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Photos / Live Review: The Cranberries @ Rams Head Live (2009.11.12)

What a pleasure it was to be able to see Dolores O’Riordan and The Cranberries perform for the first time in six years at Rams Head Live!  I was shocked to see that they were reuniting for a tour, and even more shocked to see that they were starting their tour in Baltimore!  The band played a 17 song set, ending with a 4 song encore that closed the show with classic single, “Dreams.”  Their performance and sound were both amazing; Dolores herself even commented that they had only rehearsed for a week prior to starting the tour.  Throughout the set, Delores interacted with several grateful fans, even accepting a few bouquets of flowers.  The evening was perfect!  Enjoy the photos!

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Photos: Thrushes, Sick Sick Birds, The Art of Shooting @ the Metro Gallery (2009.11.06)

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Live Review / Photos: Islands, Jemina Pearl, Toro Y Moi @ the G-Spot (2009.11.02)

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01. MP3: Toro Y Moi – Talamak from Well Tusked (2009)

02. MP3: Toro Y Moi – Human Nature (Michael Jackson cover) from CHUM ONAH: BxF celebrates the music of M. Jackson

03. MP3: Jemina Pearl – I Hate People featuring Iggy Pop from Break It Up (2009)

All photos: Greg Szeto | Full set

Toro Y Moi comes off initially like a variant of the whole indie dance shtick: solo artist pumping out insistent beats, synths and laptop samples while dancing around stage, the music is as fierce as any of his peers and leaves no 4/4 stone unturned. But there’s a twist.  What elevates him above the chaff and detritus is both the subtlety and execution; the fact that he actually sings the featherweight and often soulful vocals and plays the synth lines to his own music makes all the difference.  As a result, Chaz Bundick is downright intimate with his music: the payoff is much bigger, the riffs more electric, and everything overflows with funky heart and dance-worthy soul.  Foot-tapping pop couched in lo-fi swirls often sampled on the fly, his set was a good benchmark for meaningful indie pop. Read the rest…

Photos: True Womanhood @ the Hexagon (2009.10.17)

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Video / Photos: So Percussion – Steve Reich’s Drumming Part 1


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

So we’ve got a show coming up with So Percussion on Oct 28th. Here’s a sneak peek. The So guys were down teaching at Peabody in late September and took some time to shoot a performance of Steve Reich’s Drumming Part 1 in a Percussion studio with us and Polygon Tree, curator behind the web-show An Hour of Kindness.  Enjoy and be amazed.

I also took some photos of the shoot:

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Photos / Live Review: Future Islands, Lonnie Walker, Small Sur, Jared Paolini @ Zodiac (2009.10.01)

Jared Paolini @ Zodiac Jared Paolini @ Zodiac Andy Abelow of Small Sur @ Zodiac Austin Stahl of Small Sur @ Zodiac Bob Keal of Small Sur @ Zodiac Andy Abelow of Small Sur @ Zodiac Andy Abelow of Small Sur @ Zodiac Austin Stahl of Small Sur @ Zodiac Small Sur @ Zodiac Andy Abelow of Small Sur @ Zodiac Bob Keal of Small Sur @ Zodiac Lonnie Walker @ Zodiac Lonnie Walker @ Zodiac Lonnie Walker @ Zodiac Lonnie Walker @ Zodiac Lonnie Walker @ Zodiac Lonnie Walker @ Zodiac Lonnie Walker @ Zodiac Sam Herring of Future Islands @ Zodiac Sam Herring of Future Islands @ Zodiac Will Cashion of Future Islands @ Zodiac Sam Herring of Future Islands @ Zodiac Sam Herring of Future Islands @ Zodiac Sam Herring of Future Islands @ Zodiac Sam Herring of Future Islands @ Zodiac Sam Herring of Future Islands @ Zodiac Sam Herring of Future Islands @ Zodiac

All Photos: Greg Szeto

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MP3: Lonnie Walker – Compass Comforts

A sweaty grower of a Thursday night show, from the blissful haze of expertly layered guitar loops to the serenity of nature, followed by big-riff country-fried rock and capped off with high-energy, soul-filled dance songs.

