Scott Morrow 
Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz: Abraxas: The Book of Angels Vol. 19 (Tzadik)
“Tse’an”
Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz: “Tse’an”
The 19th installment in John Zorn’s Masada Book 2: The Book of Angels is a doozy. As with the rest of the series, these are Zorn pieces given to an extraordinary talent (or set of talents) to perform, re-imagine, or demolish, and acoustic/electric bassist and oudist Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz has done all three with his batch of songs.
With the day’s first set, Lollapalooza 2012 officially begins at 11:30 AM CST — “bright and early” for professional rock bands.
We’ll be tweeting and posting to Facebook intermittently with our thoughts, and if you’re down at Grant Park too, let us know if you’re still alive. (Today’s high temp. will be in the low 90s with 50% humidity. Drink your bubble tea.)
Tonight’s festivities end with two of the billion bands to use “black” in their names — Black Sabbath and The Black Keys. Here’s our quick list of sets to catch:
This content appears in the July/August iPad edition of ALARM Magazine. Download it for free and keep reading!
Chthonic: Takasago Army (Spinefarm, 7/6/11)
“Takao”
Since the late 1990s, Hsiang-Yi “Doris” Yeh has served as the leader and bassist of Chthonic, a Taiwanese metal outfit that utilizes the traditional Asian erhu. The band shreds, but its members have a more important mission: supporting internationally recognized independence for Taiwan from the People’s Republic of China.
The members have been a voice for Tibetan freedom as well — vocalist Freddy Lim, who doubles as the chairman of Amnesty International Asia Pacific, met with the Dalai Lama in 2009 in advance of a “Free Tibet” benefit concert — and they remain outspoken in support of the Uyghur people of China.
That would be solid enough as a day job, but Ms. Yeh, who has appeared on the cover of GQ Taiwan, also moonlights as a sex symbol. Maybe China should rethink that whole blacklisting thing…
Using the Two Fingers moniker for his more straightforward, beat-driven material, sample wizard Amon Tobin has a new instrumental cut for you to get slinky on the dance floor.
Three members of Russian feminist punk collective Pussy Riot face up to seven years in prison for staging an impromptu performance at a Russian Orthodox church. Click ahead for a link to text updates of the trial and a Change.org petition.
The Locust: Molecular Genetics from the Gold Standard Labs (Anti-)
“Perils of Believing in Round Squares”
The Locust: “Perils of Believing in Round Squares”
Somebody got new-wavey B-movie camp in with my grindcore. Somebody got grindcore in with my new-wavey B-movie camp!
No matter one’s perspective, The Locust is a band so unique and without peer that listeners are hard pressed to forget their first experience. Take a grindcore/power-violence base and add sci-fi synths, brilliant costumes, and humorous/asinine song titles (often in questionable taste), and boom: The Locust.
Tomas Haake and Jens Kidman of Meshuggah speak to Scion AV about the metallic qualities of dubstep and the band’s intended response for concertgoers.
Mastodon and Feist’s split seven-inch is finally available digitally as of today. Even better: you can watch the new tag-team video for “A Commotion,” as covered by Mastodon, and crossfade between the synchronized versions.
Following its announcement of the Sod in the Seed EP — out August 14 on Anticon — indie-hop trio Why? (seemingly now a quartet?) has confirmed plans to release its next full-length.