Author Archives: othersideoflife

Mike Kelley, R.I.P.

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The artist and musician Mike Kelley has died, apparently by his own hand (from Blouin Artinfo):

Artist Mike Kelley has passed away at his home in Los Angeles, having apparently taken his own life. The tragic news was confirmed to BLOUIN ARTINFO by Helene Winer, of New York’s Metro Pictures gallery, a long-time associate of the artist.

“It is totally shocking that someone would decide to do this, someone who has success and renown and options,” said Winer. “It’s extremely sad.” She added that the artist had been depressed.

Kelley was born in 1954 in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. He became involved in the city’s music scene as a teen, and while a student at the University of Michigan, formed the influential proto-punk band Destroy All Monsters with fellow artists Jim Shaw, Niagara, and Cary Loren (a retrospective devoted to Destroy All Monsters was held at L.A.’s Prism gallery last year). Together, the band hatched a style of performance that skirted the edge of performance art.

After graduating college in 1976, he moved to Los Angeles to attend the California Institute of the Arts, studying alongside teachers like John Baldessari and Laurie Anderson. Music continued to be a constant passion: he formed another band, “Poetics,” with fellow CalArts students John Miller and Tony Oursler.

Kelley’s career took off in the early 1990s, with solo shows at the Whitney, LACMA, and other international venues. He and Oursler organized a well-recived installation — a kind of monument to punk — at Documenta X in 1997. In the early 2000s, he began exhibiting with Gagosian Gallery after 20 years with Metro Pictures.

For his 2005 exhibition “Day is Done,” Kelley filled Gagosian with found yearbook photos, video footage, and automated furniture, prompting New York Magazine critic Jerry Saltz to describe the show as an example of “clusterfuck aesthetics.” More conventionally, he was associated with the notion of “abject art,” highlighting the irrational and the repulsive.

Kelley’s work will be included in the upcoming Whitney Biennial. It is the eighth time his work has been included in the biannual exhibition.

Perhaps best known in the music world for his cover of Sonic Youth’s Dirty album, Kelley was also a founding member of Destroy All Monsters and Poetics, and worked with many musicians over the course of his career.

WHIPS/CHAINS, ROYAL BATHS, and GANGLY YOUTH at CHESTNUT HOUSE, Sunday February 19th

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

WHIPS/CHAINS (Louisville, KY; members of Xerxes, Black God, Coliseum)
ROYAL BATHS (Brooklyn, NY; on Kanine Records and Woodsist)
GANGLY YOUTH (Louisville, KY)

Sunday, February 19th
at Chestnut House
714 E. Chestnut Street
7 PM, $5, ALL AGES!

WHIPS/CHAINS is a band from Louisville, Kentucky. WHIPS/CHAINS plays loud, slow, quiet, fast, noisy, precise, angry, sludgy, blasting, down-tuned, punk, hardcore. WHIPS/CHAINS is Will Allard (Xerxes), Ben Sears (Black God), and Ryan Patterson (Black God, Coliseum).

Jeremy Cox and Jigmae Baer started ROYAL BATHS without a plan in mind but soon the foundation for their writing found inspiration from Cox’s interest in the alternate and open tunings of delta blues, their shared fascination in the African rhythm of early Chicago blues, and Baer lyrically attempting to reflect with black humor and little judgment, and the thrills and troubles they stumble through. Recording on whatever cheap four or single-track cassette recorder they could find, they eventually borrowed a Tascam 388 to make their first 7″. Their new album Better Luck Next Life is set to be released by Kanine Records on February 7, 2012. ROYAL BATHS “take cues from Neil Young’s lightning-struck guitar sermons and the Velvet Underground’s creeping paranoia” — PITCHFORK.

GANGLY YOUTH, is a 5 piece band from Louisville, Kentucky. Led by Dan Davis along with Brent Mills, Daniel Tilford, Ashley Urjil-Mills, and Nate Woodard, the band writes jangly, fuzzy, reverb soaked “pop” songs. Pulling from a wide array of influences and a very small amount of technical skill, GANGLY YOUTH applies a shared punk mentality and manages to make songs that are refreshing and new, yet familiar all the same.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/events/196881313742581.

To join our email list, send an email to hstencil AT gmail DOT com.

