Last night, I stopped by the Whole at U of M’s Coffman Union to catch free sets of experimental music from local musician Andrew Broder (of Fog) and Madison-based Frail By Design as part of Spring Jam week. Photo coverage from the performances continues below.
(Andrew Broder)
(Andrew Broder)
(Andrew Broder)
(Frail By Design)
(Frail By Design)
(Frail By Design)
More photos from the show after the jump!… Continue reading
University of Minnesota’s Spring Jam is going on all weekend, and besides being the first major celebration of drinking around campus for the spring, the event usually is the first major free music event in the city, as well. Unofficially, the festivities kick off tomorrow when NYC’s acoustic experimentalists in Mountains descend into the Whole at U of M’s Coffman Union for a free gig with Minneapolis-based ambient/experimental musician Andrew Broder of Fog and Madison ambient post-rockers in Frail By Design (featuring bass skills from good friend and fellow U student Dan Jin). All three acts will be supporting new releases; Frail By Design just released their Time Traveler EP, Mountains third full length Choral came out in February, and Broder is having one of the most prolific years imaginable, so far self-releasing 9 albums of his solo experimentations for free download via a personal online directory (including one called Spirals that was uploaded yesterday!). If unconventional rock is your sort of thing, or even if you just want to start your Spring Jam a bit early, come down to the Whole to lose yourself in some ethereal, unorthodox jams from a superb collection of up-and-coming acts. For the price of FREE, this is a concert you can’t afford to miss.
University of Minnesota
The Whole Music Club
Thursday, April 23, 2009
8pm – FREE
Talk about a rare opportunity to see a band live. Here is an awesome (and truly beyond rare) video of Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk playing a nearly 30 minute Dj set in France in 2005.
Awesome would be an understatement. The man spins not only his own material but a plethora of different club bangers as well (Prodigy?!). It’s a must see for any fan of Daft Punk or for any fan of electronic music. I’ll stop talking so you can go watch.
Justice and Daft Punk all lovey dovey
Catch the madness HERE
After the Burial is yet another example of the prime progressive death metal that the Twin Cities is home to these days, and even though 99% of Minneapolitans probably don’t know who they are, there are legions of fans that wait for them to play shows around the globe. With the support of Sumerian Records and a fervent underground of young “deathcore” fans (and, yes, Myspace), After The Burial is one of the few Twin Cities metal bands that have garnered enough acclaim to transition into full-blown 24/7 touring status in the last 10 years. Though they still are kind enough to grace us with a local show every now and again, these days they are proud to be rubbing elbows with names such as Machine Head, Necrophagist, Suffocation, and Dying Fetus and count rising acts such as Suicide Silence and Emmure as good friends. Whatever way you look at it, it seems like After the Burial is poised to be landing some very big tours over the next few years; in unofficial terms, I think you could unofficially christen them as this generation’s ambassadors of MN metal. Better yet, Minnesota’s ambassadors of the breakdown!
If you’ve yet to hear After the Burial and their technical-yet-catchy death metal/hardcore punk hybrid, watch this video of “Cursing Akenaten” they recorded last month at Station 4 in St. Paul to get acquainted.The dualing guitars on foreign-sounding 8-string lead are undeniably cool, and the young band has an arsenal of twisted breakdowns that were guaranteed to make the hometown crowd move. It’s nearly impossible to get good footage out of Station 4, so I’ll give them big kudos for shooting a high quality (seemingly pro) live video there either way! It gives you an accurate picture of what it’s like to see a show at this venue, and it’s a great representation of their powerful live set. Cheers to the future, guys..
Day after day I checked my mailbox after class, and day after day I was disappointed. But alas, this past week finally brought great joy to my world, as my Miroir Noir special edition DVD finally arrived in the mail. It’s been a few months since the first announcements for this documentary, which features Arcade Fire and everything surrounding the release of Neon Bible in 2007, surfaced and I couldn’t try and count how many times I had watched the trailer. And when Pitchfork streamed it for a week I managed to only watch about 5 minutes, as to not ruin the arrival of my leather bound accordion styled DVD case.
So hype abound and anticipation boiling over, I watched Miroir Noir from start to finish and immediately followed it with the special features disc. I couldn’t get enough Neon Bible. Which is interesting to note because that album really put me off for about a year before I finally started enjoying it.
