After a decade-long absence from concert promotion in Louisville, The Other Side of Life returns with two exciting concerts of contemporary experimental music, both presented at Art Sanctuary in Louisville’s Schnitzelburg neighborhood. Online ticketing is now available for the following performances:
Guitarist BILL ORCUTT returns to Louisville for the first time since 2014, in his acclaimed duo with drummer CHRIS CORSANO:
$15 advance tickets, $20 day of show Advance tickets available online at Art Sanctuary; physical tickets available soon for in-person purchase at Surface Noise (cash only), 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204
$15 advance tickets, $20 day of show Advance tickets available online at Art Sanctuary; physical tickets available soon for in-person purchase at Surface Noise Records (cash only), 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204
The Other Side of Life is a sole proprietorship venture whose mission is to promote contemporary music events in Louisville, Kentucky. In its prior incarnation from 2008 to 2015, The Other Side of Life was responsible for bringing hundreds of legendary international and national touring musicians featuring all kinds of musical genres to Lousiville, including unforgettable concerts by acts such as Faun Fables, Wire (UK), CJ Ramone, Shonen Knife (Japan), Sir Richard Bishop, Tashi Dorji, Steve Gunn, Helmet, Oren Ambarchi (Australia), Spider Bags, Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band, D.R.I., Endless Boogie, Peter Brotzmann (Germany)/Hamid Drake/William Parker trio, Marisa Anderson, The Skull Defekts (Sweden), Loop (UK), Colin Stetson (Canada), Bombino (Niger), Helado Negro, Daniel Higgs, Cave, Josephine Foster, Horse Lords, and many more. The Other Side of Life also promoted events with such local, Louisville-based musical talents as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, State Champion, Parlour, OldBaby, Coliseum, Young Widows, Tropical Trash, Anwar Sadat, Cher Von, The Java Men, Black God, Tyrone Cotton, 1200 (Jecorey Arthur), and White Reaper, among many others.
$15 advance tickets, $20 day of show Advance tickets available online at Art Sanctuary; Physical tickets on sale Monday June 16th for in-person purchase at Surface Noise (cash only), 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204
18+ 8:00 PM doors 9:00 PM music
(Photo by Obie Feldi)
Based in Baltimore, MATMOS is Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt. The two have been making music as MATMOS since 1997, first in San Francisco, and then relocating to Baltimore in 2007 when Daniel began to teach at Johns Hopkins University. They are respected, innovative auteurs in the world of electronic music and sampling culture whose very first album was hailed as “entering electronics Valhalla” by the WIRE magazine for sampling highly unusual sound sources such as the amplified nerve tissue of crayfish. Ever since, they have made music out a wildly heterogeneous set of objects and sources, including the sound of 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, snails interrupting the path of a laser and altering the pitch of a light sensitive theremin, a PVC police riot shield, silicone breast implants, and their own washing machine. These raw materials are manipulated into surprisingly accessible forms and often supplemented by traditional musical instruments played by internationally celebrated guest musicians from their 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 that have the direct sensory immediacy of pop music.
MATMOS have collaborated with a wide array of artists across media and distinct disciplines. A partial list of musical collaborators includes Bjork, The Kronos Quartet, Terry Riley, Marshall Allen (Sun Ra Arkestra), So Percussion, Anohni, Yo La Tengo, The Rachel’s, Oneohtrix Point Never, Jefferson Friedman, Zeena Parkins, J.G. Thirlwell, Jeff Carey, Wobbly, David Tibet, and Mouse On Mars.
MATMOS’s practice of creative constraint has made them one of the most consistently exciting acts in electronic music. Their new album Metallic Life Review is the sound of two people who have collected field recordings of metal objects from around the world for years of their lives together, collaging their magpie hoard into rhythmic patterns, sometimes writing melodies and basslines, but sometimes just letting sound be sound. Metallic Life Review features the late Susan Alcorn’s pedal steel, Owen Gardner’s (Horse Lords) glockenspiel, Thor Harris’ drumming, Jason Willett’s (Half Japanese) guitar, and Jeff Carey’s aluminum cans, which were melted, molded into custom aluminum rods, and then bowed and struck. The most dramatic difference from any previous Matmos album is that side two was recorded “live in the studio”, ala Throbbing Gristle’s Heathen Earth. For the first time on recording, Matmos capture the evolving, shifting, slithering dynamic that happens when they play live and let patterns emerge out of chaos and then collapse and then re-form. Their playful blend of compositional brilliance and improvisational playfulness meld perfectly, truly capturing ecstatic moments in a way that can only happen live.