The Fall, Ersatz G.B. (Cherry Red/MVD)

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My review of the latest record by The Fall was published on LEO Weekly‘s Bluegrass Catastrophe blog today:

It’s tempting to compare vastly different eras of The Fall’s career to one another. After all, The Fall has been a going affair for front man Mark E. Smith for five decades now, with Ersatz G.B. being the latest in a long line of releases. So to make the comparison, the latest, 2012 incarnation of The Fall documented on Ersatz G.B. reminds me most of the relatively accessible mid-1980s version, especially the lineup that recorded the classic album The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall. Musically, the band flirts with a slightly poppier yet hard-edged sound, including an atypical “metal” number, driven by the steady rhythm section of Keiron Melling on drums and David Spurr on bass. What little of Smith’s garbled vocals I can make out involve his usual concerns – he’s been lamenting “the highest British attention to the wrong detail” since 1982’s Hex Enduction Hour.

Buy it here.

Jakob Olausson, Morning & Sunrise (De Stijl)

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My review of Jakob Olausson’s new album, Morning & Sunrise, was published in this week’s LEO Weekly:

From a part of the world where the sunlight is scarce in the wintertime, Swedish singer-songwriter Jakob Olausson delivers an album that, despite its deceptively luminous title, sounds almost as stark as a Scandinavian winter. All of Olausson’s songs on Morning & Sunrise are lyrically direct, sung as if in a relatively one-sided conversation, though musically they meander, with snaking electric guitar leads overlaid upon the foundation of Olausson’s reverb-drenched strummed acoustic. In a way, Morning & Sunrise is reminiscent of Alexander “Skip” Spence’s loner masterpiece Oar, but without Spence’s supposed drug-addled goofiness or his Nashville-produced influence on the music. Aside from the just-slightly-too-ramshackle song “Engraved Invitation,” Morning & Sunrise is a sober and serious affair, like a steaming hot cup of black coffee at the crack of dawn on a cold winter morn.

Buy it from De Stijl here.

200 Years, s/t (Drag City)

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This week’s LEO Weekly contains my review of the new album by 200 Years, the new project by Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance, Rangda) and Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers):

At the conclusion of the Six Organs of Admittance show at Uncle Slayton’s back in August, Ben Chasny was joined onstage by singer Elisa Ambrogio, and the lucky audience was treated to a preview of their new band, 200 Years. The current concern for Ambrogio and Chasny, this self-titled debut on Drag City is superficially akin to Chasny’s Six Organs project as it features primarily acoustic guitars, delicately sweet melodies and the occasional accompaniment by harmonium. But the band is really Ambrogio’s showcase, as her voice dominates the album. However, unlike her usually confrontational work with Magik Markers, the overall aesthetic of 200 Years is one of dreamy, contemplative harmony between her voice and Chasny’s guitar. In songs such as “Partin Wayz” and “West Hartford,” there’s even a welcome sense of nostalgia and sentimentality, which gives 200 Years a sweet edge quite unlike anything previously by either artist.

Buy it from Drag City here.

CHIKAMORACHI with special guests STEVE GOOD and TIM BARNES at the NACHBAR, Sunday January 29th

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Black Velvet Fuckere, Cropped Out and The Other Side of Life are proud to present:

CHIKAMORACHI (Chris Corsano and Darin Gray)

with special guests:

STEVE GOOD and TIM BARNES

Sunday, January 29th
at NACHBAR
969 Charles Street (at the corner of Charles and Krieger)
First set at 9 PM, second set at 10:30 PM — 21 and over
FREE!

Since 2005 DARIN GRAY (upright bass) and CHRIS CORSANO (drums) have performed side by side as CHIKAMORACHI. Working either in a trio with saxophonist Akira Sakata or a quartet that adds Jim O’Rourke on guitar, they’ve released six albums to date, including 2011’s And That’s the Story of Jazz double CD and Live at Hungry Brain LP. The high-speed empathy that Gray and Corsano have developed over the years will be brought to the fore in 2012, when the duo strike out on their own for a tour of the Midwest. Neither member is a stranger to the possibilities afforded when the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic duties are left to an upright bass and drum duo. Gray‘s group On Fillmore with Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche has been going strong for the past ten years. For his part, Corsano has gigged and recorded as a duo with double bassists John Edwards and Matt Heyner.

