Author Archives: othersideoflife

SIBERIA, THOUSAND ARROWS at the SWAN DIVE, Friday, April 2nd

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SIBERIA (from Louisville)
THOUSAND ARROWS (from Bloomington, Indiana)

Friday, April 2nd
at the SWAN DIVE
921 Swan Street (at the corner of Swan and Caldwell)
9 PM, $5, 21-and-over

SIBERIA is not actually from the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but is instead a duo from Louisville, Kentucky consisting of Mike Seymour and Syd Bishop. They cite Ennio Morricone, Stars of the Lid, Autechre, and Earth among many influences, yet their sound is uniquely their own. If you like instrumental guitar drone with actual melodies — and I know I do! — don’t miss their first show at the Swan Dive.

THOUSAND ARROWS is the solo project of Peter Schreiner of Bloomington, Indiana. Peter also plays in the Hollows (who played the Swan Dive back in January with Catherine Irwin and Elephant Micah) and Magnolia Electric Co.  This show marks THOUSAND ARROW‘s Louisville debut.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=104610052902693.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

ANTI-EASTER PARTY with RUDE WEIRDO, TALK NORMAL, and NZAMBI at SKULL ALLEY, Sunday, April 4th

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It’s an ANTI-EASTER* PARTY!!!
with
RUDE WEIRDO (from Louisville)
TALK NORMAL (from Brooklyn, New York; on Rare Book Room Records)
NZAMBI (from Louisville, formerly PAX TITANIA)

Sunday, April 4th
at SKULL ALLEY
1017 E. Broadway
8 PM, $5, ALL AGES!

Louisville’s RUDE WEIRDO are a return to classic, three-chord punk. Consisting of Eric Ronay, Dave Bird, Jason Hayden, and Jason Fuller, these veterans of “the scene, man” really throw it down. The first time I saw them (with an almost entirely different lineup, with the exception of bassplayer/singer Ronay), they covered Agent Orange. They’ve released a compact disc on Louisville Lip Records, and hopefully more good things are coming soon.

Sarah Register and Andrya Ambro allied as TALK NORMAL in 2007, after years of friendship, and haven’t stopped moving. Since their lightning-strike first appearance, TALK NORMAL’s sound has stormed upward and outward, referencing few and relating to many, a jarringly songful gale of rhythm and noise supporting pleas and plaints, signal-calls and marching orders. Each show builds on past ones: up-to-the-moment updates of ideas previously stated, new phrasings of old upheavals delivered with increasing focus and joy. Darkness and light; fury, silence, space and sound. Opening for Xiu Xiu in the rest of the U.S. this spring, TALK NORMAL is returning to Louisville for another rare performance!

NZAMBI is the new synth project from Christopher Cprek, who has also released work under the PAX TITANIA moniker. Christopher uses an arsenal of DIY modular synthesizers. His former projects include Darker Florida with Irene Moon, Auk Theatre with Irene Moon, and as a member of Warmer Milks a few years back. NZAMBI’s debut as a project was in October at Zanzabar, with Regression, Spykes, and others.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=391485970850.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

*please note that the “ANTI-EASTER” theme is entirely in jest, thanks.

JONATHAN GLEN WOOD, LOWER DENS, WILLIAM BRYAN RAGDALE at the SWAN DIVE, Wednesday, March 17th

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JONATHAN GLEN WOOD (from Louisville)
LOWER DENS (from Baltimore, Maryland; featuring Jana Hunter, on Gnomonsong)
WILLIAM BRYAN RAGLAND (from Louisville)

Wednesday, March 17th
at the SWAN DIVE
921 Swan Street
8 PM, $5, 21-and-over


Hailing from the mountains of West Virginia with a heritage of hard luck miners and horse traders, JONATHAN GLEN WOOD’s music falls somewhere between the front porch and the barroom. JONATHAN has been playing many fantastic shows around town lately, and we welcome him to the Swan Dive for this headlining venture, on St. Patrick’s Day.