The way the Documentary is shot is amazing, first off. I’ve seen various live DVDs and documentaries by now, and I enjoy most of them merely for the fact that they offer a different view about said band without really doing anything too crazy or original. But the fascination I now have with Miroir Noir stems from the fact that it mixes behind the scenes bits with well shot and breathtaking live tracks. Most interestingly though, it integrates one of the best fan involved projects ever: the Neon Bible telephone hotline. Playing various clips from fans (and one guy they apparently lost and who would have been “the greatest fan ever”) overtop of some abstractly shot yet perfectly placed scenes makes the documentary sometimes feel more like a movie than a straight live compilation.
There’s one scene in particular, where Regine is just running down the beach as the camera follows. It’s incredibly shaky and half-hard to make out who it is at first, but then to see the members of Arcade Fire like Regine with their guard down and their smiles wide is an engrossing feeling (almost like when the percussion parts collide in “My Body is a Cage”). Another thing that astonished me was the way Win Butler was portrayed through all of it. I sort of always took him for a complete asshole, a man who seemed closed off and very bitter yet powerful. But in Miroir Noir there’s a scene of him and another band member just dancing around while he lip syncs and smiles; it’s revealing, and it’s something that a lot of other documentaries never really touch on: the human side of things.
Seeing the glee in Regine’s eyes and voice when she finally gets to record “No Cars Go” with a full orchestra is beautiful. The examples
go on and on, and sometimes out-do the brilliant filming done during the live shows. Close up, perfect audio, and great crowd clips all coupled with a few times when the camera work is so great you forget about the music itself make the DVD a worthy purchase for any and all Arcade Fire fans.
I own the special edition, which features some great clips if you can afford the $25 price point instead of $15. A couple of SNL clips, including the hard to find parts when their sound gets cut out and they perform in the crowd. An extensive and awesome BBC session (worth the ten dollars alone) and then some other late night takes as well. Coupled with the better packaging and you’re looking at a great collector’s item if you’re a big fan of their work.
As far as documentaries go… 9.5/10
Directed by: Vincent Morisset
Shot by: Vincent Moon
The infamous death metal superstars in Cannibal Corpse were gracious enough to bring the prestigious death metal package they’re headlining with The Faceless, Neuraxis, and Obscura to the Station 4 metal club in St. Paul, MN on Friday, April 17th. Throughout the night, the music in the air was of the most savage kind imaginable; brutal-fucking-death metal in layman’s terms. Predictably, my mind and body both took on a lot of abuse Friday night, and it has taken me a few days to come back to my senses enough to finally put this post together.
Obscura came highly recommended from several “internet” friends of mine, and I was pretty bummed when traffic kept me from missing the first half of their set 
(sorry for the lack of photos because of this). Even as the openers, their technical death metal commanded the attention of the already fully packed venue and their skills especially shined on some of the heaviest tracks from their newest Cosmogenesis. French-Canadian hardcore/tech-death mainstays in Neuraxis followed suit with an incredibly tight set, despite the fact that their bassist was still held back in Canada due to a visa dispute. The band were probably pretty excited to be opening for Corpse either way, and just turned the distortion a bit higher to compensate for the lack of low-end. Personally, I was most impressed with the opening set from the young technical death metal band The Faceless on Friday; having spent the last half of a year on the road opening for some of the best death metal bands in the world, the band seems to be operating on another plateau of confidence these days and it shows. Their set was perfect, and I’ve got nothing else to say besides that. Cannibal Corpse came out on stage to the kind of maniacal, rabid crowd that only the most extreme cult bands can be proud to call their own. This is a band is still referenced as one of the most overtly violent and sexual bands in history; they pioneered a style that a million death metal bands have tried to emulate, and their set that night was as vulgar, vicious, and violent as they could make possible. During their performance, Corpse proved their still on top of theirgame and had the crowd going crazy for songs from all eras, from Tomb of the Mutilated and Butchered at Birth on to the newest Evisceration Plague. It was an impressive performance that had the crowd and band band feeding off each other in a celebration of the sickest side of metal .
Despite being scared for my safety more than a few times, I was brave enough to stick my arm out and snap a few photos as well as videos of Cannibal Corpse’s “I Cum Blood” and “Hammer Smashed Face” and “Xenochrist” by the Faceless. The media portion of the recap continues below!