Darin Gray is best known as Jim O’Rourke’s go-to bassist for nearly 20 years, as half of the duo On Fillmore, and as the bassist for Grand Ulena, Dazzling Killmen, and Brise-Glace. As an improviser he has performed and recorded with among others: Loren Connors, Masami Akita (Merzbow), Josh Abrams, Jason Roebke, Axel Dorner, Kevin Drumm, Alan Licht, Thollem Mcdonas, and Jim O’Rourke. As a session bassist he has played on recordings by Will Oldham, Cheer-Accident, Rope, Bobby Conn, Daneilson Family, Early Day Miners, Bunnygrunt, Jim O’Rourke, etc… He has toured extensively in the United States, Japan, Brazil, Canada, and Europe.

Chris Corsano began a long-standing, high-energy partnership with saxophonist Paul Flaherty in 1998. A move from western Massachusetts, USA to the UK in 2005 led Chris to develop a solo music of his own, incorporating sax reeds, violin strings, pot lids, adhesive tape and other household devices into his drum kit. 2007 and ’08 were spent as the drummer on Björk’s Volta world tour. Returning back to the U.S. in 2009, Corsano shifted focus back to his own projects, most notably a duo with Michael Flower, Rangda (with Sir Richard Bishop and Ben Chasny) and solo work. In addition to the those mentioned above, he’s also worked with, among others: Evan Parker, Paul Dunmall, Nels Cline, Thurston Moore, Jessica Rylan, Jandek, Sunburned Hand Of Man, and Joe McPhee.

Watch a video of Chikamorachi with Akira Sakata here:

During the second set of the performance, CHIKAMORACHI will be joined by the addition of STEVE GOOD (saxophones, clarinet) and TIM BARNES (percussion). A vital natural resource in the Louisville music scene for multiple decades, Steve Good‘s musical vocabulary orbits lightly through a vast expansive local history: doing time with The Web, E-Or, Juanita, Ut Gret, Sapat, Crappy Nightmareville, Parlour, The Liberation Prophecy and many, many others.  He has documented via audio recording many thousands of local shows. Slint played in his basement, he recorded the first Will Oldham single, he ran sound and documented the weekly experimental music series at Artswatch through the 1990s, and yes, he shared a stage in Switzerland with Donovan back in the 1970s. 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.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/events/154038334705749.

To join our email list, send an email to hstencil AT gmail DOT com.

Some Last-Minute Reviews for 2011

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Here are some short capsule reviews of some 2011 releases we didn’t otherwise get to over the past year.

Bill Orcutt, How the Thing Sings (Editions Mego) LP— Seemingly more aggressive than A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Bill Orcutt’s second “post-comeback” LP  How the Thing Sings still manages to showcase the occasional moment of beauty within what superficially may sound like a huge racket. Buy it here.

Nathan Salsburg, Affirmed (No Quarter) LP — We praised Salsburg’s duo record Avos with James Elkington, and we worked on the occasional show with him, so maybe you’re tired of reading about Nathan Salsburg’s deft guitar work and superb melodic sense in these pages. Well, guess what? Too bad. His solo debut, Affirmed, is every bit as good as Avos, perhaps it’s even better in its melancholy starkness. Can’t wait to hear more from Nathan in 2012. Buy it here.

Craig Colorusso, Sun Boxes (self-released) 7″ — One of the more pleasant surprises in our mailbox this year was this unassuming 7″ record documenting Craig Colorusso’s “Sun Boxes.” Basically they’re some sort of contraption that involves twenty amplifiers looping parts of a guitar chord and running on solar power, documented here in two different Massachusetts locations. Despite the short format, we look forward to hearing more. Buy it here.


The Parasites of the Western World, “Politico” b/w “Zytol Automation” (De Stijl) 7″  — Faithful repress of an obscure 1979 single by this band, recently resurrected by the same folks who brought you Michael Yonkers and 39 Clocks (so you know it’s gotta be pretty great). Late 1970s Eno-damaged glam-punk moves on the a-side, with a sparkling synth-driven instrumental on the flip. Highly recommended. Buy it (and their self-titled debut LP) here.