LOWER DENS is a band from Baltimore, which will release its first LP, Twin-Hand Movement, in summer 2010, on San Francisco’s Gnomonsong. Sonically, they come from some place near new-wave, kraut-rock, post-punk, and pop. Twin-Hand Movement, specifically, is record that incorporates those sounds to form its own. LOWER DENS formed in late 2008. Jana Hunter (guitar and vocals) needed a touring band for her solo work and found, through mutual friends, Abram Sanders (drums) and Geoff Graham (bass and vocals.) Two months of steady touring made a collaborative entity out of them, and Jana wrote the material for Twin-Hand Movement in reaction. They pored over arrangements and the final track list for nearly a year. Will Adams, an old friend of Hunter’s, joined two months prior to recording. Twin-Hand Movement was made with the help of Chris Freeland (recording engineer, drummer for Oxes, proprietor of Beat Babies Studio just outside Baltimore), Chris Coady (mixing engineer with TVOTR, YYY’s, and Beach House records to his credit, proprietor of DNA Downtown studio in NYC), and Sarah Register (mastering engineer at The Lodge in NYC, serious player in Talk Normal.) Amongst others, they cite Wire’s Chairs Missing, Chrome’s Half Machine Lip Moves, Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, Faust IV, and Snakefinger’s Greener Postures as companions and influences. LOWER DENS is indeed at once classic and of the times, sounding familiar but not dated, recalling the warmth of nostalgia but not its tiredness.

Download “Blue & Silver” by LOWER DENS here: http://www.mediafire.com/?izowmuwnwwm.

WILLIAM BRYAN RAGLAND says that he likes “to write songs, and I’ve been writing longer than I’ve been alive.” He has played, written and performed with many Louisville-area bands, including Angst., Blackface, Ants In An Argument, The Revenants, Thee Flying Carpets, HUMAN, Ben Purdom, Tennessee Edwards, and Sarah Elizabeth, as well as contributed to the soundtrack to the Baxter Avenue Morgue several years in a row. He says, “I will continue to write until my life runs out.”

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=352509726197.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

JOE MANNING, ELEPHANT MICAH, NATHAN SALSBURG, TIME & TEMPERATURE at THE LOUNGE, Friday, March 26th

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JOE MANNING (from Louisville, Kentucky)
ELEPHANT MICAH (from Bloomington, Indiana)
NATHAN SALSBURG (from Louisville, Kentucky)
TIME & TEMPERATURE (from Columbus, Ohio)

Friday, March 26th
at THE LOUNGE
947 E. Madison (at the corner of Chestnut & Wentzel), 889-5889
9:00 PM, $6, 21-and-over

Louisville’s JOE MANNING has been playing music around town for a while, either solo or as a member of Kings Daughters and Sons (currently), Leota and Engine (both sadly defunct). In fact, he’s been a part of Louisville’s music community for so long that perhaps no introduction is necessary. What is necessary is Joe’s music, which contains a plaintive and yearning expressiveness that somehow eases the worried mind. Check out what these nice people have to say about Joe’s music: “[Manning’s] deep voice is rugged and weary, an uncommon beauty unafraid of exposure and judgment” (Peter Berkowitz, Courier Journal). “There’s nothing hurried about Joe Manning’s music. It unfolds leisurely but intently, a slow burn snaking its way into your heart” (Jeffrey Lee Puckett, Courier-Journal).


ELEPHANT MICAH is music by southern Indiana based singer and sound recordist Joseph O’Connell.  Taking cues from 1970s songcraft (Townes Van Zandt, Joni Mitchell) as well as midwestern lo-fi rock (Guided by Voices), ELEPHANT MICAH has gradually built a cult audience over a decade of do-it-yourself releases and tours. Echoer’s Intent is the first ELEPHANT MICAH album to fully foreground O’Connell as a writer and solo performer.  These minimal, mostly live recordings often approximate more “traditional” blues or Appalachian stylings.  In the same breath, O’Connell takes up imitation and authenticty as his central lyrical themes, producing an album that is both a critique and an example of what can only be termed folksploitation. This spring, O’Connell embarks on a nine-week tour coinciding with the release of Echoer’s Intent.

Listen to “Loon Call” by ELEPHANT MICAH here: http://www.elephantmicah.com/Loon%20Call.mp3.