ED SUNSPOT is the nom de guerre of Robert Beatty, an artist and musician based in Lexington, Kentucky. Best known musically as a member of the excellent long-running noise trio Hair Police, Beatty has also released solo electronic music as Three Legged Race on the Spectrum Spools, Mountaain, and NNA Tapes labels, his own label Resonant Hole, and the “Soundtracks for Takeshi Murata” album under his own name on Glistening Examples. Beatty has also designed album covers for the likes of MATMOS, Oneohtrix Point Never, Tame Impala, Kesha, the Weeknd, Warmer Milks, Thee Oh Sees, The Flaming Lips, The Soft Pink Truth, and many more. https://robertbeattyart.com/
ANDROSPORE is Edwin Ramirez, a chicano, queer, multimedia artist working and residing in Louisville, Kentucky. His audio and visual art is a manifestation of his lived experiences as a synesthete, guided by the auroras from field recordings, music, video games, nature, and memories. Edwin has exhibited at various galleries in Kentucky, including recent shows at Kore Gallery (“The Education of Desire” and “Unknowns: Artists you Should Know”), as well as part of the ongoing traveling exhibition “Our Kentucky Home: Hispanic/Latin American art in the Commonwealth” curated by The Kentucky Arts Council. His works have been worn by local musicians, models, and entomologists, commissioned by an internationally renowned author, and installed at various venues for local events including “Bjork Ball” and “Radio Arcane” at Art Sanctuary. https://edwinramirezart.com
MATMOS live visuals by SEETHINGS, Louisville’s own Tim Furnish, a multi-faceted musician, graphic designer, photographer, and VJ. Furnish is a founding member of classic Louisville bands Parlour, Cerebellum, and Crain and has been a member of The For Carnation and Aerial M. As SEETHINGS he has provided visuals for Old Baby, Shedding, Flanger Magazine, Jungle Boogie, Jaye Jayle, and many others. https://www.youtube.com/user/timfurnish https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkgHn6E1QjNRWEOET_tQttXBn-Gkddv1y&si=_-7s4BwvNf1CCDaL
UPDATE WEDNESDAY 6/25: Shelby Street is closed at the Ash Street railroad crossing four blocks north of Art Sanctuary due to track repair!
$15 advance tickets, $20 day of show Advance tickets available online at Art Sanctuary; Physical tickets now available for in-person purchase at Surface Noise (cash only), 600 Baxter Avenue, Louisville KY 40204
18+ 7:00 PM doors 8:00 PM music
‘It should surprise you not an iota that [BILL] ORCUTT’s style is rooted as much in the fractal melodies of Trane and Taylor as it is in Delta syrup or Tin Pan Alley glitz. As for [CHRIS] CORSANO, well… to me Corsano is beyond jazz, almost beyond music, his ambidextrous, octopoid technique grappling many stylistic levers and spraying a torrent of light from every direction. Corsano’s ferocity has elevated many “mere” improv records to transcendence, but… he’s crafted his polyrhythms within more narrative channels, bringing to mind his “mannered” playing in the lamented Flower-Corsano duo. It’s not “groove” playing precisely, but it follows many grooves simultaneously, much like Orcutt’s own melodic musings — which is why they’re so naturally lock-in-key here.’ – Tom Carter on Chris Corsano and Bill Orcutt’s album Made Out of Sound. https://palilalia.com/ https://billorcutt.bandcamp.com/album/made-out-of-sound-2024-reissue https://cor-sano.com
FLANGER MAGAZINE is the duo of Chris Bush (Caboladies, Equipment Pointed Ankh) and Jim Marlowe (Equipment Pointed Ankh, Tropical Trash, Sapat): ‘Gathering samples, a River Doctor Limnologist inspecting the properties of After the Bend might note the specter of Leroy Jenkin’s free-violin heat-light deep in the water’s thermal stratification. Or mortgage the late-Maestro’s time with Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza to pay down the growing river heat budget. Or take one’s dirty buckets to the banks of the 19th laundromat where Walt Dickerson plays his vibraphone parts from Divine Gemini with dowsing rods. Or excavate the bedrock in the drainage basin, noting skeletal remains of a Shostakovich string quartet attempting to tune up a Kentucky Fiddle’s subsequent influence on the chemical composition of the water. Or consult the historical revisionist reenactment troupe’s episode of Fishing with John (Fahey) in which Codona, The Sea Ensemble and Nuno Canavarro guest host as their fleet of paddle boats churn river water into a regal lager, and all the fish get drunk in their quest for the leaner enamel Hosianna Mantra GPS coordinates of the Fattened Herb.’ – Kris Abplanalp on Flanger Magazine’s album After the Bend. https://flangermagazine.bandcamp.com/album/after-the-bend
