Music

Wires Under Tension

Q&A: Wires Under Tension

Wires Under Tension: Light ScienceWires Under Tension: Light Science (Western Vinyl, 2/8/11)

Wires Under Tension: “Electricity Turns Them On”

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The revolution may not be televised, but the Zombiepocolypse will be soundtracked by Wires Under Tension. The duo’s newest album, Light Science, meanders around the musical spaces between hopeful and hopeless, maintaining its taut excitement throughout.

Classically trained violinist Christopher Tignor brings the carefully orchestrated strings, while Theo Metz manages to organize the chaos with his syncopated rhythms. Loops, bleeps, and boops chime in from somewhere beyond the present. WUT never intended to make popular music, and it succeeded spectacularly. Between tour dates, Tignor was kind enough to answer a few of ALARM’s questions.

You discuss making music in a very intense, detailed, deliberate way. (“This violin technique, known as bariolage, makes use of high-energy string crossings to create melodic arcs which convey the very essence of the instrument.”) What formal musical training do you have, and how does that influence the sound?

Theo and I both grew up playing in rock bands and also [had] some classical training. As a violinist, that was the first way I began playing music, so dealing with scores is built in. As with discussing the music, I’d say we create music for an audience that isn’t interested in being underestimated and that would be excited at the prospect of bumping into new ideas. I think we’re in a unique position to do that, given our intense and varied musical backgrounds.

The first image that came to mind when I heard “Сказал Сказала” was the abandoned cityscape in 28 Days Later. The second thought was, “This is the soundtrack playing in my head when I’m lost in the Bronx.” What’s the connection between the album and the new neighborhood?

The neighborhood I live in the Bronx is Mott Haven. It’s a very down-to-earth residential place, in essence the antidote to hipster-dom. After living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for 13 years and seeing its changes, I find that quite refreshing. There’s a real urban energy tied up with risk and struggle that a place loses when [it] starts feeling more like an extension of some liberal-art college campus. Just like string instruments, without tension there is no resonance.

Murder by Death

Concert Photos: Murder by Death @ Subterranean (Chicago, IL)

Indiana-based alt-rock quartet Murder by Death is currently touring the US with Fake Problems and Buried Beds. During the month of February, the band was joined by The Builders & The Butchers and Damion Suomi & The Minor Prophets. And on April 4 of last year, Murder by Death released its fifth full-length album, Good Morning, Magpie, on Vagrant Records.

In a recent tour stop at the packed Subterranean in Chicago, cellist Sarah Balliet, clad in genre-appropriate Western wear, infused the band’s freewheeling rock with a shot of electro-country, while vocalist Adam Turla sang songs about zombies, whiskey, and the devil. Photographer Wallo Villacorta was on the scene to capture the action.

Murder by Death

Morrow vs. Hajduch

Morrow vs. Hajduch: Grand Pianoramax’s Smooth Danger

Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.

Grand Pianoramax: Smooth DangerGrand Pianoramax: Smooth Danger (ObliqSound, 5/3/11)

Grand Pianoramax: “Roulette” (radio edit)

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Morrow: Conceived as something of a live piano-and-drums experiment, Grand Pianoramax is the principal project of pianist Leo Tardin.  Once “a New Yorker from Switzerland” and now “a Berliner from America,” Tardin uses a small arsenal of instruments — grand piano, Fender Rhodes, K-Station, harmonium, Phillichorda — to achieve a diversity of sounds for his duo’s spacey, funky, classically infused music.

Smooth Danger is the duo’s third and newest album; released overseas last fall, it sees a US release in a few months.  Though it doesn’t depart much from its predecessors, it cuts back a bit on guest vocalists, allowing the duo’s music to better stand on its own.  And it deserves to, thanks to its combination of killer melodies, synthesized grooves, and classical piano that overlay tight, rapid rock and boom-bap beats from new drummer Dominik Burkhalter.  (The former drummers, by the way, were no slouches: Deantoni Parks [The Mars Volta, Meshell Ndegeocello] and Adam Deitch [Talib Kweli, John Scofield].)

Jeffery Brown: Incredible Change-Bots Two

Zine Scene: Incredible Change-Bots Two

Incredible Change-Bots TwoJeffrey Brown: Incredible Change-Bots Two (Top Shelf, 4/12/11)

Even for someone like myself, who has the very briefest experience with Saturday-morning cartoons like Transformers, Jeffrey Brown’s Incredible Change-Bots Two is a highly enjoyable send-up of the genre and a silly little slice of nostalgia.  Something about recasting transforming robots as incompetent, bickering armies, or featuring a robot with a gun for an arm as having an existential crisis, works perfectly as both an absurd tribute and satire of shows that were, even in their heyday, thinly disguised means of selling toys.

The graphic novel continues the story of Incredible Change-Bots, in which the Fantasticons and Awesomebots destroyed their own planet through war and then traveled to Earth, which they also destroyed.  The sequel continues in the same endearingly nonsensical vein.  The leader of the Fantasticons, Shootertron, was left behind when the rest of the Change-Bots left Earth and tries to regain his memory with the help of farmers and the ridiculously ineffectual US government that wants to use him as a weapon.

J Rocc

The Groove Seeker: J Rocc’s Some Cold Rock Stuf

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

J Rocc: Some Cold Rock StufJ Rocc: Some Cold Rock Stuf (Stones Throw, 3/8/11)

J Rocc: “Play This (Also)”

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One of the most important figures in DJing and turntablism over the past two decades, J Rocc is finally releasing his debut effort of original cuts titled Some Cold Rock Stuf.  Original in all senses of the word, J Rocc has amazed audiences from Los Angeles to Tokyo with a distinct style that began by co-founding the landmark DJ crew the Beat Junkies in the early ’90s with Melo-D and Rhettmatic.

Along with fellow beat junkie Babu, and the likes of Mix Master Mike and Q-Bert of the Invisible Skratch Piklz, J Rocc was a part of the pioneering scene that brought respect back to the DJ, establishing the turntable as instrument while forging a new path towards instrumental hip hop.

WORM

Behind the Counter: WORM (Rotterdam, The Netherlands)

WORM is a venue, record shop, and production space in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Perhaps it’s more accurately described as an evolving bastion of the arts, with a new, larger location opening later this year in the center of the city. The new space, designed by 2012 Architects, with one part (a metal construction at the entrance) by Joep van Lieshout, will be “a super-avant-garde institute for sustainable recreation.” We spoke with shop owner and collective co-founder Mariëtte Groot to try to get to the bottom of the seemingly bottomless entity that is WORM.

What are the origins of WORM? What came first: the store, the studio, or the venue?

WORM started in 1999 when three iniatives joined forces: Dodorama (venue plus shop for experimental music), Popifilm (organizers of experimental film screenings), and Filmwerkplaats (Film Lab).

What is the Avant Garde Institute?

To be exact: we call ourselves Institute for Avantgardistic Recreation. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek; all we mean to say is, “We like art that is adventurous and playful.” We want as many people as possible to join in and play. The word recreation is meant as leisure, as well as “to create again.”

WORM