Avant Music News

From DC’s Sonic Circuits:

Sunday April 19
Doors 630pm Music 7pm SHARP
$7

PYRAMID ATLANTIC
8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring MD 20910
301.608.9101
located three blocks south of the silver spring metro station (red line)
Free parking in gated lot out front
INFO: www.dc-soniccircuits.org
DIRECTIONS: www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org

BROWN WING OVERDRIVE
Chuck Bettis, Mikey IQ Jones, and Derek Morton are mad jugglers of oddly-shaped musical eggs. Processed banjo, shamanistic chants, and fried electronics set up against lattices of stuttered beatboxing and found-object percussion to confound and delight.

Chuck Bettis and Derek Morton met each other in Washington DC, crossing paths as part of that citys burgeoning experimental music community. Upon relocating to New York City, the two began collaborating as a duo before IQ Jones joined them in early 2007. IQs alarm clocks, duck calls, and array of unlikely sound devices provide a lively counterpoint to Bettis machine noise and Mortons chaotic circuits.

In the 90s, Chuck Bettis shook up Washington DC with no-wavers the Metamatics, his solo electronics moniker Trance and the Arcade, and the genre-traversing collective All Scars before relocating to NYC in 2002. He has since collaborated with revered downtown improvisers John Zorn, Fred Frith, and Ikue Mori (amongst others), and has recorded with such groups as Nautical Almanac, Yellow Swans, and Measles Mumps Rubella.

NYC-based vocalist/percussionist/one-man bomb squad Mikey IQ Jones has presented frankensteined collusions of performance art theatrics, mutant soul harmonies, beatbox & extended vocal technique, kitchen-sink live sampling aesthetics, and onomatopoeic wordplay in solo performances since 2003. His otherworldly rhythms, created exclusively with the sounds of IQs voice and a small handful of household objects, have captivated crowds and crossed genre-lines, resulting in performances from CBGBs and the downtown improv school to uptown hip-hop block parties and choreography collaboration.

Derek Morton has generated and manipulated sound since the early 1990s. From his days as a rock guitarist and record label owner to more recent forays into performance curating and gallery installation, he has relentlessly investigated the possibilities of audio in all contexts. He is equally interested in live improvisation, studio research, exploratory composition, and electronic reconfiguration. Mortons sound experiments have attacked everything from cutting-edge technologies like surround-sound to reinvented tools like handheld video game consoles and controllers. His work with violinist John Coursey in the duo Mikroknytes has resulted in numerous performances around the U.S. as well as four full-length CDs.

http://brownwingoverdrive.com/

U.S. Girls
If the alluring moniker used by Megan Remy conjures images of volleyball teams or cheerleading squads, forget it. Not that there’s any doubt that Remy–sorry, U.S. Girls–couldn’t rise and conquer either challenge.
Like fellow DIY ingenues Sally Strobelight and Inca Ore, U.S. Girls’ approach is deceptively ethereal and delightfully haunting; lithe, lysergic gamma rays of keyboard murk beamed over percussive bonk sort of resemble Diamanda Galas reinterpreting Suicide’s Red Star. And dig that cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Prove It All Night,” done in such an effortless, barbital lush you’d swear the air was filled with mescaline. Guess what? It’s not.

http://www.myspace.com/usgirlsss

Pilesar
A kind of warped antidote to most of the over-earnest indie rock that tends to dominate the airwaves, Pilesar is disposable, playful, intermittently brilliant nonsense, conjured on a four-track using a bunch of cheap instruments. He kicks your butt and you enjoy it in the process.

http://pilesarmusic.com/

Corpus Callosum
Corpus Callosum is Doug S. (amplified cello & effects) and Scott N. (arp analogy synthesizer, roland 808-ex, and effects/loops). Together we focus on a mix of melodic and atonal drones. The music is inspired by musicians who have explored the impact of frequencies on the conscious and unconscious mind as well as feelings of despair triggered by empathy for those who suffer day in and day out often as a result of third world exploitation.

http://www.myspace.com/corpuscallosummeltsskulls

COMING UP
April 22
A very Special Evening with Professor Eugene Chadborne
8pm $8

April 23
MEM1, Area C, Fast Forty
8pm $7