) (MediaFire MP3 link)

Fred Thomas has been keeping busy during the current Saturday Looks Good to Me hiatus. Under the City Center name, he's kept a steady blog of his audio experiments, while sporadically posting old SLGTM gems, with tour photos and journal entries along the way.

Though the latest post states, "It pains me today to officially retire as a musician and producer," I am pretty sure the City Center show at The Stone tonight (August 29, 2008) at 8pm, is still on. All dates below...

Continue reading "Fred Thomas (City Center) - blog w/ MP3s & 2008 Tour Dates"