NATHAN SALSBURG is an archivist, producer, guitarist and writer based in Louisville, Kentucky. He has worked for the Alan Lomax Archive since 2000, for which he currently serves in the capacities of production manager, photo and video archivist, and general digital catalog editor. Since 2006 he has produced and hosted “Root Hog Or Die,” a vernacular/traditional music program on East Village Radio, and is curator of the Twos & Fews recording imprint, also a vernacular music entity, and a collaboration with Chicago’s Drag City label. Its first album, I Want to Go Where Things Are Beautiful, drew on Mike Seeger’s 1982 recordings of the late miner, union activist, and singer Nimrod Workman; its second, Ouled Bambara: Portraits of Gnawa, features 2005 recordings of several master musicians of the Gnawa, a Sufi order of trance healers, living in Marrakech, Morocco. He has recently finished the production of a tribute album to the singer/guitarist E.C. Ball, late of Rugby, Virginia, entitled Face A Frowning World, released in December 2009 on New York’s Tompkins Square label. It features contributions from Michael Hurley, Jon Langford, Catherine Irwin, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Jolie Holland, and the Handsome Family, among others. Salsburg maintains an index of on-line vernacular music resources at his blog, roothogordie.wordpress.com, and contributes occasional music writing to the Louisville Eccentric Observer and the Other Music weekly update. His most recent musical contribution was to the third volume of Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem guitar compilations. He is currently working on an album of his own acoustic guitar compositions and arrangements.

TIME & TEMPERATURE is Valerie alias Val Glenn from Columbus, Ohio. Meager beginnings in 2000 under the name The Cooking Show, [with some] bad good songs. 2002 in Atlanta, [she] became addicted to ebay, acquired a 4-track, Casio SK-1 and Boss DR-202 and The Cooking Show became Juguar. Committed social suicide opening for Tracy and the Plastics that spring. With the implied eschewal of electronics in 2004, Juguar became TIME & TEMPERATURE. Played first show as T&T with best chum ELEPHANT MICAH in Gambier, Ohio in August, 2005. Something fatalistically intentional or intentionally fatalistic happened that night. The rest is mystery. Many secret recordings which were never relased. In May of 2007 Trust Apples came out in an edition of 100 on White Cassettes.

Listen to tracks by TIME & TEMPERATURE here: http://www.myspace.com/grayfavorite.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=335029798762.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

SAPAT, THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS (Nashville), and HUMUNGOUS at THE LOUNGE, Friday, February 19th.

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Kris Abplanalp and the SAPAT crew are presenting a doozy of a show:

SAPAT
THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS (from Nashville, Tennessee)
HUMUNGOUS

Friday, February 19th
at THE LOUNGE
947 E. Madison (at the corner of Chestnut & Wentzel)
9:30 PM
$5, 21-and-over

This should be a fantastic show, definitely don’t miss it!

Oh yeah, more information may or may not be available at the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=317608623080&ref=ts.

SHEDDING, MOUNTAINS (from NYC), TAPE (from Sweden), R. KEENAN LAWLER at SKULL ALLEY, Wednesday February 3

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SHEDDING (from Louisville)
MOUNTAINS (from NYC, on Thrill Jockey)
TAPE (from Sweden, on Immune Recordings)
R. KEENAN LAWLER (from Louisville)

Wednesday, February 3rd
at SKULL ALLEY
1017 E. Broadway
7 PM, ALL AGES

SHEDDING has been a solo project for Connor Bell since 2001, though in 2009 Tim Furnish (Parlour, Crain, Papa M, The For Carnation) and Joey Yates (The Loved, Parlour, Sapat) joined as the rhythm section in SHEDDING’s new lineup. Solo, SHEDDING has already released a few albums, and the new band lineup plans to release a 7″ or 2 over the winter and spring of 2009-2010.

MOUNTAINS is Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp, friends since their middle school days. The duo were brought together by mutual artistic and musical interests, and both ended up at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was during this time that they began exchanging musical ideas and compositions which led to them founding the Apestaartje label in 1999. As their collaborations and individual projects blossomed, they decided to create Mountains as a vehicle for live performance.  The group has 4 albums: their first self-titled release and second album Sewn were both on Apestaartje; the third and fourth, Choral and Etching, on Thrill Jockey. Mountains is often compared to artists such as Brian Eno and Fennesz, citing their extended melodies and their unique broad guitar work. Mountains seamlessly blend pastoral electronic sounds with field recordings and a plethora of acoustic instruments.

