today in NYC
* Mike Birbiglia @ UCB
* Bad Religion @ Irving Plaza
* Yuko Fujiyama @ The Stone
* Underworld @ Roseland Ballroom
* Nuclear Power Pants @ Silent Barn
* Japandroids, Oberhofer @ Maxwell's
* John Oates, Mutlu @ The Bell House
* Mt. Desolation, JBM @ Mercury Lounge
* Eugene Robinson, Man's Gin @ Union Pool
* The Moondoggies, Hollis Brown @ Mercury Lounge
* Matt & Kim, Donnis, The So So Glos @ Webster Hall
* Nat Baldwin, Buke & Gass, Delicate Steve @ Zebulon
* Oh No Oh My, The Suzan, Family Cactus @ The Rock Shop
* Karlsson & Winnberg (Miike Snow DJ set) @ Le Poisson Rouge
* Safari, Juston Stens & The Get Real Gang, Brian Ashby @ Pianos
* Zach Layton, Alex Waterman, Ryan Sawyer @ Issue Project Room
* Excepter, Messages, Up Died Sound, Blissed Out @ Shea Stadium
* Easter Vomit, Dirty Dishes, Total Slacker, Quilty @ Knitting Factory
* Liturgy, Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk, Lesbian, Light Hits @ Glasslands
* Sewn Leather, Narwhalz of Sound, The Babies, Yellow Fever @ Showpaper 42nd Street Gallery
* Our Hit Parade starring Bridget Everett, Kenny Mellman & Neal Medlyn @ Joe's Pub
* John Hodgman, Ira Glass, Dave Hill, Shaina Feinberg and Mary Feinberg, Jane Feltes, Eugene Mirman, Jessi Klein @ Dave Hill
* Nate Wooley, C. Spencer Yeh, Ryan Sawyer, Chicago Luzern Exchange, Mike Pride & Kirk Knuffke, Cloud Becomes Your Hand @ Death By Audio

The Excepter, Messages, Up Died Sound, Blissed Out show originally at Coco 66 has been moved to Shea Stadium. Also:

:: "The Excepter show on October 27th will be our last for some time.
:: We are taking time off to deal with a private health issue. All door
:: and table proceeds from the show will go to offset medical costs.
:: Come to support! LIFE IS LONG / LOVE IS STRONG" - EXCEPTER

--

The Books have a new video for "I Didn't Know That". Check it out below...

What else?

Continue reading "What's going on Wednesday?"

Metric @ SXSW 2010 (more by Tim Griffin)

tonight in NYC
* comedy @ Union Hall
* Warm Ghost, Rowan @ Zebulon
* Metric, Bear in Heaven @ Terminal 5
* Aa, Wild Yaks, Steel Phantoms @ Cake Shop
* Arms, Honey, Translations, Mitre @ Death By Audio
* Kidrockers w/ The Dig, The Grates @ The Living Room
* Archipelago, Lux Perpetua, Alina Simone @ Silent Barn
* Descender, Wizardry, Music Hates You @ The Charleston
* Pistola, Fake Hooker, Manawi Thorn, Cloudblues @ Don Pedro
* The Postelles, Xylos, Infernal Devices (DJ) @ Brooklyn Bowl
* Silver Apples, Burning Star Core, Love Like Deloreans @ Coco 66
* The Lindsey Buckingham Appreciation Society, Fleetwood Mike @ Union Hall
* Lord Jeff, Invisible Circle, Guardian Alien, The Needy Visions @ Shea Stadium
* Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Sam Mickens' Ecstatic Showband & Revue @ Bowery Ballroom
* The Pharmacy, Golden Triangle, Electric Tickle Machine @ Rocks Off Concert Cruises
* Veronica Falls, German Measles, Frankie Rose & the Outs, Surprisers @ Bruar Falls
* NineLives the Cat, Anton Glamb, Roofeo, 1Dad & DJ Fred Mertz, John Barera @ Glasslands

The Fifth Avenue Street and Record Fair is today in Park Slope. Check out the link to see who is playing on multiple stages near Southpaw and The Gate.

In case you were wondering whatever happened to the Spiderman Musical...

...New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel is reporting that the in-question production is indeed on, with rehearsals starting this summer, previews beginning in October, and an official opening in November. The column also claims that the production has a new Green Goblin in Patrick Page, and producers are apparently seeing potential Mary Jane replacements. Producers for the show, and its publicity team, have not made any official announcements.... [EW]

Veronica Falls play Bruar Falls tonight (but Frankie & the Outs don't despite being originally listed) (Prince Ruperts Drops have been added to the bill). Video from their show last night at Glasslands, below...

