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Live Audio / Photos: Imperial China @ the Hexagon (2009.11.13)

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Imperial China
Hexagon
Baltimore, MD
Nov 13 2009

Band:
Brian Porter
Matt Johnson
Patrick Gough

Lineage: Stereo AKG 414s + mono soundboard output -> Zoom H4n -> Cubase (mix + limiting) -> MP3/FLAC
Taper: David Carter (carteriffic@gmail.com)

Download the full set formatted as: MP3 or FLAC

Stream and download individual tracks below.  Another fantastic Imperial China set, sporting a load of tracks off their upcoming 2010 full-length debut (Phosphenes) on Sockets / Ruffian Records.  I can already tell you, it is a winner. Many kudos to relatively new-on-the-scene taper David Carter for catching such an awesome one.

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  1. MP3: Untitled
  2. MP3: Radhus
  3. MP3: Rookie Cop / Mortal Wombat
  4. MP3: Bananamite
  5. MP3: A Modern Life
  6. MP3: All That Is Solid
  7. MP3: Letter of a General

Boogaloo Times Preview: Numero Group’s Eccentric Soul Revue @ 9:30 Club (2009.11.10)

eccentric soul flyer

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01. MP3: Syl Johnson – Different Strokes
02. MP3: Syl Johnson – Come On Sock It To Me (streaming only)

It’s not unusual for friends and acquaintances to ask us how a person should start “getting into” soul music. The general situation looks to be something like this: Soul, though it hasn’t suffered any loss in sheer memorability, has become a somewhat obscure taste among young people of our day. Most everyone still appreciates a hard-hitting 4×4 soul anthem–their dad’s old Otis Redding tapes, James Brown’s cathartic screech–the problem is that few have actually bothered to delve into music made by equally meritable, yet less popular artists of modern and classic eras alike. So how exactly do you go about entering the world of soul?

Obviously, getting caught up in the genre is just as simple as it is for any other type of music–recommendations, criticism, radio, the internet, and ideally: shows. That’s why we cheerfully advise you to attend Numero Group’s Eccentric Soul Revue when it winds its way down to the 9:30 Club tomorrow, Tues Nov 10th (one of only five tour dates). The Vinyl District is also giving away free tickets and swag.

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Live Audio: Gestures @ Metro Gallery (2009.10.28)

So PercussionGestures
Metro Gallery
Baltimore, MD
October 28, 2009

Band:
Bob Chapman-trombone
Jon Lebovitz-tuba
Rebecca Mills-clarinet
Mark Cisneros-drums
Jess Matthews-drums
Kriston Capps-sax

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 full set formatted as: MP3 or FLAC

Stream and download individual tracks after the jump

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Preview: Aural States presents So Percussion, Microkingdom, Gestures, Adam Holofcener + Jeff Zeiders, the True Vine Trio (Jason Willett, MC Schmidt, Owen Gardner)

Tonight will be an inspired night for music in Baltimore. Of course, that statement is a little biased since I’m putting it on.

Here’s some decidedly non-biased material suggesting you attend:

Banging on Cans: And anything and everything else in So Percussion’s strange, not-just-percussion universe” (Baltimore City Paper)

Roll Over, Beethoven: By Reimagining Format, Alt-Classical Musicians Are Going Mainstream” (Washington Post)

Do You Hear That?” (Maryland Morning on WYPR 88.1FM)

Splice Today

and here’s what others are saying about So Percussion and their recent premiere of Imaginary City in Brooklyn:

Drummers Map an Imaginary City” (New York Times)

Yes In My Backyard: An Exclusive First Listen To So Percussion’s BAM Next Wave Piece Imaginary City” (Village Voice Music Blog)

Top Live Show: So Percussion @ BAM Harvey Theater” (Time Out New York)

So Percussion – playing ‘Imaginary City’ @ BAM” (BrooklynVegan)

Here’s some video we shot with Polygon Tree Productions of So performing Steve Reich’s Drumming Part 1:

So Percussion Perform Steven Reich’s Drumming Part 1 from Polygon Tree Productions on Vimeo.