JUNGLE BOOGIE is Ken “Bundy” Brown, founding member of Tortoise, and former member of Bastro, Gastr del Sol, Directions, and Pullman. Jungle Boogie’s Cease and Desist is now available at Bandcamp: https://jungleboogie.bandcamp.com/album/cease-desist
Saturday, June 27th at American Turner’s Club
3125 River Road
8 PM
$5
Velvet lined steam roller tactics mean TROPICAL TRASH’s LP debut UFO Rot descends from the sky straight onto your brain stem. This is potent stuff, meant to be taken in controlled doses. Load the spoon full and heat up gradually. The band has existed for two previous 7”’s but really comes roaring out of the gate with black hat tales and some lineup changes. May very well be the album you use for whatever you do when you are not reading the internet. Instead of trace papering some shadow punks of previous dictatorships, these patriots pull the curtain back and show the emperor sporting some very exotic under carriage, and spew forth tales with cop stashes, Area 51 belly bloat, and new reconfigured mainframe math – this is the new form. Nine condensed blasts of well honed songcraft that really put them at the top of the heap of the rock heap, with paranoid punk, and an eagerness to melt it all down and make it into something bold and badass. Don’t sleep on this one comrade.
Watch the video for Tropical Trash’s “Fat Kid’s Wig,” directed by Robert Beatty, here:
FAUN FABLES began in 1997, when Dawn ‘the faun’ McCarthy left the bands and cabarets of NYC for the wider world. She grew up in eastern Washington state enjoying drawing, dance, and make-believe amongst a large family. On Early Song (1999) she sang with “a voice as haunting as an abandoned coal mine, while it dances with the even tempo guitar that seems to pluck itself,” (CMJ). Mother Twilight (2001) was called “A collection of songs that seem to rove wondrously through the mountain pines at dusk,” (SF Weekly). Dawn performs FAUN FABLES most often as a soloist or with frequent collaborator Nils Frykdahl of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. But she also enjoys working with other artists, musical and otherwise; The Transit Rider, a FAUN FABLES full length musical inspired by her years in NYC, premiered 2002 in San Francisco with a cast of thirteen. FAUN FABLES tours the world regularly, studying landscape, culture and the art of feasting with locals.
PARTY KNüLLERS is the experimental garage jazz duo of Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello, guitar, electronics) and Ståle Liavik Solberg (drums). The band was described by Eyal Hareuveni as “an intimate meeting of the two restless and adventurous musicians” with an “obsessive and playful need to explore and invent new sounds and new forms of musical communication”.
Colin Greene says: “[The] sound and phrasing of his cello frequently resemble guitarists such as Thurston Moore, rich in fragmented overtones, and can sound like a Harrier Jump Jet – taking off and landing” while “Solberg’s fractured percussive playing intensifies the tension.” Before setting out as a duo, they played together in VCDC (with reed player Frode Gjerstadt and vocalist Stine Janvin-Motland), Gorilla Ass Piano (with bassist Per Zanussi) as well as a number of other ad hoc groupings including sax/clarinet player Keefe Jackson. Since forming the PARTY KNüLLERS, they have also recorded and performed with analog synth wizard Jim Baker. Independently they have worked with a who’s who of underground (and mainstream) musics from Steve Beresford to Wilco, from to John Russell to Peter Brötzmann. Their low-fidelity approach to improvising and recording and their influences of dance music, garage rock, free jazz and European Free Improvised lends itself to a raw simplicity of composition, arrangement, and performance.
The man who acts under the name Will Oldham and sings and composes under the name BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY has, over the past quarter-century, made an idiosyncratic journey through, and an indelible mark on, the worlds of indie rock and independent cinema. With his highly individualistic approach to music making and the music industry, one that cherishes intimacy, community, mystery, and spontaneity; his brilliance has captivated fans and made Bonny one of our most influential and beloved songsmiths.
A pastoral suite of electronics, acoustic guitars, synthesizers and rhythm machine, Breslin is the latest work from FLANGER MAGAZINE, the duo of Chris Bush and Ben Zoeller, whose previous work in the group Caboladies serves as a touchstone. Imitation strings, electronic interruptions, and nylon acoustic guitar figures touched with reverb are the perennial players in this work.
