Photo: Valerie Paulsgrove
Words: David Carter

Celebration played a superb free show at The Patterson in February, courtesy of The Creative Alliance. I set out for this event early, or so I thought, until it became clear that the nearest parking space to this mobbed venue was a good mile away. So, I sadly missed their opening set, an acoustic percussion-centric jam in a densely crowded front gallery area. Happily, I did get the entirety of this electric set on the back stage. In keeping with Celebration’s insistence upon giving all of their music away for free lately, they have allowed us to hand this beauty over to you all in its entirety.

This is a fine representative Celebration set that rattles off many of the reasons why they draw such a massive local following (and create such miserable local traffic conditions). Cool, collected musical skill and raw intensity collide in a magical way, creating spiky contrasts that spin and swerve through the room. Their sound is defiant and stylized without ever coming off as stilted, never losing a grip on the groove factor. As usual, the visual cortex was not reglected, the stage dressed lavishly in white lace and murky colored light. Special thanks to photographer Valerie Paulsgrove for the image above, click through that picture for more of her fantastic stills from this session. These photos were originally featured on the excellent Bmore Musically Informed blog, another indispensible site tracking and nurturing the Baltimore music scene. Thanks for sharing!

Listen freely, and support Celebration back. They are subsidizing our (raging, problematic) music habits for miles around with these free shows, free tracks; unique goodness that we can’t ever get from anyone else.

Celebration
Live @ The Patterson
February 26, 2010
Baltimore MD, USA

Streaming player:

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MP3 links:

1. Pony (5:38)
2. Junky (5:30)
3. What’s This Magical (5:55)
4. Battles (6:18)
5. Honeysuckle Blue (6:01)
6. Great Pyramid (5:25)
7. Kilimanjaro (6:06)
8. I Will Not Fall (4:44)
9. Fly the Fly (4:18)
10. Heartbreak (7:39)
11. In This Land (5:25)

Total time: 1:03:05

ZIP links:

Entire set in mp3 format

Lineage:

AKG 414 mid/side pair -> Zoom h4n 48/24 -> Nuendo (stereo encoding, limiting) -> MP3

Recorded by:

David Carter (carteriffic@gmail.com)

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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.

Read the rest…