Author Archives: othersideoflife

BUCK GOOTER, HURRICANES OF LOVE and THE RITCHIE WHITE ORCHESTRA at LISA’S OAK STREET LOUNGE, Wednesday, February 20th

Cropped Out and the Other Side of Life present:

BUCK GOOTER (Harrisonburg, VA; on X Mist Records)
HURRICANES OF LOVE (Everywhere)
THE RITCHIE WHITE ORCHESTRA (Louisville, KY; NYC, NY; Los Angeles, CA)

Wednesday, February 20th
at LISA’S OAK STREET LOUNGE
1004 E. Oak Street
9 PM, 21-and-over, $5

Listening to BUCK GOOTER you hear contradictions of caterwauling, cacophonous railing; screaming, snarling and gnashing hurled over drony beats and jarring guitar lines.  One can’t help thinking to oneself if this is a white-trash parody of trailer park life, a punk-rock free-style or some sort of crypto-intellectualizing with a ciphered message. Whatever the intention, one gets a kind of involuntary headbanging, arm-shaking, thrashing reaction to it from the second their huge sound starts. Their new album, Witch Molecules, was released last month on Germany’s X Mist Records, and was recorded by Don Zientara at Inner Ear in Arlington, Virginia.

Frank Copenhaver, the central presence in the rotating cast of musicians and friends that makes up the psychedelic folk group HURRICANES OF LOVE, has chosen an appropriate name for his music project. Copenhaver himself is a force of nature, an ebullient enthusiast of goodwill and good vibes—in a recent interview, he described two different places as “paradise on earth.” And he has no fixed location, landing, he says, “where the wind would take me.” — from Metropulse.

THE RITCHIE WHITE ORCHESTRA is one of life’s sonic rewards. An exploration in aural dissonant lollipops perfect for the brain. Comprised of anyone and everybody the Orchestra has featured some distinguished collaborators in the past – Lydia Lunch, Stephin Merritt, Roddy Bottum, Matt Fishbeck and more. As Jacqueline Susaan writes, “You have to climb to the top of Mount Everest to reach the Valley of the Dolls.”

Find the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/events/414105985349804.

To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com. You can also join our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/232825523444477/. Twitter: @OtherSideShows.

UPDATE, 2/11/2013 — HURRICANES OF LOVE main man Frank Hurricane will play a short acoustic set before BUCK GOOTER. Awesome! More band(s) for your buck!

MATMOS, HORSE LORDS, and PARLOUR at ZANZABAR, Saturday, March 2nd

matmostim
(Poster design by Tim Furnish.)

Cropped Out and the Other Side of Life present:

MATMOS (Baltimore, Maryland; Thrill Jockey Records)

with special guests

HORSE LORDS (Baltimore, Maryland)
PARLOUR (Louisville, Kentucky; Temporary Residence)

Saturday, March 2nd
at ZANZABAR
2100 S. Preston
8 PM doors, 21-and-over
$8 advance tickets available online here: http://zanzabarlouisville.ticketfly.com/event/219061-matmos-louisville;$10 day-of-show

MATMOS is M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel, aided and abetted by many others. Currently based in Baltimore, the duo formed in San Francisco in the mid 1990s, and self-released their debut album in 1997. Marrying the conceptual tactics and noisy textures of object-based musique concrete to a rhythmic matrix rooted in electronic pop music, the two quickly became known for their highly unusual sound sources: amplified crayfish nerve tissue, the pages of bibles turning, water hitting copper plates, liposuction surgery, cameras and VCRs, chin implant surgery, contact microphones on human hair, rat cages, tanks of helium, a cow uterus, human skulls, snails, cigarettes, cards shuffling, laser eye surgery, whoopee cushions, balloons, latex fetish clothing, rhinestones, Polish trains, insects, life support systems, inflatable blankets, rock salt, solid gold coins, the sound of a frozen stream thawing in the sun, a five gallon bucket of oatmeal. These raw materials are manipulated into surprisingly accessible forms, and often supplemented by traditional musical instruments played by the group’s large circle of friends and collaborators. The result is a model of electronic composition as a relational network that connects sources and outcomes together; information about the process of creation activates the listening experience, providing the listener with entry points into sometimes densely allusive, baroque recordings. Since their debut, MATMOS have released over eight albums, and in 2001 they were asked to collaborate with the Icelandic singer Bjork on her Vespertine album, and subsequently embarked on two world tours as part of her band. In addition to musical collaborations with Antony, So Percussion, David Tibet, the Rachel’s, Lesser, Wobbly, Zeena Parkins, and the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, MATMOS have also collaborated with a wide range of artists across disciplines, from the visual artist Daria Martin to the playwright Young Jean Lee to Berlin-based choreographer Ayman Harper. Their newest album, The Marriage of True Minds, will be released on February 19th, 2013 by Thrill Jockey Records.

