minus the Univac

Katie Naquin, "Orange as Hippos". Oil on canvas, on display at LSU's Middleton Library.
See more of her work at WallsCanTalkGalley.com.

Friday:
New Order, "Blue Monday" (12" Mix)
Can, Tago Mago
Various Artists, Tackhead Sound Crash Slash and Mix by Adrian Sherwood
Ruts D.C. vs. Zion Train, Rhythm Collision Vol. 1
Ghost, Opus Eponymous
Kvelertak, Kvelertak
Sleep, Jerusalem

Saturday: 
Jimbo Mathus & the Tri-State Coalition at Chelsea's Cafe, Baton Rouge, LA


Sunday: 
Roberto Bolaño, The Third Reich

Monday:
Songs: Ohia, Axxess & Ace and The LionessPhosphorescent, Here's To Taking it EasySol Invictus, Black Europe
Henry Brant, Wesleyan Gamelan, and others, Meteor Farm
Joe Byrd & the Field Hippies, The American Metaphysical Circus
Jimbo Mathus, Knockdown South

• According to the Blogger stats, we've hit 125K page views on this little blog. Thanks!
     
• I'm not really sure how to describe Henry Brant's Meteor Farm. It sounds like a live dress rehearsal of Glee, a phalanx of beplumed native drummers, a holiday jazz band concert, and a Univac going to town on interstellar gas cloud data all happening on the same stage, each rotating through their parts like serves in volleyball, all muttering "I got it" when the ball comes back over the net. Does that help?
  
  I just found some liner notes that pretty much line up with my description, minus the Univac. Brant's music as I understand it, is very much about sounds' position  in space. I'm picturing all these groups on a massive stage with a harried stage director, clipboard in sweaty palm just trying to keep everything moving.
  
  Whatever is going on, it has the massive the-earth-is-moving consciousness about it that I appreciate from the large-scale activities of the avant-garde composers. I suppose this is the thrill of any symphony or symphonic pop configuration, but when guys like Brant pull things apart and leave them all stretched out under the proscenium arch is when things really click in my brain. Section 12, when it all sounds like it's about to be run over by a train, is a dazzling constellation of anxiety.
     
• Jimbo Mathus's cosmic crew might be the best bar band I've ever seen, in a meta-bar band way, or even maybe in a meta-meta-bar band that circles around to just being a great bar band and finding the material to suit (and Nudie suit) the context. I was gonna regret not shooting a video but thankfully some kind obsessive did it for me and us, one and all. My world blogs itself!
  
  
  Jimbo Mathus & the Tri-State Coalition, "Tell It to the Judge"
      
• See, if I had his band, or his position to have a similar band or at least the wherewithal to wear a Nudie suit on occasion, I'd want to do songs like this.
  
  
  Joe Byrd & the Field Hippies, "Nightmare Train"
     
• and talk about avant-garde composers between the songs, and nobody wants that.  It's probably best that this is my venue.
  
  125,000 idle blog clicks can't be wrong!