Jared Paolini’s measured performance matched his meticulous and painstaking live layering of guitars to produce vast and glorious escapist textures. Small Sur’s set was pitch perfect, some new cuts being played, while Andy Abelow often stole the show with his ever-improving, excellent sax work (nary a squawk or hesitant entrance in earshot, and rich, full tones abound). This is no small feat considering Bob Keal’s soaring vocal work and subtle, lyrical guitar, and Austin Stahl’s deliberate and expressive drumming. Future Islands provided the soulful dance party we have all come to expect, Sam Herring’s emphatic, raw vocals and uniquely theatrical delivery proving ever effective. Will Cashion’s bass work also proved spot on, providing a much needed, kinetic bass line you could feel, compensating for the somewhat hollow drum machine beats in the background.

But for me, the big find of the night was how much I absolutely fell in love with Lonnie Walker’s foot-stomping, knee-slapping, crunchy and rousing Americana rock. Building each song from rambling country riffs and vocals to huge guitar shredding payoffs, frantic vocals, and ramped-up, urgent tempi. So versatile was their approach that they even dropped one of their songs into something like a syncopated ska beat. Expect to hear more from them in these pages in the very near future.

Photos / Live Review: Double Dagger, HEALTH, Pictureplane, Shams @ Sonar (2009.09.26)

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All photos: Greg Szeto

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01. MP3: HEALTH – Die Slow (Tobacco Remix)
02. MP3: HEALTH – We Are Water

An odd night to say the least.  Two solo openers that relied heavily on iPod-beats to move bodies versus two bands using traditional instruments with ear-shattering consequences.  These evolutions of the spastic electronified rock that characterized many Wham City acts has morphed into a more “adult” realm of music with booty-shaking club influence weighing heavy on the proceedings.  The contrast is marked: the wide-eyed innocence and playfulness of Dan Deacon’s tunes meets the bump-and-grind, down and dirty.

Shams peddles his tonic well, selling his heavily distorted vocals through twin mics and iPod-backing tracks with a somewhat ritualistic spectacle of a live show, complete with amulet, and various charms.  Overtones of amateur voodoo shaman-ism, more for fear factor than any sort of true belief, echo in his vacant, ironic and subtle-as-a-freight-train lyrics: “I want to cut your face / while I’m fucking you.”  Yet something was strangely compelling about the sensationalized violence and misogyny that made it all work.  Maybe it is just the charm of depravity with a wink and a smile.

I found Pictureplane’s music was a harder sell (but clearly I was in the minority amidst the sweaty and dancing crowd).  Much heavier club and dub sounds filled this set, heavy beats that were easy to move to.  The fact that the house lights were cut, leaving on flashes and LED strips to light the way, didn’t hurt with the immersion either.  I think living in Baltimore has us spoiled though, as I kept thinking I was listening to a sub-par Bmore Club DJ you would find on any given weeknight.  While he no doubt dropped some smoking-hot cuts, these moments of dance-floor bliss were too few amidst a sea of shallow replicas.

HEALTH provided no small racket, their primal rhythms and screeching vocals hitting hard and fast.  But they seemed a pale shadow of themselves from their Ottobar performance a little over a year ago, and their luster was dulled.  I think they would be well served by some time off the road, to recharge their electricity.  The exaggerated swings of their guitars and flailing spasms seemed little more than half-hearted artifice.  Still, underneath such a din HEALTH didn’t seem so out of place with the previous two openers, most of their songs possessing strong tribal dance circle rhythms that can sway bodies.

Double Dagger however, was the odd man out.  Funnily enough, they possessed far and away the best bass lines of the night, yet they are the furthest removed from dance fare.  But with Nolen as front-man, I don’t think there will ever be a lackluster DD show.  Bruce’s frenzied bass and Denny’s frantic drumming only add fuel to the fire.  As Bruce’s bass cut out mid-song, Nolen finished the verse before apologizing and positing the hypothetical: “maybe we should’ve played with iPods like everyone else.”  Considering what came before,  I think it was clear that the answer to this is a resounding “no.”  I walked away from the night a little disoriented by the shifting styles, and not quite sure what to make of the line-up.  I was only sure that I had had my fill of iPod-backed acts, but could listen and watch Double Dagger another ten times before drifting to sleep.