HORSE LORDS is a band from Baltimore, Maryland. According to baltimorefishbowl.com, they “offer that rare opportunity: witnessing a ragged, seething kind of greatness from a band not yet heralded by any major taste-making media outlets. Which is to say you can just unselfconsciously enjoy them. Bands like this remind you that musical greatness is not manufactured by record labels and hype machines; they’re snatched up by those entities somewhere further down the line.” HORSE LORDS are supporting and performing with MATMOS on the latter’s entire US tour.

PARLOUR originally began as a solo project from Tim Furnish following the mid-90s dissolution of CRAIN – the seminal Louisville rock group he co-founded in the late ’80s. Currently playing with new drummer (Greg Morris) and synth player (Brian Sweeney), Furnish’s PARLOUR evokes “A unique combination of interweaving guitar shards… driven by a dark, relentless rhythm section.” Their most recent album, Simulacrenfield (released on Temporary Residence), was one of our favorites of 2010.

Find the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/events/161199100694313.

To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com. You can also join our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/232825523444477/. Twitter: @OtherSideShows.

UPDATE, 2/26/2013: Here’s a couple of things to note about this show:

1. Doors to this event will open at 8 PM, and music will start at 9 PM sharp! That means Parlour will play first, right at 9 PM. Due to time constraints, the show will have to start at 9 PM. So get there early! Horse Lords will play at approximately 9:45 PM, and Matmos will be onstage by 10:45 PM, ending at midnight (if not a little before).
2. There’s a good chance this show may sell out, so if you haven’t bought advance tickets already, you probably should. You can buy them here: http://zanzabarlouisville.ticketfly.com/event/219061-matmos-louisville/
3. There will be a separate DJ event afterwards, starting at midnight. Generally, Zanzabar gets crowded early on Friday and Saturday nights so, again, buy advance tickets and show up early to ensure you don’t miss anything!
4. The show is general admission, with very limited first-come, first-serve seating around the bar and the booths ONLY, with no reservations. So if you need a seat, please be sure to be there at 8 PM.

Thanks and we hope to see you Saturday!

JASON AJEMIAN and special guests at the NACHBAR, Friday, February 15th, FREE!

Astro Black Records, Cropped Out, and the Other Side of Life present a FREE after-party for the Louisville Film Society‘s screenings of Soldier of the Road, featuring

JASON AJEMIAN (bassist; Chicago, Illinois)

with special guests:

TIM BARNES (percussion)
JIM MARLOWE (saxophones; member of SAPAT and TROPICAL TRASH)
JORDAN RICHARDSON (percussion; member of TROPICAL TRASH)

and more Louisville musicians to be announced!

Friday, February 15th
at NACHBAR
969 Charles Street (at the corner of Charles and Krieger)
11 PM, 21-and -over
FREE!

JASON AJEMIAN has acquired a high profile in the improvised music scene over the years, performing with Marc Ribot’s SunShip, Matana Robert’s CoinCoin, Rob Mazurek’s Mandarin Movie, Exploding Star Orchestra, and Chicago Underground Trio, Ken Vandermark’s Crisis Ensemble, and his 5 year weekly engagement with Jeff Parker & Nori Tanaka at the Rodan in Chicago.  AJEMIAN’s curiosity has ranged far and wide — he’s just as comfortable in the hushed, folksy setting of Born Heller, his duo with Josephine Foster, as he is in the breath-processed arrangements of his large ensemble Who Cares How Long You Sink.  Given such a variety of musical interest, a detour like “From Beyond,” AJEMIAN’s backwards version of Black Sabbath’s ‘Into the Void’ for chamber ensemble, begins to seem like an obvious stop on this bassist’s journey from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Chicago and his current home in New York City.

