Glossolalia

 With Jacques Demierre, Swiss free music improviser

Democracy Center, October 5

Bunny Hop

I wish I could smoke in here get that nicotine line to the brain this is amphetamine material guitar like White Zombie from the ’90s path to mathematics cross section of clue and glue Peter a rhythmic locomotive on drums the kids are hopping and bopping it’s like a sock hop doing the bunny hop soda pop big waves of shivering shudders made of iron mud bath wrestling with alligators funky metal stomp banshee streams of sound fly into the air like banners struck by lightning the beat changes so quick it’s like pick up sticks

She’s a wild witch demoness chanting incantations zigzag harmonies on synth like a TV on the fritz chugging truck sounds sixteen wheeler rattling machine gun strafe ’70s video arcade chalking up a score on Space Invaders hum of fluorescent lights in empty office after dark the wind whistling in the park tongue tappers linguistic exercises just plain strange and weird serpentine static hiss the time machine is ready and I take it to Cortez the clashing of swords the brash blow of muskets Quetzlcoatl

Noell Dorsey

The Mobius Gallery, buried away on a quiet suburban street outside of Central Square, still has the Cambridge grandiose charm. It is artsy, too, with its black walls lighted up by track lights, giving it the mod quality it has inherited from its prior locations in the South End and South Boston. And it still carries the distinction of showcasing artists who still hit the public with a weird or offbeat aftershock. Jed Speare, who runs the music series, has the same knack the space has always had, often in performance art, for pulling promising new faces like rabbits out of a hat, and propelling them into greater recognition. Forbes Graham and Birgit Ulher already have international reputations, but their stars are still rising. Noell Dorsey and Morgan Evans-Weiler are comfortably ensconced on the local scene, and tonight’s execution showed they are rising too.

Morgan Evans-Weiler

Birgit Ulher’s and Forbes Graham’s set tonight was a weave of improvisations that sported the niceties of through composed music, marks and stabs and fragments adding up to a mural like notes inked on a cream staff page. Ulher, from Germany, has cool European austerity, while the American Graham never lacks the quirk and funk of the blues.

Patches of warmth and familiarly shared places with difficult climbs , as up a rock face; but the work rewarded patience, as motives unfolded and coalesced into greater wholes, seeming random bits of shrapnel collecting, becoming grand and weighty edifices shining in mist and moonlight.

Birgit Ulher

Here are some more reflections:

The Soft and the Sour

Ulher a bubbling spring Forbes Bubber Miley the soft and the sour the splitting of the hour now like a long trombone down echoing halls and spittle from a spit bug a balloon losing helium doing loops in the air the lyricism is gentle creaking doors like accordions whirring broken fans the comfort of an old and broken in home thus the warmth carries in the stark realities of the hard and austere horns and now it’s like the time you put playing cards in the spokes of your bicycle wheel when you were five fabulous panoply of effects and all warm

And I pause and reflect in the atmospheric room track lights on black walls makes them almost blue Forbes in his dark purple striped shirt Ulher in a button down pink orange and likewise striped and the music is stripes of sound painting an aural canyon where the mules ride caparisoned with Aztec icons carrying obsidian idols in a psychedelic sack where the wind blows hoarse and strong fueling the flights of bats adding their own soft screech

Kassie

Amanda (Advaeta)

Sara

 

Some of their stuff reminds me of Simple Minds, the propulsive beats and grand harmonies, but this is glam goth metal, an erotically aggressive onslaught of tenderness from a trio of New York women.

 

 

Lani

Ginny Benson does an awesome job of visuals, with light shows the caliber of Pink Floyd. The tone is understated and flashy. Everything is under control.

Conrad Benjamin

Guerilla Toss, on their eponymous Tzadik CD release, is like one of those baseball cards from the seventies, where you look at it one way, and you see the player; but then you turn it in the sunlight, and you see the image of the crowds in the stadium. You can hear the band one way, like noise and mud and vomit, unbearable to the ears. Then, you listen again, and you hear the complexity and lyricism of new music, or even Berg or Stravinsky. Some of the progressions have the haunting dance of *The Rite of Spring*, and there’s an interplay to the members, glamor-guy bassist Simon, cutie/wild girl singer Kassie, deft, dapper, and understated guitar player Arian, hero of heroin survival drummer/leader Peter Negroponte, and Ian Kovac, synth guy, who keeps it together like a classy carpenter – well, it’s like watching an exciting baseball play in extra innings, a last-minute double play or a suicide squeeze.

I think of Zeul groups, like Japan’s The Ruins, or Magma from France, the commune group who speak their own language of the name. It’s like prog, kind of, but more with a free jazz base than 19th century European romanticism, like Yes or ELP. Sometimes it’s as scary as watching carpenter ants eat your house. Sometimes it’s as good as your tough friend at school beating up the bully. It can be as primitive as slash-and-burn agriculture, or as advanced as linear algebra.

I got into Guerilla Toss because they are such infectious, kind people, and they create a scene wherever they play, one that transcends the music like a mushroom cloud transcends a nuclear bomb. But I stayed with them, through the unnerving first couple of listens to the album, and it’s as beautiful as the flowers after the atom storm. I just hope it’s healthy, instead of killing me. I think it is. I feel better already, and I still have half the album to go tonight.

Sophie Dickinson plays a wooden harp, which she cares for visibly, polishing it with a black cloth onstage. On the other hand, *audibly*, she outright abuses it, accompanying it with cassette tape noise augmented by a small brown amplifier. She has a reason for this, though. I asked her was it just to be cool, and she said no (though it is), it’s because it’s what she grew up with. “I didn’t grow up hearing Celtic harp music; I grew up hearing rock music, and the noise of the television set before I practiced harp in the evening.”

She just released her first CD, *Tarp*. Strange title? That’s what I thought. Duh! It’s harp and tapes, like the muppets are puppets and marionettes. There’s little point in analyzing the music, though it is delicate and complex. That distracts from the reverie it puts one in, which is pastoral and dreamy, and also, even, a little psychy.

Dickinson played to a packed house at Deep Thoughts JP tonight. She played five songs, pausing here and there to set up her “extraneous sound”. Here are some notes on the performance.

Sophie Dickinson

She always takes me like a mistress in dreamland another realm so placid and peaceful but a current of electricity and excitement the harp I think of angels in Ireland sipping beer at The Harp as the Bruins win the Stanley Cup across the street nice dynamics

Haze and fuzz of brown box at her feet am  I worthy to touch her foot soft pluck then warm chord the tune continues interspersed with the patter of rain the high note almost brings tears to my eye intricate finger work like lace canopy over bed

She dusts wood with black cloth sets tape player sound of muffled footsteps car door slamming change drawer singsongy folk tune catchy as Frere Jacques then dark in a minor key

Sick she said the tape rewound this is her coolest audience whispering and chitchat on the tape and in the basement as the song begins honey-like and dark she sings like a little child yet the plucking so strong sure and mature beads strung on a necklace clinking now she grabs handfuls of string with the muffled voices in the background and she pauses like tentative pacing through a hall at night a young girl singing to herself waxing more confident with more drama and the strings begin again like morning sunlight with clouds obscuring rays in the breakfast garden she’s so natural with her hands it’s like she’s breaking scones with robins piping in as if it’s spring

She prepares last song to audience throng crazy recorded noise to the sound of a swan rising in the last heat of September leaves are beginning to leave their branches the bare lyricism of the wood presages October