It also bears mentioning that the line-up has expanded since our initial announcement to include two more sets. One features the premiere of a piece by local composers Adam Holofcener and Jeff Zeiders. The other is a True Vine power trio of sorts featuring Jason Willett (Leprechaun Catering, Pleasant Livers, Half Japanese), Martin Schmidt (Matmos), and Owen Gardner (Black Vatican, Janitor, ex-Teeth Mountain). Some more, press-release-y details on them after the jump.

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Interview: Office of Future Plans & the Jawbox Reunion (w/ J Robbins)

_MG_8679.jpg

Photo credit: Greg Szeto

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MP3: Report Suspicious Activity – The Night of 1000 Lies from Report Suspicious Activity (2005)

Office of Future Plans plays Oct 27th at the Sidebar with The Bomb, and a Halloween show on Oct 30th at Rock and Roll Hotel with Caverns and Imperial China.

On an anonymous street, nestled tightly amidst random warehouse facades in the neighborhood known as Better Waverly (funnily enough, south of Waverly proper), sits the Magpie Cage. From the outside, it appears to be no more than a steel-gated, two-car-width garage. But when you walk through the doors, it’s like entering a different world. A veritable oasis for anyone music-oriented, lined with warm wood tones, and contrasts of deep red while absolutely bursting with vintage and high-tech recording gear that strikes any artist like Pavlov’s Bell. Unlike many studios, this one is remarkably free of clutter, and blessed streamlined interior design (perhaps a bit of insight into the mind of its proprietor).

This is the studio of one J Robbins, one of the bonafide icons of local music, earning his stripes as final bassist in DC hardcore band Government Issue, vocalist and guitarist in post-hardcore follow-up Jawbox, and more recently with duties in Report Suspicious Activity, Channels, and Burning Airlines. He also happens to be one of the most earnest, hard-working, and genuine people you’ll ever have the pleasure of meeting.

I got the chance to gab with J in the studio before a day of mixing locals …soihadto…, who counts the infamous Duff from Ace of Cakes among its members. Our conversation veered all over: from the forging fires of his new project Office of Future Plans, to the driving forces behind the bizarre Jawbox reunion set on Jimmy Fallon, and tons more in Robbins’ very busy life.

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One Track Mind: True Womanhood – “Dignitas”

True Womanhood - Magic Child

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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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Photos: True Womanhood @ the Hexagon (2009.10.17)

_MG_8655 _MG_8649 _MG_8566 _MG_8588 _MG_8575 _MG_8591 _MG_8576 _MG_8599 _MG_8602 _MG_8603 _MG_8609 _MG_8620 _MG_8614 _MG_8615 _MG_8618 _MG_8623 _MG_8631 _MG_8636 _MG_8574

Live Review: Lorin Maazel Guides NSO to Technical Glory

lorin maazelIf 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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Live Review: Bartók vs. Bartók – BSO trumps National, Harmonia Lends Hungary For the Night

Bartok-DSC_2150Last weekend, a wonderful conjunction took place among the Baltimore-Washington musical spheres: Bartók’s music overtook its two great concert halls on the very same night.

To compare Baltimore’s own playing Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and the NSO’s take on Bartók’s The Wooden Prince is like pitting a Shakespeare tragedy against one of his comedies, and venturing that one is far better.

While it may not be fair to pit a concerto against a ballet score, we’ll give the BSO, under Maestro Marin Alsop’s baton, the upper hand. Both orchestras did fantastic things we’ve never quite heard before. Bartók brings out the best of an orchestra because he’s not something you can take for granted. You can take Beethoven’s “Pastoral” for granted. You might even take Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto for granted, but James Ehnes’ ample sprezzatura helped the BSO make a great case for Tchaikovsky, perhaps better than the composer himself when he called it “One violin concerto too many” – despite its being the only one that he composed.

Here’s what tips the scales in favor of B-more…

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Preview: Aural States presents So Percussion, Microkingdom’s Pro Hour, Gestures @ the Metro Gallery (2009.10.28)

So PercussionFor Immediate Release: All artists are open to press inquiries, interviews and more.  For more information regarding any of the artists or this show, please contact Greg Szeto at auralstates@gmail.com.