Photos / Live Review: Sunn O))) @ Sonar (2009.09.23)

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All photos: Greg Szeto

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MP3: Sunn O))) – Big Church from Monoliths and Dimensions (2009)

I’m just going to lay it out there. Sunn O))) blew my mind and disappointed me at the same time.

Sunn O))) are a spectacle and an experience. Their particularly glacial blend of drone, doom metal and many other things dark and heavy demands, and depends, on such deep immersion for its effect. This is why, no matter how enormous the sound or foggy the room, their set at Sonar couldn’t even touch the experience of reading about their set at First Unitarian in Philadelphia. From all reports, had I been there it would have instantly ranked in my all time concerts list. The crowd’s refusal to take part in the immersive experience early on rendered the introductory hypnotic monk chants largely ineffectual, and even a bit farcical as grumbles about the New Age-y trance track mounted. Despite this initial falter, they still put on a mammoth show.

After a lot of fogging, Sunn mobilized in monk robes to take the stage and drown us all in over an hour of the deepest, darkest, sludgiest doom drones outside of whatever hell dimension true metal comes from. Apropos their latest album title, Monoliths and Dimensions, their deliberately paced, deafening assault was truly monolithic. Their sound was, in fact, even more massive than I had expected. At times, I felt my ear drums were going to implode from the pressure of the sound waves, and my heart most certainly skipped beats to match the rumble of the low octave chords that made up their endlessly mutating drone. Never throughout the set did they let up on the intensity or artifice of their roles. They produced probably the closest thing to a demonic ceremony that I will ever witness, through ritualistic and crushing worship of music (even playing their instruments with no small amount of melodramatic flare ie- bass impalement, guitar offerings to the sky). One kid in the front row even took to periodic bowing and praising Sunn, only reinforcing the strength of their musical liturgy.

What proved most fascinating about their music though, was the absolute insanity of their vocalist, aptly named Attila. Stunning vocal acrobatics, dipping into octaves that may very well reside in the underworld, were the linchpin of his performance, as well as stratospheric screeches. His demented variation on the entrancing tropes of New Age chants was simultaneously impressive, disturbing, and enthralling. His costume was easily the most outlandish, as midset he activated his laser fingers (fingertip-less gloves with laser on each finger) and started a possessed game of Cat’s cradle and even donned the king of all crowns, a giant hat with huge metal spikes protruding on all sides. The summation of all these elements was a complete and total immersion in something challenging, offensive, mesmerizing, and haunting.

As you walked out of Sonar, the fog spilled out of the front door not unlike smoke from a burning building.  Your chest struggled to recuperate from the pummeling it had just received as your ears strained vainly to regain some semblance of auditory function. You maybe even felt a bit of burning in your lungs. And maybe that was from sulfur in the air…which confirms your sneaking suspicions that you’ve just witnessed something truly otherworldly.

Photos / Video / Live Review: Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Jay Electronica @ Sonar (2009.09.16)

All photos: Josh Sisk

Full set here

I have always had a giant personal dilemma in regards to hip-hop.  The genre is filled with landmines that derail my systematic approach to digesting and enjoying most other genres of music.  In my mind, the most compelling genius of music happens in live performance.  The convergence of visual, aural and atmospheric factors should make for a unique, vital and one-of-a-kind experience.

I tend to abhor live hip-hop shows (battles are a different story), as you tend to lose a large portion of the visual with the focus on one singular performer, often without any backup other than a backing track.  This has led to the egoism of the hype-up approach in order to catalyze a feedback loop of energy from the crowd to performer, and it often ends up distasteful at its worst, laughable at its best and nearly always obnoxious.  Things devolve into pep rallies reminiscent of adolescence more than should be allowed.

