Crib Notes

Could this be the slice of irony Soulja Boy intended?

From the Eyedrum website:

About Niggaz With Gratitude
We are Niggaz With Gratitude. Based in Atlanta, Ga, we combine Hip Hop, Punk, Rock, Jazz and a few other genres to culminate our sound. Why name a group of black rockers, Niggaz With Gratitude? Because we are united as a band to say out loud, in our songs, that we are proud to be African Americans. We are forever thankful to White people for bringing our Black ancestors to this wonderful country of America. It is truly the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. As long as you pay your taxes of course… Seriously though, If our ancestors weren’t stolen and enslaved into this country we would still be in Africa. We’re happy to not be there. HIV, poverty and Maleria would be our only options. Here we have everything. And it’s because of White people that we do. We know our message might be a little unconventional, but every African American says what we say to themselves. We just have the balls to say it out loud! If we come to your town you will get ROCKED! We are on a mission from God to take rock music back for the people.

www.niggazwithgratitude.com

(note - this show is actually a film shoot for a satire mockumentary)

Surely, last week’s presidential election stole some thunder from their punchline. Shame on you, Barack Obama!

Niggaz With Gratitude perform and shoot mockumentary at Eyedrum. Donations requested. 9 p.m. Tonight. 290 Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. 404-522-0655. Visit the band’s MySpace page to hear music.

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I caught up with Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery’s Executive Director Robert Cheatham this morning. Naturally, with Eyedrum’s tenth anniversary happening this Saturday the conversation went there.

In addition to the normal rounds of music, sound installations, visual arts and mingling that goes on at these kinds of functions, Eyedrum is hosting its first awards ceremony in which they are giving out “Eddie awards” to folks in the community who have done their fair share of heavy lifting for the arts, but often go unsung.

Chad Radford:  What are the Eddies?

Robert Cheatham:  About two or three years ago I was pissed off with some of the awards ceremonies that Eyedrum had been invited to but didn’t win anything, so I wrote a letter to the board and said there needs to be an awards ceremony for the rest of us. It was sort of a tongue-in-cheek thing. The upper echelon was congratulating themselves left and right. So I proposed it, but over time my anger subsided, and with it my interest in the awards subsided, and then when we started talking about the tenth anniversary someone brought it up again.

Who decides the awards’ categories and winners?

There is a small committee of a few people – Eyedrum board members and other people from the community — that formed to decide who gets what and who gives them out.

What are some of the categories?

There’s one for “Best Atlanta Arts Activist,” “New Arts Administrator,” things like that. The awards themselves are basically modified thrift store items. They’re divided into two categories: Eyedrum stuff that’s given out to board members and things like that. There are also awards aimed toward the larger community, and those are handled a little more seriously. I’m getting an award for being the “Biggest Tool.” You can take that for whatever meaning you can find, but it’s pretty much for hanging the the walls and uplifting local discourse… that sort of thing.

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This Saturday, Oct. 11, Atlanta’s longest running, and totally volunteer-run nonprofit art and music gallery is celebrating 10 years of keeping Atlanta from completely falling prey to gentrification and big box strip malls.

Ten years is a solid run for Eyedrum that has seen comrade DIY and outsider strongholds, like IAG, ISP and Art Farm go the way of the Dodo. It is a time that also saw Eyedrum grow from being a handful of dedicated members giving it their all at the Trinity Ave. location, to a nationally respected Atlanta-based arts organization that boasts a board of over 20 members.

The celebration this Saturday, dubbed “A 10 Year Affair,” features performances from several local musical acts, including Judi Chicago, the Hotels, No Face and Matthew Proctor, along with DJs Zano and Chris Daresta. There is also an awards ceremony in which “Eddie Awards” are given out in recognition of Atlanta’s deserving but unheralded artists and venues.

There will also be a screening of the locally-produced documentary film, Eyedrum: The 10 Year Affair commemorative DVD.

WHEN: Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008, 8 p.m.-midnight.
WHERE: Eyedrum, 290 MLK Drive, Suite 8, Atlanta 30312
How Much: $10 for non-members, members asked to make a donation. Friend-level memberships will be available for $25, a $10 discount. Tickets available in advance through Criminal Records, Decatur CD, Ella Guru or online here. Also you can charge by phone at 1-877-725-8849.

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On Wed., Oct. 1 Lukas Ligeti returns to Atlanta to play Eyedrum in support of his latest CD, Afrikan Machinery (Tzadik). Lukas is the son of renowned 20^th Century avant-garde composer György Ligeti. Much like his father, the younger, Brooklyn-based Ligeti thrives on the fringes of experimental musical ideas and practices, but his compositions focus on percussive experimentation and crafting rhythms and drones that land in the realm of post-minimalism. Electronica, jazz and indie rock in some form or another have fallen into his repertoire from time to time as well, but his work has very little to do with Western pop music by any means.

Afrikan Machinery is a swirling collection of polyrhythms and ethnic sounds that are mashed, chopped and screwed into varying tempos and sensory slurring constructs that on the surface defy a sense of order. But there is an underlying structure that weaves in and out of each number.

An array of plinks and plunks bounce off of each other as lines of minimal rhythms that are pieced together by a barrage of sounds intertwine to form something that is much greater than the sum of it’s parts.

It’s a hypnotic balance of chaos and design, improvisation and focused ideas that are as blissful as they are world-weary and anxiety inducing; and capture Ligeti at his finest musical moments. This show marks Ligeti’s first stop in Atlanta since playing Eyedrum with Raoul Björkenheim back in June of 2004. I had a chance to catch up with Lukas shortly before he left for the current tour.

Chad Radford: What you will be playing at your show in Atlanta, and will this be a solo performance?