A video of Salome playing the BV day party at Emo's during SXSW this year, below...

A video of Excepter playing Knitting Factory last week, below...

What else?

Continue reading "What's going on Sunday?"

by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: Zs - Acres of Skin (MP3)
DOWNLOAD: Zs - Diamond Terrifier (Zebrablood remix) (MP3)

Avant-garde band Zs are celebrating their new LP New Slaves (out now on Social Registry) with a show at Knitting Factory in Brooklyn tonight (5/11), and they've brought along a pretty amazing cast of characters to pad the show. Kicking off at 8PM, the Brooklyn band will be joined by noise collective Excepter, guitar god Mick Barr and synth band Silk Flowers with river-dredging vocals, in addition to Dutty Artz DJs Matt Shadetek & Lamin. Tickets are still available.

It's one of two NYC shows on the calendar for Zs, with the second taking place June 26th at Issue Project Room with david linton: bicameral research sound & projection system.

New Slaves marks Zs' first full-length LP on Social Registry, after dropping their Music of the Modern White EP on the label last year. The band recently debuted the track and a video for "Acres of Skin". Download that track above, and check out its video below.

The band also sent along an exclusive new remix of their song "Diamond Terrifier" done up by Zebrablood of Excepter (who play their show tonight). The result is a 12-minute dancefloor-from-hell take on the breathy 13-minute drone-like original; don't listen alone with the lights off.

That song figures into the band's plans for future, which include a record of New Slaves remixes with contributions expected from Brian Degraw (Gang Gang Dance), Gabe Andruzzi (The Rapture), Genesis P-orridge (Throbbing Gristle/Psychic Tv) Jim Thirwell (Foetus), Dutty Artz DJs, Zebrablood (Excepter) and others. They plan on touring Europe in late July/early August.

More on what's in the works for Zs and their sax player/community-mover-and-shaker Sam Hillmer (straight from Sam's mouth) - including the last concert of the Real Bushwick/Bushwick Real series on June 4th with Janka Nabay, nine11thesaurus and more, and another Maze, which he says is being planned for fall 2011, and will be constructed of chain link fences outside - is posted below...

Continue reading "the Zs record is out - MP3, a new remix, show tonight w/ Excepter & other dates & Sam Hillmer news"

Of Montreal @ Terminal 5 in September (more by Chris La Putt)

tonight in NYC
* HAIL! @ BB King's
* moe. @ Brooklyn Bowl
* DJ Krush @ Bowery Ballroom
* Oh No Ono @ Sound Fix Records
* .357 Lover @ Knitting Factory
* Charlie Hunter @ Rose Live Music
* Darius Jones Quartet @ Roulette
* Daniel Merriweather @ Gramercy Theatre
* Jenny Scheinman & Robbie Fulks @ Barbes
* Pretty & Nice, Drunken Sufis @ The Cameo
* Mirror Mirror, Omega Jarden @ Glasslands
* Beach House, Jana Hunter @ The Bell House
* The London Souls, Turkuaz @ Mercury Lounge
* Ebony Bones, Fire and Reason @ Mercury Lounge
* Of Montreal, James Husband @ Highline Ballroom
* M. Lamar, Justin Bond, Larkin Grimm, Novice Theory @ Galapagos Art Space
* Jump Into The Gospel, Brothers, Hymns, Locksley, Milk and Blood @ Pianos
* James Blackshaw, Max Ochs, Ben Hall, Nick Jonah Davis @ (Le) Poisson Rouge

On No Ono play Sound Fix today before their shows at Mercury Lounge on Wednesday with Bear in Heaven, and Union Hall on Thursday.

Fyfe Dangerfield was supposed to play tonight.

Galapagos Art Space hosts a CD release party for M. Lamar, who The New Yoker dubbed "a performance artist who celebrates and parodies the very idea of the chanteuse: he deconstructs the persona of the diva even as he wraps himself in divalike hauteur." The night also features performances by Justin Bond, Larkin Grimm and Novice Theory.

A selection of recent videos below...

What else?

Continue reading "What's going on Tuesday?"

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) "

Remember Death By Audio's 12-hour benefit on July 25th for something called You Are Here: A Maze?

Sam Hillmer & Laura Paris, who dubbed their art collaboration Trouble, had the first You Are Here festival in 2007, at 44th street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Paris drew out the floor-plan of the maze, while Hillmer, who plays tenor saxophone for the Zs, booked bands to play in the space and coordinated efforts to bring people inside to interact with the maze.

"It didn't seem like the kind of thing that could just sit in a gallery, it needs constant traffic," Hillmer explained. "That is the piece, people dealing with the situation [presented by the maze]."

