The first Lantern EP is being released tomorrow on Electric Voice. We are doing a release show tomorrow evening (6pm) at Lost & Found in Halifax with Omma Cobba and Scribbler. It isn’t “Lantern” but we will be playing Lantern songs, Emily and Sophie couldn’t make it up from the states, so I am calling this the No-Good Lantern Band, I’ll be playing with Christian Simmons (Play Guitar) and Andy March, I used to play with them in their project Crosss. The show is Free if you can make it.
I’ll be getting some copies of this tape to sell. I’ll be setting up a paypal account as well so you can buy it! We will have a few other up and coming releases as well in 2011 including:
- A Cassingle split with Cough Cool on Bathetic Records
- Another tape single with Andy March’s Craft Singles series.
- A couple of self released stuff, two splits - one with the Shambles and the other with The Ether. The shambles one will be out first, I hope to have it done by the end of February. It’ll be a run of 50 and feature some old bedroom recordings that was some stuff that I did for Omon Ra/Omon Ra II that I never got the chance to put out.
Here is my buddy D'eon's new music video pieced together by Olde English Spelling Bee. It has drummed up some controversy being too racy for the Pitchfork blogger arm Altered Zones, I guess images of terrorists always sparks some people's emotions. Decide for yourself though.
Here is a recording of me and new bud Yosuke, he plays in Blackhawks as well as doing his own lysergic laced pop jams in BananaSymphony. He is in my new Philly crew. I met the bunch of them thanks to Dan (Cough Cool) who messaged me on myspace, he found the Lantern page on Dirty Beaches top friends, so thank Alex I guess!
Here is an instrumental jam we did the other night. We are hoping this will turn into a new project. Me on guitar and Yosuke on drums. Recorded by Yosuke. Cheers to Philadelphia.
Light floats down day river on uh red raft o' blood Night blocks out d' heaven like uh big black shiny bug Its hard soft shell shinin' white in one spot well It's hard place dat I'm livin' but I'm doin' well well The white ice horse melted like uh spot uh silver well Its mane went last then disappeared the tail My life ran thru my veins Whistlin' hollow well I froze in solid motion well well I heard the ocean swarmin' body well well I heard the beetle clickin' well I sensed the thickest silence scream Then I begin t' dream My mind cracked like custard Ran red until it sealed Turn t' wooden 'n rolled like uh wheel well well Thick black felt birds uh flyin' With capes of solid chrome With feathers of solid chrome 'n beaks of solid bone 'n bleach the air around them White 'n cold well well Till it showed in pain The hollow cane clicked like ever after Its shadow vanished shinin' silence Well well
Lantern appears on another mix this week. This one by Dirty Beaches for Eargasm Lodge. It is the track that Alex did the video for. Here is the playlist...
1. Blue train - Johnny Cash 2. I'll be on my Way - Bob & Fred 3. Roll Roll Train - Hasil Adkins 4. I Want to be Wanted - Brenda Lee 5. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - Nat King Cole Trio 6. The Others in Their Worlds - Sun Ra 7. Tears for Dolphy - Ted Curson 8. The Shadow Knows - Link Wray & the Raymen 9. Catman - The Birthday Party 10. Uighur Pop - Hot & Cold 11. Desert Trip - Gil Melle 12. Untitled - Lantern 13. Bordes of Heaven - Rene Hell 14. Ghost of Love - David Lynch 15. Don't Let the Devil Ride - Ike Gordon 16. Dark Night of the Soul - Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse feat. David Lynch 17. March Theme - Sensational Happy Travelers 18. Diane, its 8am, Seattle, WA - Agent Cooper
Bernie Krause is cool. Really cool. He holds a PHD in acoustic biology, he played synth on a bunch of motown records, in the 60's he put out an electronic music education record, introduced George Harrison to synths, and helped rescue a lost whale in a river and bring it back to the ocean by talking with it - to name a few things
Lately, his work has delt with shows effects of humans on nature - in the picture of a soundscape. Sounds can tell us a lot about the health of habitat. Plus nature is making a lot of sound. Check out this amazing recording of the sound that trees make.
Frank from Hobo Cubes works fast. I sent him some tracks for a comp he was putting together and a week later he came out with two! Lantern is on comp 2.2 with a new track called "Don't Let Go."
So here they are, 3 hours of excellent underground music from all over! I know what I am going to be jamming to at work.
1) Eclipse Over a River - Élément Kuuda 2) Alpha Forms - Panabrite 3) Europa - Femminielli 4) Cosmogenesis - Hobo Cubes 5) Sailing Through A Lazer Storm - Citofono 6) 6th Cleaning - Relax and Sleep 7) Vibe Anthology - Body Rush 8) Weather Service Part 3 - THETLVMTH 9) Leurs Petites Mains Vident Mon Corps, Mon Sang sur Leurs Lèvres - Jean-Sébastien Truchy 10) fotoXr.eFE - M. Geddes Gengras 11) Transistor Blasts - Derek Rogers 12) Wormwood - Quiet Evenings 13) Distance - Bermuda Triangular 14) Blurd Wyndlines - Sundrips 15) Flowers Will Flourish At Your Feet - Flaming Rays of The Sun 16) Timetrip Theory - Sinequanon 17) Kecap Manis - Simon Frank 18) Logic Control - C V L T S 19) Plunderfonia - We Are Time 20) Grazed - Reedbeds 21) N Train - Manhattan Bridge - Dirty Beaches
1) O Senta C - Spring & Pretender 2) Landscape No. 1 - Driphouse 3) Techo Phat Yeah - Coeur de Cire 4) March to Nowhere - Metis Yeti 5) Polyform - Charlatan 6) Here's to the Eight Year Old Boy in the Gas Station Staring at Condoms and Going umm chss umm chss umm chss - Video Nasties 7) De Plus sa Main Semblait Las et ses Yeux Brillaient - RL/JST 8) Kicking the Coals - Parallel Pyres 9) 1965 - Ryan Garbes 10) Travelling Sundown - White Wigs 11) Party in the Bathroom - Wonder Wheel 12) Cabeza Fresca - Ines Navarro 13) Milkfed - Chineselightbulb 14) Itchy Face - Thickly Painted Walls 15) Don't Let Go - Lantern 16) Lassie's Last Challenge - JLK 17) Five Minute Mile - Kellen Shipley 18) Volo Umano - Donato Epiro 19) Cubisme - Ricardo Lucchesi
Slayer's Seasons in the Abyss features the band riffing in front of Camels and the Pyramids. COOL!
Sepultura's politically charged video for Territory features the members in Israel rocking out in mudd and shredding solos in the desert.
If you get over Chris Cornell's over-the-top-too-high-too-much-vibrato vocals, this song fuckin' rocks. Kim Thayil is an amazing and really unique guitar player who, has on occasion, contributed and colabed with Sunn O))). The video features the band rocking out in desert with some trippy post production.
It is no surprise that Kyuss has a music video in the desert. Guitarist Josh Holmes seems pretty fond of it. I believe his later and more famous project, Queens of the Stone Age, has a video of them head banging in the desert. Not too mention he was the brains behind the Desert Sessions.
While not an official video this is an video sync of highlights from Mad Max with Motorhead's The Ace of Spades. Like a shot of raunchy whiskey in the morning.
Lastly, again not a music video but very important to the development of the genre, is the opening credits to Easy Rider with proto-metalers Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild. Let me know if you have any others out there. I get the feeling there are a lot. -Z
Our 1st music video by Jacqueline Lachance (Has worked with U.S. Girls, Slim Twig, Dog Day) and Alex Zhang Hungtai (Dirty Beaches) is now on Vimeo!!! Cool Acid Western Vibe, hope yall dig it! Thanks so much to Alex and Jackie for doing such a great job!
The track will appear on our bluesy debut EP Deliver Me From Nowhere... on Electric Voice.
Just bought a MONO tape duplicator and some 300 tapes. Now what to do? I think I might put out some splits with friends or make some mix tapes. Most of the tapes I got are long in length so if you got some long music let me know, maybe we could put something out...
Last Monday, Philadelphia arts organization ARSNOVA presented us a with the musical equivalent of a solar eclipse; a performance from Merzbow with drummer Balazs Pandi and local synth-guru Charles Cohen.
Cohen, I gathered from the crowd's excitement, is a local hero and to witness a solo show is quite a rare event. Cohen is a master of the Buchla Music Easel, an incredibly rare analog synthesizer with only a handful left in existence. Cohen created a very rich palette of extremely organic sounds, conjuring images of dripping water, bird calls, dolphin cries, wooden chimes, marimbas, kalimbas, and in particular seal cries. Anyone who has not seen this clip from the Werner Herzog doc Encounters at the End of the World, where it shows seals crying should definitely check this out. The sounds that these seals make easily compete with the most out there Cluster, or Tangerine Dream records.
Each of the sounds was well treated with delay moving from short bleeps and blips, to ambient interstellar passages that made the sounds physical as if watching some space ballet. Cohen moved about the instrument with ease and grace, much like a dance himself.
There is an awesome video below by Alex Tyson that gives a quick peak of what Charles Cohen does.
Afterward, Merbow.
Merzbow and death metal turned free jazz drummer Balazs Pandi ignite the stage with blistering noise. These tired adjectives battling to describe the onslaught that Masami Akita has been dishing out for over 30 years without any end in sight. Merz is plugged into his scrap-matal-tar blasting white-hot fuzz-wah through a JCM900. The music is hard to penetrate. I close my eyes and Merzbow's world unfolds...
The sound of the big bang. Giant waves of noise, of thunder, wash over me as my body is tossed and turned and reduced to particles. Stars bloom, blossom, and explode around me. Quasars open, the eye of God to the gnostic rhythms of Akita's pulsar. The drummer beating out the heartbeat of man, at the whim, the beck and call, of the hand of God, Merzbow.
I open my eyes. The crowd is hyponotized, shocked, disappointed, and divided. The thin lanky man, sheepishly exits the stage.
Inspired by my last post and the mandolin playing of Snehasish Mzumder I thought I would post one of my favorite records over the last few years, Homayun Sakhi -The Art of the Afghan Rubab on Smithsonian Folkways.
Sakhi is an Afghan ex-pat who relocated to San Fransisco which boasts one of the largest Afghan population outside Afghanistan. Afghani classical music is interesting given its geographical location, being a cross roads for many cultures. The music is especially groovy and works with smaller rhythmic cycles unlike its North Indian counter parts. It is amazing the amount of momentum and presence that this duo creates. Enjoy the music!
I put out a few copies of this tape back in the spring for Wyrd Fest and the Obey Convention. I'll be making a few more once I get set up again here in Philly. If you want it in digital form though you can download it HERE.
As some of you may know I have left Canada for the "American Dream." The move has been interesting, exciting, and scary. Definitely a bit of culture shock. Philly at times looks and feels like Beirut (Or what I imagine it looks like as I have never been). I am staying in a beautiful loft with my partner's sister in Fishtown. We have a little spot in the corner till we get everything set up. I got a bank account after a bit of scare where I copied my social security number down wrong and it was looking like I wasn't going to get an account. I unfortunately had to go with Bank of America, as I was entering the bank there was a giant sign across the street that read, "I Hate Bank of America." It probably is an omen. I finally got a phone and each day is getting progressively better and I am slowly making friends. I am really worried about a job, I am not sure what to expect here and Philly's economy is the third worst in the country, seems you can't escape that. Today I am looking for more houses. I have been concentrating on writing more since I haven't had the opportunity, space, or privacy to write music. Lantern is sitting on about 20 songs write now and we'll have some upcoming releases, hopefully.
Some crappy pictures from my new AT&T cell phone.
My good friend and colleague Aaron Levin, the genius behind Weird Canada, kindly wrote some nice words of the I put out. I only made a few copies of this tape back in the spring for Wyrd Fest and the Obey Convention. I'll be making a few more once I get set up again here in Philly. Please get in touch if you would like a copy.
Best, and keep listening in!
-Z
From Weird Canada With an unruly vocabulary for the avant-garde, the wild long-hair behind Omon Ra / Omon Ra II rips through your consciousness with six streams of free jazz, orchestral minimalism, and prepared minutiae. The unwieldy compositions are performed on-or-by everything (Arp2600, Dalhousie Brass Quintet, Saxophones, mixers, prepared piano, etc.) and mutate wildly in timbre; “Origins”‘ dense, synthetic dark-age scorches a sinusoidal path for the blissfully organic sequences; hear the strangely poppy Brass Quintet devastate “Prisms” and segue into the harrowing minimalia of “Long Tones and Lose Change.” It’s all a sharp reminder that underground reverberations are still produced in the dusty corners of academia. Bsc GRIP.
My good friends of OmmaCobba & the East Side Marijuana Band have just put out their first tape on Harding Street Assembly Lab. It is a spilt with South Carolina band Cave Drums. OmmaCobba's work covers a rich spectrum of droned out RnR, to fake-jazzy freakouts, to krauty-space-stoner-pop, usually accompanied by large tom drum workouts and always given a generous portion of reverb and melody. Daniel and Denis definitely understand beauty and how to have a good time, their music reflects this take on life. The sound is a much needed breath of fresh air.
Listen below.
Here's what the label has to say about it!
From http://hardingstreet.bandcamp.com/album/hsal-06-split-cassette
"The A side is the most recent output from the brothers Condon (w/ a little help from their friends). The B side features music from great white northern neighbors OmmaCobba, who met the Condons online (think more e-harmony than dateline's "to catch a predator"). We recommend taking in this full length cassette as you would a 2nd hand smoke filled house show...complete w/ friends, brews, & good times."
These guys have defined my summer of sorts. I am on a quest to read all of McCarthy's books and have been going through Beefheart's discography.
I think both artists are quite different when talking about how one reacts to their art; McCarthy's books make one experience the cosmic-awe of nature and ponder the inexplicable tragedies and ways of man. While Beefheart serves as the ying to this yang and seems to challenge this notion of determinism. He courts the shadow of the laws of nature, chaos.
However, these two artists are quite similar. Both are intensely reclusive and really give interviews if at all, both are extremely inspired by the desert, and their art owes much to the past as it is a part of it. They recycle-reuse-and-reinvent the past and return it to the cannon as if it was there all along. They borrow from the rich history of American folk culture; oral story telling, mythology, tale tales, folk, and blues. They take this ancient wisdom and shine its relevance, its timelessness.
I posted a couple of videos. The first is a short autobiographical documentary on Beefheart that sees him briefly talking about Miles Davis and has David Lynch pitching him a few questions.
The second series of videos is two excellent lectures on McCarthy's Blood Meridian by Professor Amy Hungerford from Yale University. I understand it is part of a series of courses from Yale that are available free online, check it out here.
McCarthy's Blood Meridian is widely regarded as one of best pieces of literature to come out in the last century. A heads up to people wanting to check out the lectures, it definitely helps if you have read the book but also if you were an english major it might remind you too much of school. Anyways the lecture is very well put together and sure to get you thinking. It sort of made me wish I had an english degree.
Hello all I'll be artist in res at CKUT this month and hosting the Montreal Sessions radio show. I'm pretty stoked to be doing this and going to be trying some new stuff on air. All shows are archived in case you miss it. First week is Dirty Beaches!
MONTREAL SESSIONS AUGUST: ZACHARY DEVEREUX FAIRBROTHER August 2, 2010 by ckutmusic
Zachary Devereux Fairbrother is a musician from rural Nova Scotia. His music has touched many genres including psychedelic rock and folk, noise, drone,improvisation, and black metal. He lived and studied in Halifax for a number of years, playing in a band called Omon Ra and helping out with the Obey Convention Musical Festival. In May 2009 he graduated with a music degree in composition while studying under Jerome Blais and took off and left for Montreal. In the last year Zachary played many shows with his new group Omon Ra II and toured to Alberta to play Wyrd Fest and all the way east to for an appearance at the Obey Convention. In 2010 his music will score a film by director Salomon Nagler call *Black Salt Water Elegy *and he’ll be moving to Philadelphia for who knows what but he’ll be bringing along and cutting his teeth with his newest project entitled Lantern. He has written papers on Japanese Proto-Noise, Black Metal, is a contributor to Weird Canada , and keeps his own musings at a blog called Avant-Lard.
Zachary is thrilled to be hosting the Montreal Sessions for August. He is no stranger to radio having hosted a couple of shows on Halifax’s CKDU that were known for their enthusiasm for desperately diverse styles of music. Here is what he has planned…
August 3rd – Dirty Beaches will perform
August 10th – D’eon will perform
August 17th – Cabral Jacobs + TBA
August 21st – Lantern
Also planned are interviews with Halifax group The Ether and Divorce Records owner Darcy Spidel.
I am moving to Philadelphia come fall and I am moving on with musical projects as well.
I am starting a new project called Lantern and I feel its the best material I have ever written. I am not sure what direction this group will head but it plans to have lots of collaborations and explore the map of American musics from folk, blues, jazz, rock, experimental, and minimalist. I have a few tracks up on this here myspace and some more stashed away. I hope yall dig...
My good friend Dirty Beaches has just released a new 7" on San Diego label Zoo Music. It's the True Blue EP and the title track I guarantee will be your favorite track of the year! Weird Doo-whop, in the temple of Phil Spector worship.
Dirty Beaches rockin' the rooftop. Photo by Caley Jones
Alex Zhang Hungtai is the conduit for the one man band Dirty Beaches. The project, now in its 5th year, has taken Alex wide and far, literally and metaphorically. Alex has performed in China, and in the last year completed two US tours. His music has also traveled a long way; initially a more introverted, experimental project, Dirty Beaches has evolved into a full on violent-twist-jive-rockabilly-whiskey throw down, with a penchant for doo-woppy ballads. 2009 was a breakout year for Alex, with releases on Night People and Fixture. In 2010 Alex has been busy on the road and lining up a solid release schedule, including a full length LP on Night People, splits with fellow Obey Performers U.S. Girls and my group Omon Ra II (On Campaign for Infinity), and an archival release on Beijing label Rose Mansion Analog. I am over-the-top-excited to have Alex perform at this year's festival. Alex is a tremendous artist and I know his visceral and veracious performances will have a profound affect on the Halifax audiences. Below is a short interview I conducted with Alex last week:
Z - Since you moved from Montreal to Vancouver you've been incredibly busy. Why do you think 2009-2010 was/has been such a break-through year for you?
A - Being isolated from your friends always encourages productivity, albeit painful at times. My definition of friendship is much like the concept of family. I grew up without my family after age 14, so I spent a lot of time with friends growing up. There were older brother figures that I looked up to, and it has shaped me into the person I am at right now. Without them and those experiences, I am nothing. Those experiences morph into soundscapes in my music, or themes, even. They will always be there, like re-occurring characters.
Another reason for this year's intense schedule would be credited to my release on Night People, ever since my first tape release with them, I have been getting a lot of offers from labels, tour requests, etc, along with blog reviews. I hate letting people down, so I put the mileages into it. Been very lucky on those tours, making just enough money to get from one city to the next, with gas and what not into consideration as well. Met a lot of kind people on the road that gave us a little extra cash just so we could make it, and to the people that bought my merch, my thanks goes out to them.
Z - What's it like making music for you on the West Coast?
A - This year's winter in Vancouver has been so mild in comparison to Montreal that I almost secretly chuckle to myself whenever I look out the window. The area I live in (Hastings Sunrise) has a lot of trees, mountains, and old people. When I first arrived in October 09, I would listen to the twin peaks soundtrack my friend Conor got me for my birthday, and take little walks. However, there is one similar coincidence that my Montreal apartment shares with the Vancouver one: they are both very close to the train tracks. I love trains. oh boy. I like how they look, how they sound, I love walking on train tracks, I love riding trains, I love everything about them. Sometimes at night you can hear the train whistle, and it makes you want to be on that train, and just leave town. But that's just me. In China you can still smoke on trains, too. Although that's slowly changing now. I heard they banned indoor smoking in Shanghai this year. I hope it was only a rumor.
Z - One of things I really dig about Dirty Beaches is its exploration of minimalism. For the last five years you have used basically the same simple equipment and have created a world of sound, always light on resources but heavy in sound and spirit. Can you explain your approach and how you keep things fresh?
A - The approach to minimalism came out of necessity. My first release on Fixture was recorded with multiple tracks, with overdubs and layers. The problem was, I could never play it live. I had a hard time dealing with other people playing them, because they never got it right. I hate being the tyrant type too cuz I've been in bands with them when I was younger. So I never wanted to become that person where you write all the stuff and force, trick or manipulate other people to play the parts that you wrote. That shit is whack. And fucked up too. I think Bands should be formed out of friendship, and the idea of collaboration in mind.
Once I got over the idea that I was not going to be in a band, but a solo performing artist, things started to open up. I began recording my materials LIVE, almost identical to my live set up so I could translate my performances onto recording.
Whenever I'm out of ideas, I just watch a shit ton of films that have been on my watchlist. Lately I've been really into Tsai Ming-Liang, and Hou Hsiao Hsien (both based in Taiwan) and random forgotten gems from the 80's (like Willem Dafoe's first role in THE LOVELESS). Nick Cage and Val Kilmer flicks in the 80's are great too. I watch them when I'm sad and Val always cheers me up. He's the best.
Z - Given now that you are in your 5th year of the project, how do you hear the next 5 years of Dirty Beaches? How can we expect your sound to evolve or change?
A - I know I will always be making instrumental music. I've been doing that for the past 10 years. So I don't think that's gonna stop anytime soon. I've also started to make videos, and am currently working on my first short film, which is kind of a pilot for a digital download series part detective/film noir and other genres mixed in, starring my friend Bernadino Femminielli, who is a amazingly gifted musician based in Montreal. It will be fun to score it.
In terms of more ambitious ideas for dirty beaches, I'd like to try making sound installations for DIY spaces. I had an idea for the album HORROR that I put out on Fixture, but it was too costly financially to realize.
Z - Will Dirty Beaches always be a one man band and are you working on any collaborations?
A - I think dirty beaches will always be a one man project. Like films, that main character will always be longing for a place where he does not belong. An eternal damnation from home, misplaced, in exile, with nothing to hold onto.
However, I would love to throw it all away and start a new band that's not about any of that stuff I just mentioned.
Last summer my friend Erika Ellsworth hosted a show at the King's University theatre; a dark basement theatre without any windows. The show's aim was to match bands with visual artists. My friend's band The Ether teamed up with Heather Rappard to make a seriously twisted showfeaturing broken glass, blood, booze, crazy fat clowns with two foot drumsticks, and deep throated mics, all in front of a weird sparkly cloud blanket. Check out the videos below of the chaos.
The Ether have a new record coming out on Patente records called Folly and features yours truly on a track. I also hear that they might be packing up and switching HQs to Montreal.
Some groovy-ass African music. From Benin's capitol Cotonou. They appear on several comps such as A Real Thing and African Scream Contest. Check out some archival recordings of the group on the label Analog Africa.
I have recently been enrolled in French Classes which means I have been studying French for 30 hours a week for the last three weeks. My head has been spinning with a mélange of French and English, as well as the idea of a language. I am taking a class made up of mostly immigrants that speak multiple languages already, and my appreciation for the amount of effort and sacrifice that immigrants make to become Canadian has awakened. I had no idea of the difficulties, why do we have to give some many wonderful people a rough time? I guess humanism is dead in this part of the world and most. Especially with wars being replaced by homeland security, but this is for another time.