Wednesday, June 17th
at KAIJU 1004 E. Oak Street
9 PM, 21+ FREE!
Check out the Facebook invitation here: https://www.facebook.com/events/656909121120654/
Recommended If You Like: Royal Trux, Wolf Eyes, AIDS Wolf, Dan’l Boone
DRAINOLITH is the project of Alexander Moskos. The Montreal-based Moskos is a longstanding figure in the North American Underground Music scene. He has played in various projects, most notably as the lead guitarist in noise rock outfit AIDS Wolf. He is also currently a member of Danʼl Boone whose self-titled LP was released in 2014 on Drag City. Moskosʼ songs in DRAINOLITH are simple lyrical motifs wrapped in angular blues riff and futures-hock electronics that are as much inspired by Robert Ashley as they are by Leonard Cohen. The first DRAINOLITH album Fighting! was released on Spectrum Spools in 2012, and the new DRAINOLITH album Hysteria was just released on NNA Records & Tapes. Hysteria was co-produced by Neil Hagerty of Royal Trux and Nate Young of Wolf Eyes. The cycle of songs on Hysteria touch on many themes: The Quebec biker wars, surviving street hassles in Detroit, getting jacked for your sneakers, coarse sexual desire. Moskos has toured all over the world with his many projects and will continue to do so. He is also set to publish a novel and drop a solo piano album in 2015.
THREE LEGGED RACE is the solo electronic project of Lexington, Kentucky-based artist and musician Robert Beatty. Beatty is a founding member of Hair Police, and a long time collaborator with C. Spencer Yeh’s Burning Star Core project. Beatty’s constantly evolving aesthetic is realized via an elaborate network of primitive electronics and outmoded thrift store detritus. Each performance and recording explores the repetition and decay of simple musical themes, discovering a new world of rhythmic and harmonic possibilities with each tier of abstraction, evoking minimalist sci-fi soundtracks, clouded hypnotic landscapes, and primal industrial techno. The debut THREE LEGGED RACE full length entitled Persuasive Barrier was released in 2012 on Editions Mego sub-label Spectrum Spools, run by John Elliott of the band Emeralds. A collection of Beatty’s Soundtracks for Takeshi Murata was released under his own name on the Glistening Examples label late in 2013.
FRED THOMAS is a Michigan-born songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who’s been at it forever. Starting out as a teenager in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti noise scene in the early 90’s, the guy just kinda started jamming and never stopped. Dedicating the past two decades to various projects, Fred’s output has always been wildly varied and constantly changing. Best known for work as a “brainchild” sort of bandleader with the experimental pop sounds of Saturday Looks Good To Me, Thomas has also made significant noise and traveled the world on a seemingly endless string of tours with the washed-out physche of City Center, reverby surf punkers Swimsuit and the internal gentle pop duo MIghty Clouds with former SLGTM singer Betty Barnes. Compulsively playing in bands, running small-scale labels and doing shows on a non-stop basis would make a comprehensive list of related projects a little exhausting, but it’s safe to say there’s always gonna be something homespun, beautiful and a little weird if Fred is involved. So all of this brings us to All Are Saved, technically the eighth FRED THOMAS solo album, but the first one many people will get a chance to hear. Painstakingly assembled between Detroit, Michigan and Athens, Georgia, the album features mixing assistance from Drew Vandenburg (of Montreal, Deerhunter) and guest spots from friends in bands like People Get Ready, Radiator Hospital, Known Moons and even a guest backing vocal cameo from Andrew W.K.
BOOKSHELF is a band currently residing in Louisville, Kentucky, planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy… Find out more at http://www.bkshlf.net.
FRIDAY, MAY 29 at Decca
812 E. Market Street
DOORS AT 9
MUSIC AT 10 FREE! (SUGGESTED DONATION)
Facebook invitation here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1442266419418556/
Recommended if you like: Louisville! Chicago and Nashville, too!
“Spend some time in Louisville, Kentucky and you will find it is one of the most unassumingly strange places in America. The ratio of grown folks to millennials in attendance at any rock gig seems roughly 3:1. Such events take place in places like caves and chicken coops, among other nontraditional venues. Hip, transgressive people don’t seem to outgrow hip, transgressive things here; no one seems very eager to settle for a life less weird. Catherine Irwin of the great Louisville/Chicago band Freakwater — who lends her inimitable vocal talents to several tunes on Fantasy Error, the latest album by STATE CHAMPION — once joked that the evergreen nature (no pun intended) of the Louisville scene was due to the dearth of area vocational schools. If an album has been made in this young century that better captures the essence of this burg than Fantasy Error, I haven’t heard it.