This year's festival, scheduled for Spetember 10th through October 2nd, will take up the entire space of Death by Audio and feature a maze constructed out of salvaged doors from Built It Green, a nonprofit organization that sells surplus building materials. The space will also have woodchip-covered floors ("to reference mazes built out of bushes," Hillmer notes). The twists and turns of the venue will be littered by some 200 of Paris' sculptures, molded from some of her pieces and then cast repeatedly. [Greenpoint Gazette]

According to the promoter, "Medium and genre vary and overlapping and simultaneous performances are frequent, each performer establishing a different corner or dead end as his or hers." Sounds fun.

The preliminary lineup (aka almost a month's worth of shows at the venue while the maze is up) mixes interesting out of town names (Calvin Johnson, Ty Segal, The Coathangers) with local acts like Skeletons (as 'Skeletons and the Kings of All Cities'), Mick Barr (he is local right?), Extra life and Stars Like Fleas. Full lineup to be announced soon but more of it is below, along with video footage of the first Maze (starring Dave Longstreth, Thee Oh Sees and others), and other details and the flyer for the new Maze...

Continue reading "Death by Audio maze installation running Sept 10-Oct 2 (Skeletons, Mick Barr, Calvin Johnson, Extra Life, Ty Segall)"

The previously announced April 4th Thee Oh Sees show at the Bell House in Brooklyn is doubling as the FreeMusicArchive.org launch party...

The Free Music Archive will combine the curatorial approach that stations like WFMU have played for the last few decades, and the community generated approach of many current online music sites. It'll be a valuable resource for those in search of legal audio; each track will have a clear set of rights associated with it, as determined by the artist, letting podcasters, bloggers, remix artists and music fans know what uses the artist will and will not allow. The project began here at WFMU, but we are just one of several curators who've been gathering audio for the Free Music Archive, freeing archival audio into the public domain, adding to the Creative Commons and building an open forum for participation that we're very excited to share with you. Stay tuned to our pre-launch blog for more previews and announcements as we get closer to launch.

Excepter, Catatonic Youth, and Pink Skull are also on the bill. $10 tickets are on sale. Tickets are also still on sale for the April 5th Thee Oh Sees show at Mercury Lounge.

Speaking of the Bell House, tickets are on sale for the May 7th Vetiver / Papercuts show. Tickets are also still on sale for the May 3rd Vetiver show at Bowery Ballroom.

Motel Motel have a show coming up at the Bell House too. They've been added as opener to the Phosphorescent / Mike Bones show happening there on February 28th. It's the show where Phos will be performing his entire "To Willie" album from start to finish, like he will... at the BrooklynVegan official SXSW showcase at Club DeVille in Austin on Wednesday night, March 18th (and he's doing it in LA and San Francisco too). Brooklyn tickets are still on sale. All Phos tour dates HERE.

Video of Thee Oh Sees playing at Cake Shop, below...

Continue reading "WFMU, Thee Oh Sees, Vetiver, Motel Motel, Phosphorescent"

DOWNLOAD: Skeletons - The Things (MP3)

"With a sound that truly verges on unclassifiable, Brooklyn-based freak-niks Skeletons are an anomaly even at the venerable Tomlab label, which stables an entire herd of experimental artists. For a group to stand out as uniquely off center amid labelmates such as Xiu Xiu and Deerhoof is rather remarkable.

Fronted by singer/multi-instrumentalist Matt Mehlan, the fifth full-length album ["Money"] under the Skeleton's banner (third for the full group) features dispirate, seemingly incohesive musical undertones that are tenuously held together by Mehlan's R&B/pop croons. Fretboard noodling, sputtering drums and a menacing bass undercurrent comprise a confounding blend on "The THINGS," which segues unknowingly into "RIPPER a.ka. The Pillows," the latter sounding like Perry Farrell fronting John Zorn's avant-jazz band Naked City. [Lost at Sea]

The band formerly known as Skeletons and the Girl Faced Boys are playing a show with Extra Life, John Dwyer & Sam Hillmer (mems ohsees, Zs), and John Fell Ryan of Excepter tonight/Friday (1/2) at Death By Audio. The show was moved from its original location of Le Poisson Rouge. Skeletons will also take part in the "Shinkoyo Circus" happening at Roulette from Jan 27 to Jan 29, and in BAM's 'Sounds like Brooklyn' fest with a show at Zebulon on February 12th. Download an MP3 above. Listen to more songs at MySpace. All dates below...

