DOUBLE DAGGER – “No Allies” from Matt Porterfield on Vimeo.

Today is the last day to leave a comment on our Masks review as part of the Double Dagger Does Europe contest.

The guys hopped across the pond yesterday, premiering the above video for “No Allies” on the site for influential British music illuminati, NME. The video was directed by local film luminary Matt Porterfield (Metal Gods, Putty Hill, Hamilton) and was shot in the venerable, now-retired first home of Charm City Art Space. CCAS moved up to bigger digs earlier this year in the form of the garage next door.

Thanks to the kind folks at Thrill Jockey (especially Paco Barba), we’re happy to premiere the video for the title track of Jason Urick’s new EP, “Fussing & Fighting.” Jason took a few moments to enlighten us on the EP: Read the rest…

Ed. note: Here’s hoping you all have a great time ringing in the New Year. Thanks to Guy (Vimeo / YouTube) from the Metro Gallery, you can also reflect back on a great night of live music from 2009: our fall showcase headlined by So Percussion this fall. Unfortunately, Microkingdom’s set was lost due to technical malfunction.

Congrats to friend of Aural States, stand-up guy, and all-around great musician (and highly underrated lyricist) J Robbins. His noted 90s project Jawbox (infamous for being one of the only artists to leave legendary Dischord Records). They delivered a taut performance of “Savory” last night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon to commemorate the reissue and remastering of their Atlantic debut For Your Own Special Sweetheart.

If you missed it, YouTube has a version (see below), and Hulu will have a true HD 480p version later today.

And according to my chat with J, we also get two more online-exclusive performances after the jump (“FF=66″ and “68,” both also from FYOSS).

Read the rest…

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:

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.

Read the rest…

The True Vine
3544 Hickory Ave.
Baltimore, MD

Telephone: 410 235 4500

open hours:
Tues. to Sat. 12 – 9
Sun. & Mon. 12 – 6

hello,
this is jason speaking.  there’s alot to say & not much time to type it but i’ll give it a shot.

today is wed. oct. 21st 2009 & at some point today jad fair’s brother david will arrive from coldwater, michigan to the true vine with a truck crammed full of vinyl for us to sell. jad called me last week to tell me that he & david have decided to sell both their entire large record collections to this shop. both collections have been in storage for a long time & some of these records were from their first record purchasing days in the 70′s.

if you know some history about half japanese then you could imagine as much as i could that there would be some very interesting music in these boxes. about 20 years ago when i had a record shop in frederick, md, david dropped off a pile of amazing records on my desk for me to borrow.  everything in that stack was amazing & that was the first time i heard jandek. half of those records were jandek lps. the amount of records between the two of them is easily in the thousands & david’s drop off today will be part 1 of two drop offs. the next will be in about 3 months from now.

Read the rest…

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: