Category Archives: Upcoming Events

Sapat, Crazy Dreams Band, Jana Hunter at the SWAN DIVE Friday, August 28

(photo of CRAZY DREAMS BAND from Baltimore’s City Paper.)

SAPAT
CRAZY DREAMS BAND (Baltimore, Maryland; on Holy Mountain)
JANA HUNTER (Baltimore, Maryland; on Gnomonsong)

Friday, August 28
The Swan Dive
921 Swan Street
9 PM
$5, 21 and over

Spawned from the formidable Louisville, KY 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.

Grooves that confuse? CRAZY DREAMS BAND is an outfit that presents its guitar free “thug pop” of dirge rather than drone with creeping crooning and brassless horn blasts [note: Crazy Dreams Band will actually have a guitarist in tow at this show —ed.]. Like the best of Giallo films you’ll be as turned on as you are terrified. As tender as Coco Rosie, as brutal as Magik Markers and as cool as Royal Trux “Radio/ Video” vibe. Imagine if Bruce Springsteen and Martin Rev collaborated on songs for Patti Smith or Catherine Ribeiro. Channeled inner voices are expelled as cave anthems into neon text in Linear A while bones poke through the skin atop a witch’s brew of venomous sludge. This is the urban tribal music that survives whatever “end is nigh” theory you choose. They’re jamming this music outside the thunder dome, beneath the planet of the apes and the day after tomorrow. CRAZY DREAMS BAND has released one self-titled album on Holy Mountain, and features members of Lexie Mountain Band, Harrius, Religious Knives, and Mouthus.

A dark pop musician hailing originally from northern Texas, JANA HUNTER has been writing and recording, if not releasing, songs, for the past 16 years. Intensely private, raised in a large, religious family, and an orchestral violinist from an early age, followed melodic obsessions and a gift for striking listener’s as being near-“haunted” (Chas Bowie, The Portland Mercury, 2.9.06), developing a signature sonic topography. These elements caught the rapt attention of critics and the enthusiastic endorsement of many of the day’s most respected musicians upon the 2005 releases of a split LP 12″ with Devendra Banhart and Hunter’s solo debut, “Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom”. She followed with 2007’s “There’s No Home” full-length and and EP bearing the title “Carrion”. Hunter’s newest work (a full-length due out in 2009) is still at times bleak, even grim, but more often rapturous, lush, and resplendent, and a marked refinement of her already considerable melodicism and sensitivity. “Jana Hunter is…making stark and mysterious songs full of a weird will, as if they’re writing themselves.” (Ben Ratliff, New York Times, 4.29, 07)

Check out the Facebook invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=114594818591.

R. Keenan Lawler, Nick Hennies at the SWAN DIVE Saturday, August 8

R. Keenan Lawler at Terrastock, 2008

(Image of R. Keenan Lawler at Terrastock 2008 swiped with love from Chris Barrus’s Flickr photostream. Image of Nick Hennies and a dog swiped from whiskeyandapples.com.)

R. KEENAN LAWLER
NICK HENNIES (Austin, Texas)

Saturday, August 8
The Swan Dive
9 PM
$5, 21 and over

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.

NICK HENNIES is a percussionist and composer from Louisville, KY. He received his M.A. from UC-San Diego where he studied with world-renowned percussionist Steven Schick and performed with ‘red fish blue fish’, the SONOR Ensemble, Castanets, and in a duo with trombonist Tucker Dulin. Since relocating to Austin, TX in 2003 HENNIES has performed regularly with The Weird Weeds, the Austin New Music Co-op, Peter & the Wolf, and numerous collaborations with local and visiting musicians. He has worked with a wide array of musicians including Arnold Dreyblatt, Radu Malfatti, Eugene Chadbourne, Stuart Saunders Smith, and Jandek in his first ever U.S. performance. HENNIES’ solo work involves minimalist experiments in timbre with percussion instruments, as well as working with found sounds and electronic sources. His first official solo CD “Paths” was released on Thor’s Rubber Hammer in 2008 and also has released or forthcoming work on B-Boim, Sentient Recognition Archive, and Spectral House.

Listen to a clip from NICK HENNIES’ solo CD “Paths” here: http://nhennies.com/audio/paths-sample.mp3.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com/upcomingevents for updates and/or email hstencil@gmail.com.