The first up, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Adonis took us as close as you can get to an evening in Versailles without the price tag.  My friend and I scored the last two tickets to be had.  This free-for-all packed the house as part of Peabody Opera’s tie-in with Free Fall Baltimore.

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MP3: True Womanhood – Dignitas from Magic Child Digital Single (2009)

True Womanhood have taken direct aim at one of the main limitations I initially appraised in their sound, namely a lack of diversity.  Without deviating from their dark and moody musical stew, they wring more refined permutations, nailing laser-precise shades of grey in their music to keep things always fresh and vital.  This maturation over a short period of time puts them, in my eyes at least, in rarefied air: they manage to take early, lofty expectations and praise and burn through it as fuel, evolving fast enough to keep pace with the landslide of praise.  And then outrun it.

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MP3: Ari Schenck – One That Got Away (The Anomoanon cover)

For all you night owls, we’ve got a little surprise for you tonight. Many thanks to friend Zach Kaufmann over at local webzine Splice Today for this leak of the first track from their Baltimore Does Baltimore compilation album of original covers (I think you can probably guess the running theme across the 10 tracks).  The free download drops tomorrow, but we’ve got a track from Ari Schenck right here: a cover of “One That Got Away” from Anomoanon’s Asleep Many Years in the Woods (2002).  The Anomoanon was a project from Baltimore transplant Ned Oldham (his slightly more famous, younger brother Will you may know is Bonnie “Prince” Billy) that also included Dave Heumann of Arbouretum.

While there aren’t any artists on the compilation who will be unfamiliar or surprising to current Baltimore music aficionados (nobody’s history really starts much before the aughties), there are some unexpected collisions of styles and genres that make for interesting twists and turns. Some of those include a Wye Oak cover of a Bmore Club standard by scene fixture Rod Lee, two very different takes on a big-hearted Future Islands ballad, and Caleb Stine finally putting to record one of my favorite live covers ever. Recording was done by each individual artist, and mastering by the Leffler-Schulmans’ Mobtown Studios.  Album artwork by the ever great Kathy Fahey.

It seems like Zach and Splice, like us at Aural States, have started yearning to do more than just write about music. There are tons of sites and blogs that do so now to varying degrees of depth and competency.  What few do is take that extra step and generate original content that adds to the greater pool of art.  Hopefully this is a sign of many such efforts to come from Splice (their first effort The Old Lonesome Sound already proving their passion for such endeavors).  We certainly have some fun plans for the very near future here.

If we were the National Symphony Orchestra, we’d ask the 79-year-old conductor, Lorin Maazel, back anytime. A lot of great things happen under the baton of a man who took his first conducting lesson at age seven.

From the moment Maazel took the podium to conduct Night on Bald Mountain (the Rimsky-Korsakov arranged, Fantasia favorite by Mussorgsky), you knew the highpoint of the evening would be tight control — no matter the piece.  A night of spot-on entrances and deft togetherness reigned in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

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Jason Urick
The Hexagon
Baltimore, MD
October 16, 2009

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Taper: Jeff Mewbourn (jm292@yahoo.com)

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Stream or download individual MP3s below:

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1. Boleo
2. The Eternal Return
3. Light Moves
4. Fussing & Fighting

Notes:
Lineup:Zomes>Dustin Wong>Vows>Jason Urick
Album Release show for Jason Urick’s Husbands
Sound: Josh Atkins
SUPPORT LOCAL MUSIC

Photo credit: Nate Dorr

Vows (Shaun Flynn of WZT Hearts)
The Hexagon
Baltimore, MD
October 16, 2009

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Taper: Jeff Mewbourn (jm292@yahoo.com)

Download the entire set as: FLAC or MP3

Stream or download individual MP3s below:

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1. Endless Concentric Void of Diamond Shapes

Notes:
Lineup:Zomes>Dustin Wong>Vows>Jason Urick
Album Release show for Jason Urick’s Husbands
Sound: Josh Atkins
SUPPORT LOCAL MUSIC

Photo credit: YiiioiiiY P, Dustin Wong @ No Rest Fest 2

Dustin Wong
The Hexagon
Baltimore, MD
October 16, 2009

Source: Peluso CEMC6/ck4(card)>PS-2>AD-20>NJB3
Transfer: NJB3>PC>SF-7>Wav>FLAC
Taper: Jeff Mewbourn (jm292@yahoo.com)

Download the entire set as: FLAC or MP3

Stream or download individual MP3s below.

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1. untitled
2. untitled
3. untitled
4. untitled

Notes:
Lineup:Zomes>Dustin Wong>Vows>Jason Urick
Album Release show for Jason Urick’s Husbands
Tracking is arbitrary and definitely off.
Sound: Josh Atkins
SUPPORT LOCAL MUSIC

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01. MP3: Death Domain – A Pox on You from split tape with High Marks (2008)
02. MP3: Death Domain – Ethidium Bromide 2

There’s a lot of good going on in Baltimore tonight, particularly in Station North with the release parties for Height With Friends’ Baltimore Highlands Remix Album at the Windup, and Jason Urick’s Thrill Jockey debut Husbands at the Hexagon.  But for something a little more under the radar and farther towards the extreme end of the spectrum, you should look westward to AMERICA.

Now, I’m going to say at the start, there’s a little authorial bias here.

Death Domain aka Adam Stroupe is a science nerd and, like me, wears it as a badge of honor.  The name of his apocalypse-heralding solo project says as much (death domains are stretches of amino acids found in proteins that signal for apoptosis, programmed cell death).  And let’s not get started on the bevy of overt scientific references saturating his songs’ titles (“A Pox On You,” “Vampyroteuthis infernalis,” “Toxoplasma gondii“) and lyrics.

To my ears, his sound is perhaps the most deserving of the ultra-vague, tongue-in-cheek designation of future shock.  If you take novelist Alvin Toffler’s definition, “future shock” is merely a twist on “culture shock,” essentially defined as the disorientation arising from the speed of change.  And DD’s music is undoubtedly one of the most bewildering, disorienting yet magnetic and infectious slices of downright bleak takes on synth-based dance music.  So welcome this wayward son home from tour tonight when he stops off at AMERICA with tourmates Cult of Youth and a host of others from the House of Tinnitus venue/collective in Denton, TX.

Crucial details:

AMERICA, doors @ 8pm
122 S Stockton St (a side street, between Lombard and Pratt, in the perpendicular, and between Carey and Carrollton, in the parallel)

CULT OF YOUTH – Neofolk in the tradition of Death in June.  These guys and gal barely play outside NY.  Snagged them after the last date of their tour!

DEATH DOMAIN – Criminally overlooked local synth-based non-organic onslaught.  Cold, catchy and clinical.  Lamentations of the future-present.

LYCHGATE – Grim harsh noise from Denton, TX.  Power electronics without the courtesy of misanthropicscreamers.

ASHES – On tour with Lychgate; also from TX.  Like-minded harshness.  Think FFH, Grey Wolves, Ahlzagailzehguh.  Ashen colored nihilism.

CORPORATE PARK – Part of the TX noise package.  Self-proclaimed back stabbers.  Think Pedestrian Deposit, Burmese, Throbbing Gristle and where the best place to find a leather zentai suit would be.