What I really want to talk about is the globalization of art and music, and in particular the use of music as a language. The phrase, music is the universal language, I doubt is anything of a surprise to the people reading this blog, but music itself is a blanket term for countless numbers of musical dialects, most of which are very hard to learn. However what makes music interesting is how over centuries musical dialects have mashed and mixed with one another, creating new languages and fashions for creation. The laws of the language of music are extremely flexible and adaptable. Like the English language I will argue, after years of colonization, has undergone a constant and rapid evolution. The English rose to global power with the great advancements in technology, distribution, capitalism, and of course the United States. New methods of distributing the mass amount of American Culture emerged in the 1900s, which of course backboned by capitalism. These technologies, which ultimately led to digital technologies, the Internet, and today’s musical landscape, have allowed the language to mash and bend faster than the technologies can keep. The spell check on the Microsoft program I am using to type this is a prime example.
I have an interest in world music, and in particular pop, rock, and psychedelic music of the 60s and 70s. I am amazed at just how well artists from around the world were able to synthesize the evolutions in rock and integrate them into their own cultural characteristics. Artists like Omar Khorshid, who did his version proto-eruption guitar heroics, melding fiery Egyptian modes with American surf music. He is perhaps, only rivaled by Dick Dale or Link Wray. Another example is Korean guitarist Shin Jung Hyun, who was doing his own heavy, fuzzed, out, wah-worship, proto-prog jams, around the same time as Hendrix. But unlike Hendrix, he music does not seemed to be rooted in blues, but in something way far out, or just foreign to my ears.
It is amazing how these cultures were able to understand the musical dialects, syntaxes, and accents. Just listen to groups of the above-mentioned artists. Someone learning a language will attest to how difficult it is to learn an accent. It takes years to learn a language if you are not born into it.
This idea of musical globalization should not be mistaken for western imperialism; it’s symbiotic. This is particularly obviously with late 60s American psych-rock or the experimental music of the minimalists. Both borrowed heavily from India and African musics. They took their ideas of musical architecture, rhythm, improvisation, and trance. Globalization in music is in fact way older. An early example is that of the chaconne, a popular dance of the baroque period. Bach composed a famous Chaconne. The rhythm itself however, actually comes from South America, imported by colonization. Mozart too, Rondo a la Turk, was largely inspired by Turkish music (hence the name). As well as Ravel who was deeply moved by the music of Indonesia.
With technology our world gets smaller, and global consciousness increases, but as we can see our world has always been small, and maybe music points to a future where we speak a melting pot language.
@ Friendship Cove (215a Murray - Metro Bonaventure)
PAY WHAT YOU CAN
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THE BLIND SHAKE are one of Minnesota's best bands in recent years. In 2007, they released a collaborative album with 60s Minneapolis psych / weirdo rock legend MICHAEL YONKERS called "Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons," which was amazing and one of the most critically acclaimed albums of that year. On their own, the band play a distinct style of psych influenced post-punk that has given them favorable comparisons to bands like The Urinals, Fugazi and The Intelligence. We are really excited to have them up here for the first time.
OMON RA II are a new band that have risen from the ashes of Halifax psych rockers (and Divorce and Fixture Records alumni) OMON RA. The band is lead by composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Zachary Devereux Fairbrother, who upon moving to Montreal, started up the band again and expanded the lineup to four members (including long time collaborator Chris D'Eon). A force to be reckoned with live, this is one of just a handful of shows the band has played since their re-birth in Montreal.
FUTENSIL are a three piece garage punk band from the St-Henri borough that bring to mind Thee Oh Sees jangly guitar parts and male / female vocal harmonies, but with the added warped experimental bent of weirdos like The Residents. They were one of three bands hand picked to perform live on CKUT's "If You Got Ears" program during the station's annual funding drive week last year, and their catchy songs and killer live shows make them one of the city's most exciting up and coming bands.
INTERRACIAL LOVE TRIANGLE are an awesome new two piece minimalist garage rock band who have been blowing audiences away with their incredible live shows recently. Their drum kit consists of two metal salad bowels turned upside down, and their riff heavy, raunchy guitar sound and super charismatic front man make them this city's long awaited answer to The Gories.
Zach lives in Philadelphia, with is wife Christina and their dog, Snowflake. He plays in a band called Ghösh.
He is originally from Nova Scotia.
Email me at zacharyfairbrother@gmail.com