Swedish trio TAPE was set up in 2000 by brothers Andreas and Johan Berthling with Tomas Hallonsten. Taking cues both from pop, experimentalism and minimalism, their sound has become recognized internationally and is clearly something of its own. Their first album Opera was released on the Häpna imprint (which Johan is a co-owner of) in 2002. With an array of electronic and acoustic instruments at hand they recorded at a small stone barn on the island of Öland, east of Sweden. 2003 saw the release of Milieu, recorded at the very same barn. In 2005 they went to Cologne to have Marcus Schmickler produce and record their third album Rideau. Over the past few years, their touring has taken them to places like Japan, Taiwan, USA and most parts of Europe.

R. KEENAN LAWLER is a musician and sound artist based in Louisville Kentucky. For over 25 years his musical journey has taken him from early experiments with reverb tanks, noise and tape decks to all manner of avant-garde, “new” music, psychedelia, electro-acoustic, drone, ethnic and sampler-based work. LAWLER is best known for developing a highly personal and exploratory language for the metal bodied resonator guitar which Baltimore’s John Berdnt called “Cosmic, monolithic and deeply American.” Indeed his work is informed by carnatic classical, Charles Ives, Albert Ayler, blues, minimalism and non-western trance musics. Primarily a solo performer, he is also known for collaborative work. The “Keyhole II” album he recorded with Pelt and metal worker Eric Clark is one of Pelt’s most beautiful and memorable recordings, and his guitar playing is also heard on releases by Paul K., Jack Wright, My Morning Jacket and most visibily on Matmos’ “The Civil War.” He has collaborated or performed with a wide range of forward-thinking musicians and mavericks including Rhys Chatham, John Butcher, Eliott Sharp, Charalambides, Ignaz Schick/Perlonex, Kaffe Matthews, Burning Star Core, Jason Kahn, Ut Gret, Thaniel Ion Lee, Ed Wilcox, Ramesh Srinivasan, Kevin Drumm, Arco Flute Foundation, Helena Espvall, Ian Nagoski, Connor Bell, Andy Willis, Alan Licht, Taksuya Nakatani, Tom Carter, Bhob Rainey, Aaron Rosenblum, Joe Dutkiewicz, Evergreen, Eric Carbonara and Joseph Suchy.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=248875773696.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

CATHERINE IRWIN, ELEPHANT MICAH, THE HOLLOWS at the SWAN DIVE, Friday January 22nd

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CATHERINE IRWIN (member of FREAKWATER)
ELEPHANT MICAH (from Bloomington, Indiana)
THE HOLLOWS (from Bloomington, Indiana)

Friday, January 22nd
at the SWAN DIVE
921 Swan Street
9 PM, $5, 21-and-over

CATHERINE IRWIN has called Louisville, Kentucky home, or at least her home base, all her life. She began performing by playing guitar in punk bands “and not caring a bit about country music,” she says. Still, the seed for her band Freakwater was inside her: “Most of the country music I heard on radio, I hated. But I loved the Carter Family, the way they would approach songs about death and dying or being saved and rejoicing the same way. That kind of music seems to age better. I can’t see myself playing punk anymore, but this kind of music I can see playing the rest of my life” (Chicago Tribune). Her songs are just packed with sapience, despondency, and wry wit, though you don’t have to look past “Louisville Lip” or “Dirty Little Snowman” to see she’s one of America’s greatest living songwriters. Even so, she remains humble, even self-depreciating: “If I had a master plan, it’d be trying to get people used to the idea of frumpy middle-aged losers singing music” (Boston Phoenix). She will be joined at this show by (we think) fantastic Louisville guitarist Michael O’Bannon, formerly of Blinders, Antman, and current member of 1069.

Kentuckiana’s ELEPHANT MICAH has been practicing the fine art of flying under the radar for almost a decade now. In the middle 2000s, along string of home-fi folk rock albums (released by BlueSanct Records and Time-Lag Records) earned the band praise from avant-music mag The Wire and overseas gigs with Jason Molina’s Magnolia Electric Company. In 2010, Elephant Micah returns with a major CD/LP release on Time-Lag Records and its first American tour in five years. ELEPHANT MICAH is the name of a music collective led by musician Joe O’Connell. In addition, he has released work on his own LRRC (Luddite Rural Recording Cooperative), which has also released work from collaborators Justin Vollmar and Jason Henn.

