Friday, April 11, 2014

Real Estate


Frankly, it's more surprising to discover that Real Estate haven't played on television yet than it is to realize that Stephen Colbert will be taking over David Letterman's job.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Austerity Blues


Another song from Thee Silver Mt. Zion, etc., this one a mere excerpt from a song on their recent Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything.  Did I mention they're coming to Athens' 40 Watt next week?

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Mutual Benefit vs. Shaky Knees



So the Shaky Knees schedule has been announced, and the whole festival starts with Mutual Benefit playing the Piedmont Stage (which appears to be in the space that Cirque du Soleil always sets up their tents) on Friday at 12:45 pm.

I missed Mutual Benefit at The Earl earlier this year, as it was on a Monday night after my first day back at a real, full-time job in almost two-and-a-half years. However, it shouldn't be as much of a challenge getting to Shaky Knees in time to hear his opening set. 

Other than scheduling Mutual Benefit a tad too early, I don't see any other major irregularities in the schedule, other than Friday is clearly better that Sunday, and Sunday is clearly better than Saturday (Fri > Sun > Sat). But even Saturday still has the terrific Lord Huron, as well as Modest Mouse, Jenny Lewis, and Conor Oberst, so it's not like there's really anything to complain about.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Orchestra . . .




. . . And Tra-La-La Band, featuring members of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, have released a new song, Birds Toss Precious Flowers. The southern leg of their current tour doesn't touch down in Atlanta, but will have them performing at the 40-Watt in Athens on April 15 before they embark on the tour de ville (Asheville, Louisville, Nashville).

I'm scheming how to arrange a business trip to Athens next week. . . 

Monday, April 7, 2014

Cell Song



As described by Fanfarlo, "Cell Song is a song about the body. Most of us think of ourselves as an individual, a unity. Some sort of lone spirit living inside the head of a soft machine. But really we are the product of billions of little organisms that at one point decided that they were better off together, and so gave up their independence and joined together in a pact for survival. It's a beautiful thing, how the body is at once one and many. Like an evolutionary love story."

The Cell Song video employs thousands of individually inkjet-printed sheets of paper to create a stop-motion world teeming with bizarre cutouts from childhood science fiction and story books, and a cast of topsy-turvy biology gone decidedly strange.

Enjoy.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Red Baraat at Smith's Olde Bar, Atlanta, April 4, 2014

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Still catching up . . .  here's my pics and commentary (such as it is) on the Red Baraat show at Smith's Olde Bar last Friday night.

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The show opener, Atlanta's The Dialect Trio, were a revelation.  Where have these guys been hiding, and why haven't I heard them before?  The "trio" took the stage as a quartet and played a great amalgam of various world musics, incorporating elements of Hindustani pop, Afro pop, reggae, Cumbia, and various Afro-Cuban rhythms, with pleasingly Santana-esque guitar.  They described their style as "Chichia," a psychedelic, surf-inspired form of Cumbia popular in Peru.  Their Bandcamp site lists a full dozen albums and EPs, so they've obviously been around for a while - perhaps they've just been playing in an alternative universe of clubs and venues than I've been attending.



Here's a great video of them set to a memorable scene from Rodriguez' From Dusk 'Til Dawn (written and featuring Quentin Tarantino), posted here for The Dialect Trio's music and because you can never get too much Selma Hayek.


Headliners Red Baraat may be from Brooklyn, New York, but their music is from the Asian subcontinent by way of New Orleans, which is to say this is what a second line brass band might sound like in the India Quarter of the Crescent City, if such a thing even existed.  

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To say they got the party started and the audience up and dancing would be an understatement - it was clearly the band's singular aim and mission in the very same manner as, say, the Dirty Dozen or Rebirth Brass Bands.  

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There was a large contingent of Indians in the audience - I've never seen more turbans in an audience at any show before - engaged in a friendly, South Asian form of moshing, which involves two or more people locking feet or hands in the center of a circle, and then spinning around the center as rapidly as possible.  It was fun, and I speak from personal experience as late in the show I got pulled into one of those circles by an outgoing young man.


The band is led by percussionist Sunny Jain, whose hard driving North Indian bhangra rhythms merge with the five-man horn section's elements of jazz, funk, and hip-hop, and if you've never experienced a Sikh rapping over brass-band funk before, then you've got to catch Red Baraat.

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This is the kind of band that really needs to be experienced live in order to be appreciated, so here's a little taste of Friday's show and a video below from a show in their native Brooklyn to give you a rough approximation of the joyful multiculturalism of their performance.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision

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Before I start falling too far behind, let's recap last Thursday night's Atlanta Film Festival Sound + Vision event at The Goat Farm.  I've already posted pictures of some of the visual offerings from the event over at the other blog, so here's a summary of the musical portion of the events.


When I arrived, Florida's The Dewars were on stage.

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I hadn't heard of The Dewars before and wasn't quite sure what to expect - they describe themselves as "adult sing-along."  What they performed was witty and entertaining folk pop, as in their song Switzerland, the video of which was also periodically projected outside on a large screen.


Atlanta's electronic band Jungol were up next, and they brought a friend on stage with them.

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The friend is a character from their short film/extended video Go Softly, which seems to fall somewhere in the Animal Collective-to-Bjork continuum of strangeness for strangeness's sake that doesn't need to be explained.  



Anyway, the friend lent an enigmatic and powerful presence to the stage while Jungol performed.  

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Here's the entire Go Softly film, which was also one of the featured "experimental films" being screened in the building across from the band's performance.


Atlanta's eight-piece Faun And A Pan Flute took the stage sometime around 10 pm.  FAAPF play an indescribable brand of music that's equal parts Harry Partch, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, jazz fusion, math rock, minimalism, and prog, and I'm probably leaving out a half-dozen or so other genres that they covered.  It can be pretty adventurous and avant garde stuff at times, and I think it says a lot of good things about Atlanta's musical audience that the band seems to be so well loved and appreciated.

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The weather was absolutely lovely the whole night - warm and dry, with a pleasingly low pollen count.  But despite the weather, and despite the terrific performances, fascinating films and videos, and fantastic art installations, I still called it an evening after Faun And A Pan Flute so that I could get home at an early enough hour to get a good night's sleep and be ready for another evening of live music on Friday.