The Round of 64 for Sound of the City's own version of March Madness—in which you, the Sound of the City voting public, help determine the quintessential New York musician—continues, and you get to vote on who makes it to Round Two. We'll have some first-round results later today, but for now, Brooklyn's top seed Jay-Z takes on the recently disbanded electro-skronk outfit Parts & Labor. Check out the arguments in favor of each contender, and vote at our Facebook page.
In Waste Of Paint, our writer/artist team of Jamie Peck and Debbie Allen will review goings-on about town in words and images.
This weekend brought the end of one driving force in underground music and the beginnings of a new one, all within the confines of 285 Kent. But I'm not going to turn that into a sign of the times re: Where New York's Sound Is Headed, because that would be depressing. (It would also not be true.)
Brooklyn's econo-electronics-mishmashing, art-rocking noisemakers Parts & Labor are calling it a day and throwing a farewell jamz bash to ring in the band's indefinite hiatus on Friday at 285 Kent. Conceived in the early aughts by electronic gnaw artists and dueling vocalists Dan Friel and (bassist) BJ Warshaw, Parts & Labor were an omnipresent and major force in Brooklyn's DIY spaces. P&L played a slew of gigs over the last decade and had a killer five-album stretch of noise-rock deconstructionist glory, crash 'n' burn sonic melodies, arena-wired anthemry and throbbing dissonance. And the alliance the band formed with the likes of local buds Oneida, Liars, Black Dice and Yeah Yeah Yeahs helped morph the borough from barren wasteland into choice music destination, for better or for worse.
In Waste Of Paint, our writer/artist team of Jamie Peck and Debbie Allen will review goings-on about town in words and images.
What is it about the area around South 2nd Street and Kent Avenue that makes it a magnet for good D.I.Y. venues? Is it the tidal pull of the moon? Some type of harmonic convergence? Plain old coincidence? Whatever the cause, I really like being able to bounce back and forth between Glasslands, 285 Kent and Death By Audio. May they never be purchased by developers and turned into garishly lit pharmacies.
Noveller is the nom de musique of Sarah Lipstate, whose precise compositions build on a cathartic repetition of righteous riff aktion colored with gorgeous loopingfuckdoodlery and noise gush. Live, it's just Lipstate, all by her lonesome, just the way she likes it, slinging her guitar with rows upon rows of pedals at her feet while abstract, mind-bending visuals play behind her. She's not partial to "band" situations—but more on that later.
The Branca/Chatham/No Wave disciple has been a Brooklyn mainstay since arriving in 2007, pulling guitar duty for electronics-twiddling noiserock mashmongers Parts & Labor (she quit) and minimalist synth-popsters Cold Cave (she got kicked out) before focusing on Noveller full-time.
Lipstate has a mesmerizing new LP called Glacial Glow, releases her own shit via her own Saffron Recordings label, and tours in her sister's Jeep. She recently paired up with Lee Ranaldo and played with feuding guitar army visionaries Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham; she also serves as mentor and frequent collaborator for Jesus Lizard bassist David Wm. Sims and his experimental solo project, unFact. We had a lot to talk about.
Guardian Alien's Greg Fox, in the house that Parts and Labor built. Pics by Rebecca.
On a quiet residential block near the BQE in Greenpoint, a vacant former convent and schoolhouse came alive on Saturday thanks to a collective called Rabid Handsand 60 or so artists they invited to collaborate with them on an exhibition utilizing "sound as the organizing and uniting principle." The four-story, single-day show, called "Sequence of Waves," had almost as many rooms as artists, with no bathroom, broom closet, or dishwasher left uninvolved. Most of the works were site-specific installations invoking both sonic and visual concepts; many were interactive and could be "played."
The seven hours during which the exhibit was open to the public also included a full schedule of musical performances, and huge crowds turned out, at times creating gridlock. The budget for this spectacle, according to Rabid Hands' Nick Chatfield-Taylor -- who dutifully manned the door all day, politely soliciting donations -- was nonexistent; artists relied at least partly on salvaged materials.