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01. MP3: So Percussion – Drumming, Pt. 4 (Steve Reich)
02. MP3: So Percussion – June
03. MP3: Microkingdom’s Pro Hour – Double Abacus from Wrenches:My Heart/Double Abacus (2008)
04. MP3: Gestures – Doritos from Nice EP (2009)

Aural States presents So Percussion, Microkingdom, Gestures, more TBA at the Metro Gallery on Wed Oct 28th

(BALTIMORE, MD — Sept 14 2009) — Defining the boundaries of what we know as music and classifying its endless offspring are both ever-evolving, vital enterprises.  In celebration of this constant growth, Aural States has brought together musicians who we feel excel at making music a malleable and dynamic entity through bold experimentation.  We are proud to present So Percussion, Microkingdom, and Gestures at the Metro Gallery on October 28th 2009 in the Station North Arts District of Baltimore.

Brooklyn-based quartet So Percussion take up the cause of showing the world that percussion is much more than a primitive means to an end, expanding far beyond drums laying down beats.  Lauded as “revelatory” (David Lang), “brilliant” and “consistently impressive” (The New York Times), and “astonishing and entrancing” (Billboard Magazine), their genre-bending work has lead to collaborations with innovative musicians like Dan Deacon and Matmos, with whom years of work will bear fruit in a late Spring 2010 release on Cantaloupe Records.  They’ve prepared bracing performances of pieces from visionary composers such as David Lang, Steve Reich, John Cage and Iannis Xenakis, as well as crafting their own compositions.  Their music has taken them around the globe to stages and audiences of all shapes and sizes, from the Lincoln Center Festival to Carnege Hall, the Kennedy Center, and even Whartscape 2009 at the Baltimore Museum of Art where they performed excerpts from Steve Reich’s Drumming.  This summer, So created an annual summer institute at Princeton University consisting of an intensive two-week chamber music seminar for college percussionists.

In their only Baltimore/DC area performance, in an unusually intimate venue, So will perform works from Steve Reich, their 2006 album Amid the Noise, and their latest original work entitled Imaginary City, which has its world premiere just a few weeks before as a commission for the 2009 BAM Next Wave Festival.

http://www.sopercussion.com/ || http://www.myspace.com/sopercussion || http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1259

The trio known as Microkingdom’s Pro Hour is one of Baltimore’s avant-garde powerhouses.  Its members hold pedigree second to none: guitarist Marc Miller of math rock pranksters Oxes, percussion whiz and composer Will Redman, and the musically polyamorous John Dierker’s fierce reeds.  Playing “sinuous, powerfully dynamic improvisations” (The Wire) or self-described “No Jazz,” Microkingdom have been called “dynamic, challenging, confident” (Pitchfork).  Over the past couple of years Microkingdom has played shows with: Wzt Heart, Ecstatic Sunshine, Thank You, Singer, Food For Animals, Daniel Higgs, These Are Powers, Jack Wright, White Mice, Talibam!, Peter Brotzmann, Pontiak, Extra Life, The Homosexuals, and many others. They’ve also self released color vinyl Wrenches: My Heart/Double Abacus as well as putting out the CD-R EP Spectacular Edges on Human Conduct.  This fall will see them playing Brooklyn-based Death By Audio’s You Are Here: The Maze installation and performance festival in late September.

http://www.microkingdom.com/ || http://myspace.com/microkingdom || http://www.willredman.com/

Gestures’ “shambolic drums-n-brass band” was named D.C.’s “Second-Best Use of Air Pressure” by Washington City Paper’s Best of D.C. 2009.  A horn and drum collective consisting of tuba, trombone, saxophone, clarinet, and two drum kits, think manic marching band meets frantic free-jazz structures and you’ve got a pretty close approximation of their sound.  Fascinating and brazen blasts of dissonance test and probe the limits of your endurance while simultaneously forming vivid mental images and narratives like some crazed sonic bard, drunkenly dragging off-kilter harmonies out of entropy.  Gestures’ debut EP Nice will be out soon.

http://www.initiatedeyerecordings.com/gestures || http://www.myspace.com/gesturesdc

Venue Information

The Metro Gallery, 1700 N Charles St, Baltimore MD 21201

http://themetrogallery.net/ || http://www.myspace.com/metrogallery

Tickets $10 in advance.  $12 day of show.  21 and over only.

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