THE HOLLOWS feature neo-country songstress Kate Long backed by an accomplished cast of fellow Bloomington music mainstays (see also: Fatted Calf String Band, Magnolia Electric Company, Panoply Academy, etc).  Be sure to catch them on this rare Louisville outing!

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=246305277152.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

The Best (and Worst) of 2009

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This week’s LEO Weekly contains a short top-five list by yours truly, and here it is for your perusal — Top Five Albums of 2009:

1. Blues Control, “Local Flavor” (Siltbreeze)

Russ Waterhouse and Lea Cho of Blues Control have delivered the goods with “Local Flavor” (full disclosure: Russ and Lea are friends, and I was present at their first show a few years back). That is, if the goods were super-hallucinogenic drugs that didn’t leave you damaged, but rather took you on a midnight journey through Tangier without leaving your living room. From beat-laden not-quite-dance workouts, to deconstructed guitar licks, to massive underwater drones, to ringing alarm clocks, there isn’t a record this year I’ve heard as wonderfully evocative of out-of-mind experiences.

2. Group Doueh, “Treeg Salaam” (Sublime Frequencies)

While it might put off some world music purists (and who do those jokers think they are, anyway?), the lo-fi nature of Group Doueh’s recordings are not only more “authentic” than, say, bringing the band to Paris or London to record in some sterile studio, they’re also far more joyous. Listening to “Treeg Salaam” at a loud volume, you feel like you’re standing in some Western Saharan souk, watching guitarist Doueh and company tear it up – and seeing them have a great time while they’re doing so.

3. The Phantom Family Halo, “Monoliths and These Flowers Never Die” (Karate Body)

Generally, most rock bands these days can’t pull off the sprawling double album, once a 1970s hallmark. But The Phantom Family Halo manages to do so, with aplomb. After multiple listens, I’m not entirely sure what the overarching theme or concept behind “Monoliths and These Flowers Never Die” is, or even if there is one, but this double album is executed so brilliantly, I’m not sure it matters. Hopefully the rest of the country will start paying attention to what these local greats are up to.

4. Mouthus, “Divisionals” (Ecstatic Peace!)

Back in May I wrote in LEO about Mouthus, the rackety, noisy guitar-and-drums duo of Brian Sullivan and Nate Nelson, and their album “Divisionals,” one of the mellowest, yet undeniably great albums I’ve heard this year. I even went so preposterously far as to write that “Divisionals” contains “a mysterious set of cyclic drones, which interlock and mesh within each other, much as the strands of DNA within our cells.” Well, Nate came through Louisville in August, and told me that “Divisionals” was performed on synths, a departure from their usual m.o. There you go.

5. Extra Golden, “Thank You Very Quickly” (Thrill Jockey)

Despite listening to more music from around the world than ever, I find that not very much of it is by current bands. The recent explosion of reissues of 1960s and 1970s African music is far more compelling than most new African bands, sadly. Extra Golden is an exception to that rule, and perhaps it’s because the half-Kenyan, half-American band has an extra rock element to it reminiscent of 1970s classics. Regardless, we’ve been lucky to see them twice in Louisville in the past year, and that they release consistently great albums.

Other albums that I’d have given honorable mention to, if space allowed: Bill Orcutt, A New Way to Pay Old Debts (Palialia); Sperm, Shh! (DeStijl); Sir Richard Bishop, The Freak of Araby (Drag City); Oneohtrix Point Never, Zones Without People (Arbor); Omar Souleyman, Highway to Hassake: Folk and Pop Sounds of Syria (Sublime Frequencies); Jim O’Rourke, I’m Happy, and I’m singing and a 1, 2, 3, 4 (Editions Mego); Kurt Vile, Childish Prodigy (Matador); Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, The Voudon Effect: Funk & Sato from Benin’s Obscure Labels 1972 – 1975 (Analog Africa); Death, …For the Whole World to See (Drag City); Tony Conrad/Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Taking Issue (Dais).