It would be hard to call the combined show of effort and creativity on display (and the overall sensory experience of exploring the sprawling exhibit) anything less than epic. Even if some rooms disappointed, the exhibit as a whole was still above and beyond, certainly not the kind of thing that happens every week even around here, the center of the cultural universe. That this affair was one-day-only is a shame, but so it goes -- a film crew is moving into the freshly de-installed space first thing Tuesday morning.
When last we heard from Brooklyn noise-rock trio Parts & Labor, it was 2008, and they'd just made their emo-fuzz masterpiece, Recievers, a startlingly epic journey through a couple of seven-minute songs and a bunch of really pleasant melodies. It's taken them two years, but a follow up is finally nigh: Constant Future, the band's new record, is due on March 8th. Hear the record's Oneida-tight and vaguely countrified first single and title track right here:
YIMBY columnist Chris Weingarten's contribution used the album as a platform for what appears to be... well, let's leave it to Chris, who chimes in with an update. "My piece is the jar itself, which is full of water and the record after put it in a blender. No bodily fluids were harmed in the making of this piece."
Damn, there was a plethora of lady parts at the Front Room Galleries last night in DUMBO--not a bunch, not a lot, a plethora. Makes sense. This was the opening of an art show where the white vinyl-sleeved 12-inch single of Ninjasonik's party-rap threat "Somebody Gonna Get Pregnant" was the primary canvas. So affixed to walls last night was an album cover, unfolded, and rigged to resemble a baby ninja emerging from a rather gruesome birth canal. It looked, harrowingly, like a spread from an adult pop-up book.
Please join us in congratulating SOTC faves Parts & Labor for being asked to play this spring's All Tomorrow's Parties: The Fans Strike Back in Minehead, England. For the upcoming installment of the Best Music Festival Series Ever, the weekend's 6000 ticket-buyers curate one day by individually choosing ten bands they'd like to see. Invitations have been rolling out at regular intervals since December 1, mostly to the top four vote-getters. But then a few weeks ago, Parts & Labor finished last in the results--100 out of 100 bands--and "in a somewhat counter-intuitive stroke of luck" were asked to play. Brilliant.
Better still: MGMT were also invited, but, like Kraftwerk and Tom Waits, were deemed "too expensive." Hahahahahaha!
Sound of the City roots for the home team and so does Impose Magazine's Jeremy Krinsley.
Parts & Labor's "Fractured Skies": the real star of this fixed-gear porn video "Empire"
While I will make no attempt to encapsulate the massive invasion of time, space, and taste that is CMJ, I would like to direct you to a few of the "best of CMJ" posts for your own amusement and perusal. If I were to make a scoreboard, meticulously calculating the bands who everyone decided were the most important and exciting to grace the Lower East Side and/or Williamsburg, I would be forced to note that Crystal Stilts have apparently shown up on more radars than anyone else. I would have preferred people to get excited about Women, but that's just me.
Zach and Camille talked about Crystal Antlers, Tripwire liked Ponytail, Tobacco, and Women (well done), Stereogum liked Ponytail and Crystal Stilts (and six others), Spin has heard of Crystal Stilts, Amy Phillips hearts Marnie Stern, and Marnie Stern watching other bands play, and digging on Molly Siegel's dolphin singing. Craziest shit? Perennially, the Panache showcase.
Parts & Labor quietly slipped out of town on the heels of the release of Receivers—their latest, smoothest, and many people's favorite of their three Jagjaguwar albums. Before leaving Brooklyn for greener touring pastures, they played the Not-CMJ Impose show-as-record-release-party, showed off their dirty toilets and fat-reducing machines on this lil blog, and were given a round of warm, fuzzy critical thumbs ups. Upon leaving for tour, they've also updated their website (it now includes a full stream of the new album) and created a toll free number (888 317 5596) where you can "leave sound" that they'll incorporate into their live show.
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