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Jay Electronica fell into this trap horrifically.  His ‘tween song banter ranged from bad to insufferable, yet somehow the crowd seemed trained to eat it up.  Maybe that’s because when he put aside the ego and the role of hypeman, picking up the mic as a rapper, he delivered some of the best rhymes of the night.  His style is wordy, dense and filled with vivid metaphors, yet his flow is smooth and steady, like raging waters smoothing over a rocky riverbed.  Counting among his repertoire a number of cuts with J Dilla beats, his set excised from the B$ could have potentially outshined both headliners.  As it stands, the set was marred by awkward silences and particularly momentum-killing moments where he was having mic feedback and when he had his backing DJ searching for a line to play back from some unknown track.

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Talib Kweli, by contrast, flowed forth not only with his words but with the show itself. Rarely, if ever letting silence rule the space between songs, Kweli packed every second with agile turns of phrase or phenomenal scratching by his DJ.  A master of crowd control, the charismatic Kweli had the perfect balance of crowd interaction and sensing when to stow it and drop knowledge on everyone in a set largely culled from his collaborative efforts with DJ Hi-Tek.  His steady and rapid-fire rhythmic skills while rapping a capella were top-notch, and his energy and intensity were off-the-charts on cuts like “Get Em High” and “Get By.”  He even gave a birthday shout-out during a Marley sing-along that proved he’s can be as gentle as he goes hard.

3932138266_1b5c79ec02Mos Def most clearly recognizes the need to fill the energy gap as he has taken to becoming a more versatile, multi-instrumental performer.  The visual energy from watching him play the drums while rapping is remarkable, and its contribution to the performance immeasurable.  Unsurprisingly, Mos Def performed the majority of The Ecstatic in gripping fashion.  The end of the night heralded the reunion of Kweli and Mos Def as Black Star, the union which originally thrust them into the spotlight.  The power of that performance almost dwarfed the individuals, and makes you wonder whether either of them has truly stepped out from the shadow of their earliest, arguably finest works?

It turns out Music Without Labels had a camera crew in the house and got some great live footage of Talib Kweli, Mos Def and Soul Cannon.  Check it out after the jump.
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Photos / Live Review: White Magic, Daniel Higgs, Zomes @ the Creative Alliance (2009.09.04)

Dan Higgs @ the Creative Alliance Dan Higgs @ the Creative Alliance Dan Higgs @ the Creative Alliance Dan Higgs @ the Creative Alliance Dan Higgs @ the Creative Alliance Dan Higgs @ the Creative Alliance White Magic @ the Creative Alliance White Magic @ the Creative Alliance White Magic @ the Creative Alliance White Magic @ the Creative Alliance White Magic @ the Creative Alliance White Magic @ the Creative Alliance

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01. MP3: Zomes – Clear Shapes from Zomes (2008)
02. MP3: Daniel Higgs – Living In The Kingdom of Death from Ancestral Songs (2006)

Creative Alliance billed an interesting line-up Friday night: two veritable forces of nature, followed by one group desperate to tap into that same well of inspiration, but still standing on the outside.

Daniel Higgs and Asa Osborne come from the same musical lineage, both working together in Baltimore-grown journeyman-punk band Lungfish. I have always assumed Lungfish were the equivalent of musical monks, on a mission searching for some deep, dark, ancient secret of the universe through their music. Music that possessed a mystical aura and was complemented by appropriately cryptic lyrics, their live shows were filled with a phenomenal vitality. The quest for enlightenment seemed to be pushing Higgs near the raging and maddening edge. I like to think that it was because his frail mortal vessel was attempting to contain and process the otherworldly messages and thoughts he was experiencing. Likewise, Osborne’s steady and scorching, often repetitive guitars in Lungfish were nearly exploding with anthemic melodies. The feeling was that both men were communicating something primal and universal, but they were often incapable of fully controlling how it came out. As their solo careers have progressed, I would say they have figured out how to control and communicate the voice of their respective muses.

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