Best Shows I Attended in 2009: Throbbing Gristle/Emeralds at Logan Square Auditorium, Chicago; Daniel Higgs at Lisa’s Oak Street Lounge, Louisville; Joe Manning/Doug Paisley/Nathan Salsburg at the Swan Dive, Louisville (full disclosure: I booked this show); Endless Boogie/Cross at the Swan Dive, Louisville (I also booked this show); Sapat/Blues Control/Softcheque/Raw Thug at Lisa’s Oak Street Lounge, Louisville; Black Juju (The Alice Cooper Cover Band) at Lisa’s Oak Street Lounge, Louisville; Young Widows/Maserati/The Genitalmen at Zanzabar, Louisville (full disclosure: I djed at this show); The Julia Schagene/Furry Bits at Jeff Komara’s house, Louisville.

Worst Things to Happen in 2009: The deaths of Rowland S. Howard, Jack Rose, Jerry Fuchs, Tony Bailey, Rashied Ali, Maryanne Amacher, Hugh Hopper, Max Neuhaus, Michael Jackson, Ron Asheton, Randy Bewley, Lux Interior, Luther Thomas, Mick Cocks, Sirone, and probably many more that I’m forgetting.

You can read the rest of the feature, including the top-five picks by the rest of LEO‘s music critics here: http://leoweekly.com/music/music-top-fives-2009.

Trans Am, What Day Is It Tonight? (Thrill Jockey)

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LEO Weekly ran my review of the new Trans Am live album today:

Live albums generally serve two main purposes: as documentation of a one-time-only, you-had-to-be-there concert that defines an artist’s career (think James Brown’s 1963 classic Live at the Apollo); or as a survey of greatest hits performed live (with the caveat that said album is a fulfillment of contractual obligations). Regardless, either approach usually disappoints. In the first instance, I end up bummed out because I wasn’t there. In the second, I hope whatever variation of “Greatest Hits Live!” I’m listening to finishes quickly. Unfortunately, Trans Am’s new live album, What Day Is It Tonight?, falls into the second category. While I’ve enjoyed seeing them many times over their nearly two-decade long stint, listening to their pleasant-but-superficial tunes sprawled over 70 minutes (without much noticeable variation from their albums, aside from a superfluous drum solo or three) doesn’t seem necessary.

Buy it from Thrill Jockey.

NZAMBI, PETE FOSCO, and ANDREW WEATHERS at the SWAN DIVE, Saturday January 9th

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NZAMBI (electronic drone from Louisville, formerly of PAX TITANIA)
PETE FOSCO (solo experimental guitar from Cincinnati, Ohio)
ANDREW WEATHERS (solo electronics from Greensboro, North Carolina)

Saturday, January 9th
at the SWAN DIVE
921 Swan Street
9 PM, $5, 21-and over

NZAMBI is the new synth project from Christopher Cprek, who has also released work under the PAX TITANIA moniker. Christopher uses an arsenal of DIY modular synthesizers. His former projects include Darker Florida with Irene Moon, Auk Theatre with Irene Moon, and as a member of Warmer Milks a few years back. NZAMBI’s debut as a project was in October at Zanzabar, with Regression, Spykes, and others.

PETE FOSCO was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1980 and grew up in a suburb on the west side of town. Every day after school he would pillage his dad’s record collection, listen to early ’80s Phil Collins-era Genesis, eat oatmeal raisin cookies and stay up until 4am for no reason. He graduated from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music in 2004, where he studied digital video and film production and learned how to appreciate fresh guacamole and The Green Manalishi by Fleetwood Mac. He is a self-taught guitarist and started playing out in 2007. He is inspired to live today by the soundtracks from Herzog’s Grizzly Man [by Richard Thompson — ed.], the Flower/Corsano Duo, Fushitsusha, and pot roast and mashed potatoes cooked by his wife Heather. They reside in Covington, Kentucky and live with an English bulldog and mini Italian greyhound.

Brad Rose at Foxy Digitalis recently wrote this about PETE FOSCO’s release Autumn Fire Blues: “Our man in Ohio knows when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em, cuz on Autumn Fire Blues, he’s burning the whole thing into a pile of silken ash. FOSCO just plain rules. His skill in crafting soaring guitar drones is up there with the best of ’em. Autumn Fire Blues takes what he started on last year’s [release] Dust, American Dust and pushes it over the edge and into the abyss. Anchors of bleed drip from the ceiling coating everything in a thick layer of crimson bliss. This is music for the last season. Music for the last days, to see us off into the heavens as they crumble. Pure magic.”

ANDREW WEATHERS is a composer of experimental music. He is currently based in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he studies music composition at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=226271631480.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.