VIDEO: Cannibal Corpse, “I Cum Blood” (live at Station 4, 4/17/09)
(Cannibal Corpse)
(Cannibal Corpse)
(Cannibal Corpse)
(Cannibal Corpse)
(Cannibal Corpse)
VIDEO: The Faceless, “Xenochrist” (live at Station 4, 4/17/09)
(The Faceless)
(The Faceless)
(The Faceless)
(The Faceless)
(Neuraxis)
(Neuraxis)
(Neuraxis)
Fans of Corpse, don’t stop reading now.. We’ve got a full live video of the cult classic “Hammer Smashed Face” waiting for you right after the jump! Continue reading
Great blog. Great bands. Great club. The weather’s looking nice this week and it’s a excellent time to party, so stop by the Turf Club tomorrow to support an awesome show sponsored by our friends at More Cowbell! Thanks to them for 5 years of dedicated blogging. Romantica, The Absent Arch, and The Evening Rig will be performing.
Every so often, the entertainment opportunities in this city really put you into some tough spots, and the choices I had to make last Friday (April 10, 2009) were some of the hardest I’ve had to make in a while. Throughout the week I wrestled between going to one of several shows on 4/10, and in the end I decided to attend the return to the Twin Cities for the progressive rockers in Dredg at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown featuring highly acclaimed support from the likes of Torche and From Monument to Masses (forgoing the Acid Mother’s Temple set at 7th St. Entry as well as several other local shows that would have definitely been worthy of attendance). Luckily, the open-minded acts playing at the Varsity weren’t short to impress.
I hadn’t seen Dredg in nearly 4 years before their performance on Friday (since Rockstar Mayhem), and despite spending nearly a year off the road, the 
band was on point that night and ready to impress their ecelectic audience. With everyone from heavily bearded metalheads to formally dressed females in attendance, Dredg had to know that their opening acts and their dynamic catalog would be sure to attract a such a undefinable mix of people – which probably is why the band chose to spend fair amounts of time playing songs from all of their albums, including several songs from their forthcoming album The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion. Songs from the recent Catch Without Arms and El Cielo were sounding more impassioned and intimate this time around, and against the back drop of the Varsity their performance was even grander. Even Leitmotif got acknowledged with a performance of “Yatahaze” (video below) that ended with the band proclaiming, “whoa that felt good! We need to do that more often.” Throughout their performance, the entire crowd often sang above the band, and as anyone there would likely agree, we all agreed it was an amazing return.
Honestly, Torche was the band that I came to see, and even as a trio they’re still as massive as you might imagine. The band’s melodic stoner metal was perhaps a little heavier than most fans at the show had expected, but for those in attendance who knew what was up, the show was incredibly intense. Mostly playing songs from their recent instant-classic Meanderthal, the band charged through an energetic set of free-spirited doom rock that theatrically transitioned between mammoth sludge, doom-pop, noise rock, and good old fashioned heavy metal jams. By the time the band left the stage, their set surely won over more than a few people.
From Monument to Masses opened the show, supporting their recent On Little Known Frequencies album. Like Torche, FMTM is a trio that sounds much larger than you’d expect; the post-rock they play is a swirling, entrancing, heavy style of psych-rock that is layered with samples, effects, and multiple instruments by all three members as they push the unrelenting crescendos further and further. More like GY!BE than EITS, From Monument to Masses introduced the night with a beautiful, authentic, organic presentation that had all fans of the guitar quietly attentive.
To cap off the coverage of the show, we are lucky enough to present you with a whole mess of media we captured that night. We’ve got over 40 photos, video from Dredg (“Yatahaze”, “Same Ol’ Road”, and “Bug Eyes”) and Torche, so there’s no reason to stop reading now! Sit back, relax, and enjoy the rest of our recap of the stellar Friday night show at the Varsity…
VIDEO: Dredg, “Yatahaze”, (live at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis, MN 4/10/09)
(Dredg)
(Dredg)
(Dredg)
(Dredg)
(Dredg)
VIDEO: Torche, (live at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis, MN 4/10/09)
(Torche)
(Torche)
(Torche)
(Torche)
(From Monument to Masses)
(From Monument to Masses)
(From Monument to Masses)
VIDEO: Dredg, “Same Ol’ Road” (live at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis, MN 4/10/09)
Like always, keep reading because we’ve got many more awesome photos from this show after the jump (and even another video from Dredg’s set for their song “Bug Eyes”!). Just click the link… Continue reading
By the end of Andrew Bird‘s show Saturday night (April 11, 2009) at the State Theater in downtown Minneapolis you could have heard a pin drop. It wasn’t as though nobody was cheering because it was bad, for anybody who’s seen an Andrew Bird show before knows how amazing he is live. It was his double encore featuring the mesmerizing “Weather Systems” that put the crowd in a state of comatose as the man went to work with his violin and beautiful voice.