Lukas Ligeti: I’ll be playing solo on an instrument called marimba lumina. It’s a kind of electronic marimba, a very sophisticated midi controller, built by Don Buchla from California, and you can get information on it at www.buchla.com. The sounds I play come mostly from my laptop - samples for the most part, recorded during my travels, often in Africa. The music is part composed / part improvised, and made to be played live on electronic percussion.

Local percussionist / composer Klimchak opens the show with an aural collage of clashing electronic and acoustic beats and textures. $8. 9 p.m. Eyedrum. 404-522-0655.www.eyedrum.org

(Photo by Chris Woltmann)

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This Friday night (Sept. 26th) Eyedrum hosts the Atlanta premiere of Michael Tully and Matthew Robison’s (We Fun: ATL Inside Out) documentary film Silver Jew. The film follows Silver Jews main man David Berman on a spiritual quest to the Western Wall (A.K.A. the Wailing Wall) in the Old City of Jerusalem to embrace his Jewish roots … And play a few shows. Doors at Eyedrum open at 9 p.m. and the film starts at 10 p.m. Admission is $5.

Proceeds from door sales are being donated to B Jay Womack (a.k.a. Bobby Ubangi) of local bands the Gaye Blades and the Soft Spots, who was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Chad Radford: How did you you come to be involved with making Silver Jew?

Matthew Robison: David and I met in a club where I was playing, and he humbly introduced himself and his (then) girlfriend Cassie. I had read one of his poems in Mean Magazine, but didn’t know much about Silver Jews. I always understood him as an artist, but admittedly never played his records over and over. I do know most of them very well, and for a few months put together a band to be called Walnut Falcons to play Silver Jews covers. So I like the songs very much. The attachment to the music increased when I used some studio tracks in the doc and began to associate them with the work.

(more…)

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Next Friday night (Sept. 26th) Eyedrum hosts the Atlanta premiere of Michael Tully and Matthew Robison’s (We Fun: ATL Inside Out) documentary film Silver Jew. The film follows Silver Jews main man David Berman on a spiritual quest to the Western Wall (A.K.A. the Wailing Wall) in the Old City of Jerusalem to embrace his Jewish roots… And play a few shows. Doors at Eyedrum open at 9 p.m. and the film starts at 10 p.m. Admission is $5.

Chad Radford: How did you you come to be involved with making Silver Jew?

Matthew Robison: David and I met in a club where I was playing, and he humbly introduced himself and his (then) girlfriend Cassie. I had read one of his poems in Mean Magazine, but didn’t know much about Silver Jews. I always understood him as an artist, but admittedly never played his records over and over. I do know most of them very well, and for a few months put together a band to be called Walnut Falcons to play Silver Jews covers. So I like the songs very much. The attachment to the music increased when I used some studio tracks in the doc and began to associate them with the work.

I knew when David told me about the Israel shows that it would be something remarkable for him whether or not it was documented. In a few moments I went from wanting to go and write about it to my then (and now) preferred medium of video. When I got his blessing to document I promised that he would at the very least have high-quality home movies.

(more…)

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Monday nights are always a hard sell, but there are a couple of noteworthy shows going on around tonight.

First and foremost Derek Lyn Plastic is playing a 7-inch release party for his brand new She’s Go A U.T.I. 4-song 7-inch EP tonight at 97 Estoria in Cabbagetown.

Who would have thunk a 7-inch EP with a title like She’s Got a U.T.I. would show off major artistic growth for Derek Lyn Plastic? Believe it.

The four songs that make up the latest release from Atlanta’s burgeoning icon of discomfort are cut from the same vampy and paranoid cloth of synth-driven punk jams that made his previous singles so addictive. But there’s an added level of precision and intensity in his delivery that makes it clear Mr. Plastic isn’t just working out his social demons for the sake of it.

To read the rest of the story click here and to stream mp3s from Derek Lyn Plastic’s “She’s Got A U.T.I.” 7-inch click here.

… and if if the avant-garde thing is more your speed, CONNCET 9,  JERKAGRAM and QUR’ANOSAURUS HEX are playing over at Eyedrum. The droning and mysterious ensemble Conncet 9 revels in the dark resonance of real-world sounds and textures but manipulates them to take on a much more cluttered and haunting hue than their naturally occurring order. Jerkagram is a noisy and reactionary improv/psych-rock outfit from Connecticut that bashes out aggressive and ramshackle art-rock clusters of rhythm and dirge. Qur’anosaurus Hex opens the show and there’s a distinct possibility that Atlanta’s very own Duet For Theremin and Lapsteel will perform as well. $5. 9 p.m. Eyedrum. 404-522-0655. www.eyedrum.org.

(Photo courtesy of Derek Lyn Plastic).

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The sound of ecstatically beaten drums was what greeted me on my first trip to Eyedrum and the energy of a happy throng of art and music lovers is the feeling that stays with me. Rising Appalachia played Concrete Pandemonium III, a collection of music, art, poetry and activism meant to unite a community and inspire a little joyful communing. The duo will soon be taking separate trips to far-flung countries and will return with a new name (R.I.S.E) and a new feeling (revived).

[Show as slideshow]

(Photos by Tara-Lynne Pixley)

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If you want edgy, talk to Randy Castello. He’s earned a rep for nurturing emergent sounds and scenes as the talent buyer for Drunken Unicorn and the man behind Tight Bros Network promotions company. When he announced his split from Drunken Unicorn last week (due to undisclosed, irreconcilable differences), it sounded like the perfect time to talk to him about his evolution and how he has, in turn, affected Atlanta’s.

Continue reading Spotlight.

(Photo by Megan Macksey)

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