Continue reading "Skeletons - MP3 & 2009 Tour Dates (DBA, Roulette, Zebulon)"

DOWNLOAD: USA for Affluence - Cash for Christmas (MP3)

The star-studded video is below...

Continue reading "Beardo Episode 5 - CASH FOR CHRISTMAS (Tim Harrington, Moby, Andrew WK, AC Newman, Will Sheff, etc, etc...)"

Besides being a tongue twister, NY Eye and Ear is also...

a 2 day record fair and all-ages music festival celebrating NYC homegrown DIY recording labels and bands. This is NYC's only record fair devoted exclusively to NY record labels. The title is inspired from the 1964 Michael Snow film w/ soundtrack by Albert Ayler and from the all-too-familiar signs seen daily in the subway tunnels by riders of the L-train of the famous NY Eye & Ear Infirmary. The Fest will be held at Vanishing Point, a huge 4700 sq. foot industrial loft in Bushwick, Brooklyn (240 Meserole street, Brooklyn, NY 11206).

Friday, December 12 from 2pm -4am
Saturday, December 13 from 2pm -4am

Something like 36 bands are playing at this thing, plus "Dance-party from 1:30 - 4am" each night. Ticket info and all the record sellers, labels and bands are listed below...

Continue reading "NY Eye & Ear music festival and record fair (Dec 12-13)"

photos by Nathan Miller

In May, 2007 Jack Dangers released a double CD of old Meat Beat Manifesto demos, as well as an instrumental version of the Perennial Divide album, Purge, entitled Archive Things 1982-88 / Purged. MBM's 9th studio album, Autoimmune, was released on April 7, 2008 in Europe via Planet Mu Records and on April 8, 2008 in the US and Canada via Metropolis Records. According to the band's website, Z-Trip is again collaborating on several tracks. The lead single, "Guns And Lovers" was released as a digital single via iTunes on March 18, 2008, while the track "Lonely Soldier" was released as a single via bleep.com. [Wikipedia]

Meat Beat Manifesto played their first of two east coast shows at Bowery Ballroom in NYC last night (11/19). NYC's Excepter opened. The next Meat Beat performance is this weekend at Brainwaves in Boston. More pictures from Bowery below...

Continue reading "Meat Beat Manifesto & Excepter @ Bowery, Ballroom - pics"

The Meat Beat Manifesto show originally scheduled for November 19th at Highline Ballroom was recently moved to Bowery Ballroom. Excepter is opening and tickets are still on sale. Two days after NYC, Meat Beat will head up to Boston for the Brainwaves Festival,...

Friday, November 21, 2008 - doors at 7pm, music begins at 8pm
Meat Beat Manifesto
Silver Apples
JG Thirlwell's Manorexia
Marissa Nadler
& a special Greater Than One video presentation

...and then in December they have two shows scheduled on their own, west, coast. All dates below...

Continue reading "Meat Beat Manifesto tour dates (new NY venue, Brainwaves)"

Beach House @ the 2008 Siren Fest (more by Leia Jospe)

The Carpark & Paw Tracks CMJ showcase will take place at (le) poisson rouge in NYC on October 22nd. Adventure, Beach House, Ecstatic Sunshine, Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, WZT Hearts, Dent May and His Magnificent Ukelele, Excepter, Kria Brekkan, Rings, and Tickley Feather are all on the bill. $10.00 tickets are on sale.

Beach House will also be playing (le) poisson rouge five days earlier as part of the Baltimore Round Robin tour (they are on the October 17th bill, not the one on the 18th, both now sold out). All non-round robin Beach House tour dates below...

Continue reading "Beach House - 2008 Tour Dates (Carpark/Paw Tracks CMJ)"

Thursday April 17th, 2008
Get Weird: Fakey and Hex Message
Part of Get Weird
$8 Members, $10 General Admission

April's very special Get Weird welcomes two newly formed musical acts, both featuring gurus of the downtown art and music worlds.

Fakey is a power trio combining the musical stylings of Joe Williams of White Williams (electro dance jams for the people), Moses Archuleta of Deerhunter (ATL ambient punk), and Matthew Papich of Ecstatic Sunshine (good time guitars).

Hex Message takes listeners on a journey of sonic experimentation and positive juju, featuring Dan Hougland (of Excepter) on keyboards, gallerist Pascal Spengemann (of Taxter and Spengemann) on drums, Abigail Portner (of Rings) on keyboards, and artist Andrew Kuo on guitar.

Get Weird is a monthly series of performances featuring experimental and freaky jams. Expect anything from dusted-off salsa to psychedelic harmonies, performed by unknown legends and young-gun mavericks. Get Weird takes place on the third Thursday of each month. [the New Museum in NYC]