Louisville resident and drummer extraordinaire, the list of Tim Barnes‘s collaborators is too long to list here, but it includes Jim O’Rourke, Silver Jews, Neil Michael Hagerty and the Howling Hex, The Tower Recordings, and countless others. Most recently, Tim Barnes played drums with the newly resurrected lineup of The For Carnation, as well as with MV+EE at Cropped Out in November, 2011 and with Wooden Wand at Cropped Out, September, 2012.

Jim Marlowe and Jordan Richardson you know from their incredible all-over-the-place band Tropical Trash, as well as their reputations as improvisers about town with the likes of Sapat, Ecstatic Girth, and Jandek at Cropped Out in September, 2012.

Soldier of the Road is a documentary about saxophonist/clarinetist Peter Brötzmann, directed by Bernard Josse in collaboration with journalist and photographer Gérard Rouy, who has been following Brötzmann since the early 1970s. It looks at Brötzmann’s live performances and artwork, and takes in interviews and performances with Han Bennink, Evan Parker, Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, Joe McPhee, Michael Zerang, and many others. There will be two screenings of Soldier of the Road at the Louisville Film Society‘s Dreamland Film Center on Friday, February 15th at 7 PM and 9 PM. $8 general admission or $5 for Louisville Film Society members. Sponsored by Astro Black Records.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/events/326580244118818.

To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com. You can also join our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/232825523444477/. Twitter: @OtherSideShows.

ENDLESS BOOGIE’S LONG ISLAND LISTENING PARTY at NACHBAR, Monday, February 18th

ENDLESS FLYER 1

Monday, February 18th at 10 PM – ?

ASTRO BLACK + THE NACHBAR + THE OTHER SIDE OF LIFE WELCOME YOU TO FILL YR EARHOLES WITH THE MOEBIUS STRIP CHOOGLE OF ENDLESS BOOGIE’S LATEST LONG PLAYER LONG ISLAND (ONE DAY EARLY!) AT EVERYONE’S FAV WATERING HOLE THE NACHBAR.

Special taps + drink deals, Endless Boogie promo giveaways, and most importantly THE NEW ENDLESS BOOGIE LP will be spinnin’ all night! There’ll be copies for sale from sexy purveyors of the finest sounds ASTRO BLACK RECORDS.

Listen to the first single, “Taking out the Trash,”  from Long Island here: https://soundcloud.com/noquarterrex/taking-out-the-trash.

GET THEE TO THE NACHBAR – KEEP ON CHOOGLIN’

Facebook invite with address and all that jazz here: http://www.facebook.com/events/310108569109768.

Thanks to our friends at No Quarter.

BLUES CONTROL, RAW THUG, and JONATHAN WOOD & LOWE SUTHERLAND at ZANZABAR, Monday, February 4th

Cropped Out and The Other Side of Life are proud to present:

BLUES CONTROL (on Drag City; from Coopersburg, PA)
RAW THUG (on Loin Seepage; from Louisville, KY)
JONATHAN WOOD & LOWE SUTHERLAND (from Louisville, KY; members of OLD BABY and SAPAT)

Monday, February 4th
at ZANZABAR
2100 S. Preston
8 PM doors, 21-and-over
$5 advance tickets available online here: http://zanzabarlouisville.ticketfly.com/event/207103-blues-control-louisville/; $7 day-of-show

Don’t lose control — dig BLUES CONTROL! Following a circular path in order to access the unknown, Russ and Lea nab chaos in a plastic cup and crush rock into diamonds, or something that looks like them anyway. Valley ho! Their new record, Valley Tangents, “is like drugs for your ears.”

Watch the video for BLUES CONTROL‘s “Iron Pigs” from Drag City Limits here:


(Photo of Arsenio Zigonoto by Ron Jasin via LEO Weekly.)

RAW THUG is the brainchild of one Arsenio Zigonoto, recently profiled in Louisville’s LEO Weekly 2012 People Issue here: http://leoweekly.com/news/2012-people-issue-arsenio-zignoto. Needless to say, he is one of Louisville’s musical treasures. To quote:

He once played a plastic bag at a show — “There were lots of drums and it sounded like … an evening gown amongst the chaos” — and has shared his sounds with bands like Sapat, Softcheque, his own RAW THUG moniker, and most recently Mindhorn, amongst countless other sit-ins and randomness.