Silver Tongues, Black Kite (Karate Body) LP — This new Louisville band is both confounding and fascinating — the former because of their occasional “big rock” moves, the latter because of the clear gospel-via-Spiritualized influence we hear ringing throughout. Tough to grasp, in a good way, and hints at a possibly more interesting sophomore record. Buy it here.

Stare Case, Lose Today (De Stijl) LP — If you thought you were familiar with Nate Young and John Olson’s music through their “other” band Wolf Eyes, you may be in for a slight shock when you hear the much mellower — yet still intense — Stare Case. Lose Today is almost like a mash-up of their solo work as Regression (Young’s vocals and electronics) and Spykes (Olson’s electronics and reeds), which shouldn’t work, but does. Buy it here.

Mark McGuire, Get Lost (Editions Mego) LP — Excellent solo noodling by the guitar player in Emeralds, probably the best band to come out of Cleveland since, well, the 1970s. Reminiscent of our favorite Cluster/Harmonia/Eno records, but with an acid-drenched modern edge, which is no mean feat. Buy it here.

Void, Sessions 1981-83 (Dischord) LP — Void still sounds better than 99% of hardcore since. Buy it here.

Two Good Shows Tomorrow!

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It’s going to be tough to decide on which of these to go to — that is, if we end up not having to work tomorrow night!

The Web
Brett Ralph’s Kentucky Chrome Revue
David Grubbs
Rude Weirdo
Straight A’s
at the Bard’s Town, 1801 Bardstown Road. 9 PM, $6, apparently now it’s all ages. This show, presented by Louisville’s excellent Noise Pollution label, should be a good one as it’s well-stocked with artists that (should) need no introduction. If you need more info, you might find it at the Facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/events/145355115567233.

Also, over at Zanzabar (which is at 2100 S. Preston, of course), Natural Child and State Champion are playing (here’s the event invite: http://www.facebook.com/events/255787627819138). Natural Child played an excellent set at this year’s Cropped Out, so if you missed it, don’t sleep on this show! It’s $5, 21-and-over, and starts at 9 PM.

No matter what you end up doing, have a fantastic New Year!

Wooden Wand & The Briarwood Virgins, Briarwood (Fire)

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My review of Briarwood by Wooden Wand & the Briarwood Virgins ran in this week’s LEO Weekly:

The near-closing lines of the first song, “Well, it’s winter in Kentucky/And I’m all tapped out,” perfectly encapsulate the emotional desperation running like a crooked river throughout Wooden Wand’s ambitious new Briarwood. Recorded with a large ad-hoc ensemble of Alabama-based session players, Briarwood showcases the usually solo, Lexington-based Wooden Wand at his most musically accessible; it’s an album chock full of beautifully sung harmonies and well-played solos, overflowing with melancholic, defiant lyrics written from the perspective of scarred loners just trying to survive. In an era overpopulated with generic music masquerading trite sentiment as true insight, with hackneyed retro retreads posing as nods to “tradition,” the despondent personalities inhabiting Wooden Wand’s songs should earn him an appreciative audience akin to those enjoyed by the best American singer-songwriters. Alas, much as the characters of Briarwood well know, the small rewards eventually come to those who lower their expectations.

You can buy it from Fire Records here.

David Lynch, Crazy Clown Time (PIAS America)

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My review of David Lynch’s Crazy Clown Time ran in this week’s LEO Weekly:

David Lynch – director of such cinematic classics as “Eraserhead,” “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive” – has decided to try his hand at music. While both his masterpieces and near-misses (like his underrated adaptation of “Dune”) possess a fantastic musical sensibility, it’s difficult to discern why Lynch felt it necessary to inflict Crazy Clown Time on the public. At best, such as with album opener “Pinky’s Dream” (with guest vocalist Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Lynch retreads the gothic Americana creepiness present in most of his movies. At worst, which describes most of the album, he sounds like a comically impaired Neil Young — except without Young’s heart-tugging sentiment, simple lyrical genius, or compelling melodic sense. Crazy Clown Time plays like a bizarre hybrid of Young’s famous failure Trans mixed with the terrible techno of ex-porn star Traci Lords’ 1000 Fires — except not as enjoyable as either.

If, after reading that review, you still want to buy it, you can find it at http://www.pias-america.com.