Music

Somewhere between Iowa City and Denver, Ben Chasney is hitching a ride with Elisa Ambrogio and Pete Nolan’s noise-rock duo the Magik Markers. Though he’s not a member of the band, Chasney’s past collaborations with them have made him a welcome guest to tag along for the tour. “It stresses me out when I’m just sitting there not having anything to do,” says Chasney.

Chasney’s latest album, Shelter from the Ash, is his tenth album under the moniker Six Organs of Admittance and his third with label Drag City.

Steve Moore has played keyboard and bass with drummer Anthony Paterra for the last six years as synth-rock duo Zombi,. The Pittsburgh, PA pair is famously adherent to the prog/horror soundtrack legacy of the likes of Cherry Five (better known to most horror aficionados as Goblin), John Carpenter, and and Tangerine Dream.

With the release of The Henge, we get a glimpse into Moore’s solo journey along this same trajectory. Moore wrote, performed, produced, and mastered the entire album in Pittsburgh and Nyack, NY (Moore currently lives in the Hudson River Valley across from the legendary Sleepy Hollow).

On Saturday, March 8, 2008, the Chicago Composer’s Forum (CCF) hosted New Music Plus Painting at Columbia College. The free performance by composers Nathan Davis, Guillermo Gregorio, Ryan Ingebritsen, Christopher Preissing, and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) happened simultaneously as Chicago’s Shan Zhou and DaHuang Zhou, better knows at the Zhou Brothers (and the kind owners of the Zhou B Center, which hosted our Printers’ Ball last year), painted a large scale canvas.

Not even a hurricane barreling through Galactic’s hometown New Orleans could stop the funk fivesome from wrapping its latest disc, From the Corner to the Block (Anti-). And it’s such resilience that’s led the outfit to persevere through tragedy, gathering over a dozen friends, including Lyrics Born, Z-Trip, Chali 2Na, and Boots Riley, to join them on their concept album.

“Agoraphobic Nosebleed meets the Postal Service—that was the dumbest one,” muses Mookie Singerman, lead screamer and keyboardist for Philadelphia metal trio Genghis Tron. He’s rattling off inane descriptions he’s heard from folks trying to summarize the band’s sound. “House music metal was another one,” he says, laughing.

Unappealing as those comparisons sound, they’re starting points for those who’ve never heard the band. Genghis Tron is most definitely metal, with a sound evocative of early industrial, buzzsaw guitars, prog-rock synths and positively evil programmed drumbeats.

“We’re playing a haunted house tonight,” Bradford Cox, Deerhunter’s frontman says. “It’s the kind of haunted where you’ll see a band rock out and maybe see a disembodied head.”

The Southgate House in Newport, Kentucky is actually a haunted theatre, and is quite fitting for the four-piece from Atlanta, Georgia. A self-described “ambient punk” band, their droning, dark, and moody sound is matched with Cox’s tendency to smear fake blood on his face and wear dresses.

Lately, Brad Laner has been spending a lot of time at home. Such self-induced seclusion might seem a little out of sync for a singer/songwriter better known for his workaholic tendencies fronting the likes of Medicine and Electric Company, but after the birth of his first son, Laner’s attention was understandably diverted.

“I couldn’t really do anything the first two years he was around,” says Laner of his now three-year-old son Julian. “It really wiped out that creative drive for a while.” Despite this shift in energy, over the course of those three years Laner worked with the equipment he had at hand in his house, developing dozens of tracks. With the help of co-producer Thom Monahan, he sorted through the collection. The end result has become Laner’s first official solo album, Neighbor Singing.

Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor was all apologies when the servers hosting his bands instrumental opus, Ghosts I-IV, went offline for a short period of time following the March 2nd release. A post on the NiN website read, “Sorry again about the hassle. Somebody kicked the plug out of our internets, but we’re all set now.” Bandwith problems generated by interest in the new album are the most arduous problems the band is contending with at the moment. Sales of Ghosts I-IV have grossed $750,000 in three days which is great, considering portions of the four part project are free to download.

As part of their first appearance in the United States, Norwegian jazz/prog-rock outfit Shining will perform at Chicago’s Empty Bottle on Tuesday, March 11. This is a rare opportunity to catch the group live, and the ticket price is a steal ($8 in advance, $10 at the door)!

Ray Davies released his second solo album Working Mans Café (New West/Ammal Records) last October 2007 to critical acclaim from critics and fans. Davies (with full band in tow) will play seven shows at historic venues in the tour cities. The Chicago Theatre in Chicago, the Wiltern theater in Los Angeles, and the Beacon theater in New York will help set the stage for what promises to be an epic performance from a legendary performer.