JONATHAN WOOD & LOWE SUTHERLAND
are well known to connoisseurs of Louisville music, primarily for their main musical vehicles OLD BABY and SAPAT, respectively. For the first time in public (that we know of), they’re taking a dynamic duo detour down a ramshackle dirt road, riding a pink Cadillac into the sunset of a February night. Will they fly off the handle, riding high like Thelma & Louise into an expansive western sky? Or will they keep it down-to-earth, dusting up your jacket and filling your lungs with exhaust while they peel out, squealing their tires? There’s only one way to find out, dear listener…

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/events/415252498550605.

To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com. You can also join our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/232825523444477/. Twitter: @OtherSideShows.

TWIN SISTER RADIO, ANWAR SADAT, and AXIS:SOVA at ZANZABAR, Friday, December 7th

Cropped Out and The Other Side of Life are proud to present:

TWIN SISTER RADIO (Louisville, KY)
AXIS: SOVA (Chicago, IL)
ANWAR SADAT(Louisville, KY)

Friday, December 7th
at ZANZABAR
2100 S. Preston
8 PM doors, 21-and-over
$7

TWIN SISTER RADIO is a band from Louisville, Kentucky. It consists of David Wright (guitar, vocals), Joey Yates (drums), Benny Clark (bass), Catherine Baines (vocals), Ryan Davis (keyboards), and Dan Marshall (guitar). Members of Six White Horses, State Champion, The Loved, Parlour, Elliott, and many other fantastic combos are involved, so you should be, too.


(Photo of ANWAR SADAT from The Decibel Tolls.)

They’ve been called noise-rock. They’ve been called indie-punk. They’ve been called post-punk . Well, you can call ANWAR SADAT anything you want, we’re calling them the most exciting new band in Louisville today. The trio of William Carpenter, Clay Farris, and Shane Wesley will knock your socks off.

AXIS:SOVA is the brainchild of one Brett Sova from Chicago, Illinois. You can read about him at Altered Zones here: http://alteredzones.com/posts/1561/axissova-i-feel-laying-low/ (written by our pal Kenny Bloggins!). And you can watch his most recent video, “Raising Hell,” here:

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/events/117208381774851.

To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com. You can also join our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/232825523444477/. Twitter: @OtherSideShows.

DANIEL HIGGS and TROTTER/RILES at QUILL’S, Thursday, November 29th

Astro Black Records, Cropped Out and The Other Side of Life are proud to present:

DANIEL HIGGS (Baltimore, Maryland)

with special guests

TROTTER/RILES (Louisville, Kentucky)

Thursday, November 29th
at QUILL’S
930 Baxter Avenue
10 PM, $6, ALL AGES!

DANIEL HIGGS is a musician and artist from Baltimore, Maryland on whose behalf superlatives are destined to fail. It’s not that his artistic output – spanning three decades, numerous albums, books of poetry and collections of drawings – simply eludes classification, it defies it. Often we hear that a true work of art is meant to speak for itself, and with the work of DANIEL HIGGS the maxim rings truer than ever. His art is of the cosmos, we on Earth merely lucky that it happens to be confined to our atmosphere, in our lifetime. HIGGS is known primarily for his work as the sole lyricist and frontman of the band LUNGFISH, a four-piece dedicated to charting, in this listener’s estimation, nothing short of the evolution of all species, known and unknown. That the band has undertaken this pursuit in the guise of a humble rock outfit, in the absence of any public relations fanfare, metanarrative, or manifesto has been enough to endear them to tens of thousands. They are enshrined as one of America’s last true folk bands, and HIGGS anointed as a patron saint to artistic purity.

TROTTER/RILES is the duo of Tyler Trotter and Zak Riles. Both have been active within the Louisville music scene, and in the greater world, as musicians, promoters, sound engineers, and enthusiasts. Riles is best known as a member of the Temporary Residence Ltd. band GRAILS, while Trotter has performed with the PHANTOM FAMILY HALO, and was the longtime sound man for the CALIFORNIA GUITAR TRIO. This show marks their second-ever Louisville show, and third show total, coming after their debut with Maserati at Zanzabar and with OM and Daniel Higgs in Bloomington, Indiana.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/events/203067093162350.

