Hauschka

Guest Playlist: Hauschka’s experimental acoustics

Hauschka: Salon des AmateursHauschka: Salon des Amateurs (FatCat, 4/12/11)

Hauschka: “Radar”

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Volker Bertelmann, better known under his stage name, Hauschka, follows in the footsteps of experimental composers John Cage and Erik Satie, experimenting with prepared piano sounds. Bertelmann, who is based in Düsseldorf, Germany, manipulates traditional piano sounds by affixing different objects to the instrument’s inner workings. The resultant sound is one of surprising flexibility, as Bertelmann MacGyvers his way into a world of original sounds and unexplored sonic terrain. Here, he shares a playlist of his favorite experimental, acoustic tunes.

Experimental Music with Acoustic Sound Sources
by Volker Bertelmann

1. NSI: “Track #15” from NSI plays Non Standards

This track is a wonderful example of processing the piano sounds to get into a dark tone area. I like the modulation inside.

Kid Koala

Concert Photos: Kid Koala @ Abbey Pub (Chicago, IL)

Fresh off a residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, a new graphic novel (Space Cadet), and a new album with The Slew, Québec-based turntable king and visual artist Kid Koala is on tour in the USA and Canada. Though this show in Chicago was relatively standard (if you consider a koala suit, projections, shooting bubbles with water guns, and impeccable technique standard), Koala has something truly special planned for future audiences: The Space Cadet Headphone Tour. Attendees will sit in “space pods,” listening via headphones to a performance featuring seven turntables and a piano. Visuals from his graphic novel will accompany the music. Consider yourself warned, and check out these photos from Lauren Herrmann.

Kid Koala

Sharon Van Etten

Guest Spots: Sharon Van Etten’s ideal drinking partners

Sharon Van Etten: EpicSharon Van Etten: Epic (Ba Da Bing, 9/21/10)

Sharon Van Etten: “Don’t Do It”

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Sharon Van Etten was on the road to becoming a full-blown wine snob. After discovering its magic as a high-school exchange student in Spain, she worked for a time in a wine store and even took classes to increase her vino know-how. Eventually, she decided to pursue music full time instead. The folk singer/songwriter released her second full-length, Epic, late last year. Here, she addresses her passion for wine and explains the five people with which she’d want to share a bottle.

Five People (Living or Dead) I Would Love to Share a Bottle of Wine with and Why
by Sharon Van Etten

The Five People:  Anaïs Nin, Woody Allen, Bill Murray, PJ Harvey, and Rainer Maria Rilke.

The Wine:  A red wine from Bandol in Southeast France. The Mourvèdre grape adds body and spice; the wine embodies the garrigue landscape aromas of lavender, rosemary, licorice, and thyme. Paired with garlic-based dishes such as aioli. Known as one of the five noble wines. France is a country of passion, expression, and class, as are my five guests.

Q&A: Lanu

Lanu: Her 12 Faces (Tru Thoughts, 4/19/11)

Lanu: “Beautiful Trash”

Lanu: Beautiful Trash

In order to fulfill his eclectic musical interests, producer/multi-instrumentalist Lance Ferguson created a separate solo image known as Lanu. Vastly divergent from his work with Australian funk/soul band The Bamboos, Lanu’s material combines dreamy pop melodies with hip-hop beats and electronic atmospheres to create a tasteful, lounge-worthy sound.

Lanu’s recently released second album, Her 12 Faces, displays a realized emphasis on songwriting and -crafting. But the 12-track collection also handsomely balances instrumental tunes with lush vocals by Australian pop star Megan Washington and others. Here, Lanu discusses his progression as a solo artist, working with the French language, and collaborating with Washington his newest record.

What couldn’t you achieve with The Bamboos that you’ve done with Lanu?

I try to push [The Bamboos] as far as I can, but at the end of the day, it’s still basically a soul/funk band. I’ve tried to sort of push the boundaries within those genres, but there are things I simply couldn’t do in The Bamboos —  I couldn’t really do a folk song or I couldn’t do stuff that’s too electronic. I guess for a while I was trying to use The Bamboos as a vehicle for all the music I liked, but I realized that there was this stuff that would never really fit. So I went back to my solo project and thought, “This is the best place to do this kind of stuff” — more electronic-based things and pop influences as well.

Arkan

The Metal Examiner: Arkan’s Salam

Every Friday, The Metal Examiner delves metal’s endless depths to present the genre’s most important and exciting albums.

Arkan: SalamArkan: Salam (Season of Mist, 4/18/11)

Arkan: “Origins”

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Despite some great successes, aspirations to incorporate “world” music into metal has also managed to sink countless bands along the way. Ambition and intention aside, most efforts came off as gimmicky or, even worse, just plain silly.

French melodic-death-metal outfit Arkan showed that it was the real deal with its 2008 debut, Hilal, by delivering on the promise of a more Eastern brand of metal — one not just splashed with Arabian and Occidental influences but fully fused with them. Whereas some bands merely branch out into Eastern sounds, Arkan emerges with fully planted roots. Hilal was not perfect, but the follow-up, Salam (Arabic for “peace”), picks up where its predecessor left off, smoothing out what rough edges existed and pushing the band’s sound to its limit.

Tune-Yards

Concert Photos: Tune-Yards @ Lincoln Hall (Chicago, IL)

Hot on the heels of releasing her second full-length, Whokill, Merrill Garbus (better known as Tune-Yards) took to the stage at Lincoln Hall in Chicago to crank out a few jams in her signature, inspired, on-the-fly style. Garbus builds layers on stage by recording and looping drum and vocal patterns, creating diverse, avant-garde sounds that jump from classic doo-wop melodies to groove-heavy, jazz-influenced electronic pastiches. Photographer Elizabeth Gilmore was on hand for the performance.

Tune-Yards

Gutbucket

Guest Spot: Gutbucket explains how to argue about food

GutbucketGutbucket: Flock (Cuneiform, 2/22/11)

Gutbucket: “4 9 8”

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Brooklyn-based jazz-rock quartet Gutbucket released its fifth album, Flock, in February on Cuneiform. The band takes its name from the term “gutbucket,” which means to play jazz in a particularly exuberant or expressive style, and it claims that its unconventional style has been “injecting a shot of glorious spazmitude into the minimalist cool of the New York downtown scene” for the past 10 years.

Gutbucket’s off-the-wall music is the result of its members’ distinct contributions and, inevitably, artistic disagreements and compromises. When it comes to food, Gutbucket engages in a similar, hotly contested discourse. So whet your appetite and embrace the taste-bud-inspired tongue lashings with Gutbucket’s culinary treatise, “How to Argue About Food.”

How to Argue About Food
by Gutbucket

Most bands break up. It’s a fact. Rock bands do this quite a bit, and it’s often not very friendly. Jazz bands might be a bit more civil about it, or perhaps not. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been in a band before, so this is not unfamiliar terrain.

Take three or more humans engaged in a creative endeavor, and ideas, visions, aesthetics, and more will clash. So how do you handle this?

Well, Gutbucket has the answer.

Forget about consensus. Don’t pretend you will agree. Embrace the friction, disagreement, discomfort, and argumentative spirit.

But please have other outlets and arenas besides your music in which to behave this way.

That’s why Gutbucket chooses to argue, debate, dissect, and regularly disagree about food. Yes, food. We are a band of music nerds who spend most of our time talking about food instead of music.