But as any good night begins, the opening act has to deliver as well. Haley Bonar, the Minneapolis native, took charge of the audience from her first track, commanding the crowd with her easy voice and shoe stomping music. I had written a little bit about a one Alela Diane a little while back, and Ms. Bonar reminded me exactly of her. And in a good way too, the way that the musician’s talent and enjoyable music can overcome the fact that their genre of music isn’t something I usually listen to. She played a great set, slow and fast paced songs, timely lyrics and a fun laid back attitude all combined to make her a welcome surprise.
It wasn’t just the fact that Andrew Bird’s encore seemed endless, it was everything leading up to that which was perfection as well. The way the man is able to create music, and piece together different violin lines or whistling sequences is astounding. Most of this has all been said before, it seems to be common knowledge that Bird is amazing live, but to finally see it in person I feel like I have to rave about it. How crystal clear he is able to keep his sound and the way his voice commands so much energy throughout the entire set also surprised me. Though he changed the tempo of delivery on a few lyrics, the way his voice actually sounds is just as beautiful as it is on record. He had a great rapport with the crowd, joking intermittently between nearly every track, somethings that few artists are able to capture. Of course I could gripe about what songs he did or didn’t play (just to note, I would have loved to have heard more Bowl of Fire and Armchair Apocrypha tracks) but I won’t get into that too much. I feel truly grateful and honored just to see him perform, Andrew Bird has a great gift and to be able to share that amount of time with him is a great feeling. The show was a spectacle of all that is concert going: perfect weather, an above awesome venue, an anxious and diverse crowd, an opening act that is surprisingly awesome, and most of all a great set from the big performer. Oh, and did I mention the encores too? I thought so.
Check out some great videos, one of “Imitosis” and the other of “Fake Palindromes”, & awesome pictures of each act below. Sorry if you had to miss it, but enjoy these nice keepsakes!
Video: Andrew Bird – “Fake Palindromes”
Video: Andrew Bird – “Imitosis”
Haley Bonar
(Andrew Bird)
(Andrew Bird)
(Andrew Bird)
(Andrew Bird)
(Andrew Bird)
(Andrew Bird)
(Andrew Bird)
(Andrew Bird)
(Haley Bonar
(Haley Bonar)
Continue reading after the jump for more photos and a complete set list from the show… Continue reading
Fucked Up played the Triple Rock Social Club on Wednesday, April 8, with local hardcore punks in Bring That Shit, post-hardcore band The Nina! The Pinta!, and crossover punks Totally Harsh supporting, and the show was nothing short of spectacular. Throughout their set, Canadian progressive hardcore punks in Fucked Up played with an untouchable fire, fueling the highly supportive crowd through one of most exciting and satisfying hardcore shows in recent memory. Truly, the refreshing nature of the set I saw on Wednesday night is hard to put into words; the band’s charismatic frontman Pink Eyes is a larger than life personality that had fans on the tip of their toes throughout their performance with his unpredictable antics, hilarious banter, and infectious enthusiasm while the three-guitar wall of hardcore noise provided the perfect soundtrack for the flying bodies and spontaneous mosh pits on the floor of the Triple Rock. While I had personally believed that the hardcore scene I once knew was dead and gone (and even though Fucked Up plays a much more adventurous style of hardcore than I’m used to), their performance proved that the passion for this kind of punk rock is still strong in the city of Minneapolis. Right now, I’d rank this as the best show I’ve seen this year, and it will be a hard one to top.
VIDEO: Fucked Up live @ Triple Rock Social Club on 4/8/09
**apologies for the long intro, but my iBook is horrible for editing and encoding videos and I wanted to get this post up before the weekend. Oh well; “Black Albino Bones” starts around 1:45**
(Fucked Up)
(Fucked Up)
(Fucked Up)
(Fucked Up)
(Fucked Up)
(Fucked Up)
(Fucked Up)
(Fucked Up)
(Bring That Shit)
(Bring That Shit)
(The Nina! The Pinta!)
(Totally Harsh)
Continue reading; I’ve got even more Fucked Up photos (and a video coming soon), after the jump! Continue reading
MIND INVERSION 