Dienstag, Oktober 23/2007 - 9 pm
Berlin: Maria Am Ostbahnhof : Schillingbrücke/Kreuzberg.
Daniel Higgs (of Lungfish) Dischord/Thrill Jockey – (USA)
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dan higgsWith the appearance of a heavily bearded tattooed prophet, Daniel Higgs emerged from the early-'80s hardcore punk scene as an underground icon with a near-mythological status. He sharpened his teeth in the music scene as a wild-eyed vocalist in the legendary Baltimore hardcore group Reptile House. Brewing a dark psychedelic sound with early-'80s hardcore energy and aesthetics, they earned a solid following and a lasting reputation due to debauchery at their live shows.
As the lead singer of the definitive band Lungfish, Higgs' stage presence was part Jim Morrison stream-of-consciousness poetry and part G.G. Allin unbridled lunacy. In his shows, he evoked specters of Franz Kafka and Walt Whitman in his lyrics while performing outrageous shenanigans like rolling his eyes back like a madman and trying to pull his own tongue out, or stabbing himself in the forehead with a safety pin while spouting rants about the Antichrist. Some consider his unabashed freakouts nonsensical; others consider them an art form of the purest kind. After ten records with Dischord, Higgs dabbled in conceptual art, formed a side project with his brother called Cone of Light, and created several books of poetry. His first solo album was recorded in 2006 and released on Holy Mountain and combined minimal meditative hillbilly blues, Eastern mysticism, and lyrics about physical and ethereal demise at the hands of demons. The beautifully packaged Atomic Yggdasil Tarot is newly released by Thrill Jockey in June 2007, and combines a book of his art and poetry with a CD of abstract lo-fi instrumental drones, with intentions of conjuring a tarot-like force when experienced simultaneously.
Vanishing Voice (of Wooden Wand, Magik Markers) 5RC, Important -- (USA)
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vanishing voiceVanishing Voice originally played with Wooden Wand, beginning around 2003 in Staten Island, New York. Wooden Wand & Vanishing Voice jammed, recorded and toured extensively, the lineup fluctuated, but the road dogs were usually the same. In the last couple years, since Wooden Wand and Satya Sai moved to the south and worked on their solo side of things, the Vanishing Voice has continued as a band and kept on playing with Pete Nolan/Magik Markers. Our recordings have generally been a core of four people, though the band has varied at times (recent releases include “Stone Tablet” on Important Records and “Nordic Visions” on Gipsy Sphinx). Heidi Diehl and G. Lucas Crane/Nonehorse will use treated guitars n tapes for the drone side of the Vanishing Voice project and extensively screen their selfmade new videos.
“On “Stone Tablet”, their debut outing for Important, Vanishing Voice (sans Wooden Wand) give us another heaping spoonful of freaked out forest psyche madness. Composed of two tracks (with a mysteriously extra song title but no song), the first is the epic 40 minute title track (or it could be called "Peace Symbols", -we're very confused on the song listing), which takes on a long whirling vortex of clattering percussion (provided by Magik Marker's Pete Nolan) and damaged electronic passages before propelling momentously forward with a Krautrock-like acid jam. The second song (we think it's called "The Last Evil") begins with a twisted sing-a-long that reminds us of "On Top of Old Smokey" but perhaps sung by the mutant children from the recent remake of The Hills Have Eyes, before developing into further mutated lo-fi weirdness.”
Aquarius Records
Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat (Kraak, Implied Sound) Belgium ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kiss the AnusThe young Belgian ruler of Apocalyptic Folk, Stef Heeren, after his much aclaimed debut album of last year, returns with an amazing follow up. “An Interlude For The Outermost” combines the dark mantra-ish folk of his first record with sharpened folkrock, intense melodies and heart-ripped spleen. His punkroots are still clearly present in his powerful voice, the themes are still slightly pagan. The difference with “If The Sky Falls, We Shall Catch Larks” is the fact that on the new album we much more hear the product of a band, with profound arrangements and detailed production. “An Interlude For The Outermost” has become the masterpiece we all expected from Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat.
The recordings of “An Interlude For The Outmost” already started in August 2006, when Heeren, together with guitar player De Maré and drummer David Stubbe (ex-Thee Plague Of Gentlemen) took a room in art center Vooruit (Ghent) to record the basics of the new album. With this rock line-up he has clearly found his thing, and presents us the new album that is definitely one of the highlights of the contemporary darkfolk movement.
SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN (Ecstatic Peace, Smalltown Supersound) USA --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sunburnedSunburned Hand Of The Man is a legendary collective of changing memberships from Boston/NYC. Their rhythmic and fluid jams are variations on a theme is what you might call free improvisational in those upcoming rites of spring. A cloud of psychedelic raga flow like Miles Davis on Water Babies and On The Corner – though only their trumpet player had not gone lost on the long way to Hugmaglog. We heard Herbie Hancock might jump in, for sure Mick Flower, Paul Flaherty and Christina Carter did. Thurston Moores next fave band. Check their records on Eclipse and Ecstatic Peace.
"Sunburned live-set is a lot to take in; the stage is loaded with a hoard of Sweat-Hog stunt-doubles wading through patch-cords and toppling over hand-drums, and twiddling knobs, and shaking shakers and bells and cymbals, and futzing with fritzing primitive drum-machines, and fingering electric guitars, and dry-humping bass guitars, and prodding propulsive often-times motorik drum-kit'd linearity. But they come on slow, whipping sound(s)into stiff-peaks over an intangibly long time; adding to and subtracting from and fortunately ameliorating prior sporadic sound(s) to craft a big mass of undulating boogie that metastasizes through your auditory canals and gets you shaking your ass just like the I-don't-dance guy right next to you" – Stylus Magazine.
"These guys play music that can only be described as extremely fúcked up. Either they're rocking it hard with crushing riffs, barrages of noise, feedback galore, and manic percussion, or they slow things down for expansive, brilliant psych-cum-avant-cum-what-the-fúck shít." – Indieville.com
PLUS: Visuals by Sunburned & Vanishing Voice
DJs: Humdrum Collective
Doors: 9 pm
flyer 23.10.