“STATE CHAMPION‘s punked-up country gunk frequently recalls both the Aristotelian pathos of bands like Souled American and Palace Brothers and the character-driven black humor of indie ironists like Camper Van Beethoven and the Supreme Dicks. Mere homage, however, is not STATE CHAMPION‘s line. Singer and head honcho Ryan Davis is a sharp, astute lyricist, the kind of songwriter who probably gets tired of people asking him why he doesn’t try his hand at short story writing. Indeed, Fantasy Error‘s depictions of postmasters and county coroners, Dickensian drinkers and ‘teardrop pushers’ are as vivid as they are familiar, sung with the conviction of a Drag City-damaged Chris Knight. The musicians provide the perfect foil, loose without trying too terribly hard to appear ‘ramshackle.’ Frayed horsehair bows are dragged across fiddle wire and banjos frail for dear life; fuzzy, unfussy electric guitars bend, scrimmage, and howl while subtle synthesizers interject ominously through the din; even the percussion sounds bleary-eyed and broken-up with.
“Fantasy Error is a great rock and roll record, equal parts Springsteen and noise scene, as American as broken traffic lights and bad trips.
“The banner yet waves!”
– James Jackson Toth (January 2015)
Spawned from the formidable Louisville, Kentucky collective known as Black Velvet Fuckere, SAPAT resides as the centrifugal force in this Midwestern psychedelic madrigal set in the psychosexual backwaters of the mighty Ohio River. For the entirety of the ‘00 decade, members have kept busy collaborating with and/or massaging the egos of various and sundry avant-pontiffs such as Robert Fripp, Magik Markers, Dead Child and Eugene Chadbourne – when not honing the orgone energy of SAPAT. Their most recent LP, A Posthuman Guide to the Advent Calendar Origins of the Peep Show, was released last fall on Sophomore Lounge Records.
WILL OWEN GAGE performs groovy, rootsy, blues rock, funk, soul, R&B, bluegrass country music! He has performed all over the country and has opened for such greats as Stephen Stills, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Leon Russell, Peter Frampton, Dick Dale, Kenny Wayne Sheppard, Three Dog Night, Pinetop Perkins, Delbert McClinton, and many more! Members of Tim Krekel’s band will be joining him for this very special homecoming!
The members of GOODBYE JUNE have spent much of the past decade honing their skill as songwriters along with their proficiency as vocalists and musicians. The sum of their collective efforts makes for a greater musical experience. They typically write together and draw off of each other’s ideas. Being strong songwriters individually, and even stronger as a unit, there is never any shortage of material to build songs around. They have no set method to the songwriting process; the only constant is that everyone gets involved at some point. The fact is, the cousins of GOODBYE JUNE are constantly working on their music and perfecting their artistry, because they know that’s what it takes to make music that matters. Their debut album Nor The Wild Music Flow was released in 2013 on Cotton Valley Records.
THE SAL SHOW is a musical extravaganza consisting of several versions of thee one and only, Sal Cassato, by use of his two favorite performance mediums; visual projection interaction and rock ‘n roll [technically that’s three, Sal! -ed.]. You may know this inspiring man from performances with his other rock outfits, State Champion and Animal City. He’s playing with himself, but thinking of us.
The New Vintage and The Other Side of Life are proud to present:
The New Vintage Showcase 4th Anniversary & WHITE GLOVE TEST Celebration
with
GRAFFITI
SECOND STORY MAN
and SPECIAL GUEST DJS BRETT EUGENE RALPH (Kentucky Chrome Revue, Malignant Growth, Rising Shotgun) JOEY YATES (Twin Sister Radio) JOEL HUNT (The Other Side of Life)
We’ll be celebrating the four year anniversary of The New Vintage Showcase AND the official (Saturday night) White Glove Test: Louisville Punk Flyers 1978-1994 Exhibition after-party. The event is free to attend and there will be tons of surprises.
Don’t miss the Opening Reception for White Glove Test: Louisville Punk Flyers 1978-1994 Exhibition at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft on Friday, February 6th, beginning at 5 PM. More information here: https://www.facebook.com/events/597840816983514/.
And the White Glove Test After-Party Friday night at Seidenfaden’s with DJ Kim Sorise and the Staple Slingers, from 10 PM on. More information here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1533808756880136/.
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The Other Side of Life 