To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com. You can also join our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/232825523444477/. Twitter: @OtherSideShows.

Black God, Child Bite, and Alcohol Party at Mag Bar, Monday, November 19th

LEO Weekly ran my staff pick of Monday’s Black God, Child Bite, and Alcohol Party show at the Mag Bar (scroll down to the Monday entry):

Monday, Nov. 19
Child Bite
Magnolia Bar & Grill
1398 S. Second St.
facebook.com/MagBarOldLou
$TBA; 9 p.m.

Detroit’s Child Bite is often compared to Rust Belt punk pioneers Pere Ubu because of their dissonant guitar lines and vocalist Shawn Knight’s high-pitched histrionics. Whereas Ubu’s frontman David Thomas couched his sometimes-sentimental lyrics within a whimsical yelp, the approach of Child Bite’s main man Knight is more assured, wrapped in the band’s more aggressive, straightforward post-hardcore sound. Additional synth and horn textures add some variety to an otherwise standard Midwestern rock approach, and Child Bite seem like the kind of band that are more fun to watch live than listen to in any other setting — though what I’ve heard of their recordings are pretty good, too. With Louisville hardcore alumni Black God and Alcohol Party. —Joel Hunt

More information is available here: http://www.facebook.com/events/451171688261803.

C.S. Yeh, Transitions (De Stijl)

LEO Weekly ran my review of C.S. Yeh’s new album, Transitions, in today’s edition:

Defying expectations is risky, but even more difficult for experimental musicians playing pop. That challenge — of a player known for more demanding fare stretching out into “less serious” realms — is readily accepted by C.S. Yeh on Transitions. A violinist known for his Burning Star Core project, Yeh plays every instrument here, with a shaky retro sensibility reminiscent of 1980’s one-man band My Dad Is Dead. Yeh takes more than a few chances on Transitions: His icy vocals, rudimentary guitar work and synth-driven rhythm tracks are far more direct than previous experimental efforts, while lyrics like “I thought that good luck routed me to Cleveland” might be too tongue-in-cheek to take seriously. But with sly nods to the underground and the mainstream, covering both Father Yod and Stevie Nicks, Yeh makes their songs his own.

You can buy it from De Stijl here.

MOUNT CARMEL and TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN DAWN at ZANZABAR, Friday, November 23rd

Cropped Out and The Other Side of Life are proud to present:

MOUNT CARMEL (Columbus, Ohio; on Siltbreeze Records)

and

TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN DAWN (Louisville, Kentucky)

Friday, November 23rd
at ZANZABAR
2100 S. Preston
9 PM, 21-and-over
$5 advance online tickets available here: http://zanzabarlouisville.ticketfly.com/event/187621/;
$7 day of show admission

For those swayed by the magisterial authenticity of MOUNT CARMEL on their eponymous 2010 debut album: its follow-up Real Women finds the band honed and sharper, thus delivering what might be the best sophomore album released by an American blues-based power-trio since ZZ Top’s Rio Grande Mud. Nods to Free, Humble Pie, even Trapeze can be sussed out in the mix, but at the end of the day, Real Women is straight-up MOUNT CARMEL all the way. Searing leads, smokey vocals, thundering rhythms, cascading drums, hyperbolic hyperbole… it’s all here. MOUNT CARMEL brings back the spirit of 1973 like no one else. The only difference now is better weed and shittier barbiturates. It’s hands-down pure rock, no frills. Nary a retro contrivance is to be heard. These guys live it for real. Honest.

Watch the Red Bull Sound & Vision documentary on MOUNT CARMEL here:

TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN DAWN was founded in early 2012 for the purpose of studying spiritual awakenings through low-frequency bombardment as well as transcendental mind expansion using electric six-string techniques. The founding four members (Scott Brooks [guitar, vocals], J. Brian Reese [guitar, vocals], J Brent Stewart [bass], and Pinker Lichvar [drums]) have come together from the remnants of other Orders & Secret Societies (Les Debutantes, L&N, Manchuria, The Ravenna Colt) to seek, together, further enlightenment and a Universal Knowledge.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/events/432878283427381.

To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com. You can also join our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/232825523444477/. Twitter: @OtherSideShows.