Crib Notes

Baltimore-by-way-of-Houston songstress JANA HUNTER sings and strums with a brittle quietude that transcends the boundaries of traditional folk emotion with a sparse aplomb that bores deeply into the cerebellum. Hunter’s songs lean more toward lonely and grinding avant-garde than they do the happy, earthy tones of Mother Nature. 

I caught with Jana last week to find out what she’s been up, and here’s how she breaks down:

“I just released a split 7″ with Inoculist, a Brooklyn band, on Heartbreak Beat Records, also from Brooklyn. It’s Inoculist’s “Provenance” with my “Two Cocks Waving Wildly at Each Other Across a Vast, Open Space, a Dark, Icy Tundra” on the other side.

My band (as yet unnamed) and I are working on a full-length (as yet untitled) that we’ll record immediately after the tour that includes this show. It’s be a significant departure from the music I’ve released in the past. I haven’t anything written up, so I’ll just say it’s louder and it has some moving beats.”

Fellow Baltimore act the Crazy Dreams Band – featuring members of Lexie Mountain, Mouthus and Mexcellent – also perform with a brash, guitar-less jam of pop improv, noise and whatever unorthodox sounds they pull out of the air. Rural Georgia noise-folk alchemist Damon Moon and the Whispering Drifters open with a set of creeping, slow-motion freak-outs.

Jana Hunter “Valkyries” mp3

$5. 9 p.m. 529, 529 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-228-6769.

(Photo courtesy Jana Hunter)

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Update:  an ummastered mp3 of Ecstatic Sunshine’s “Turned On” from Yesterday’s Work has been added to this post.

The Baltimore/Atlanta/Washington D.C.-based accessibly weird and vinyl friendly label Hoss Records has unveiled its fall release schedule. First up is the third full-length from Baltimore duo Ecstatic Sunshine, titled Yesterday’s Work. According to Hoss boss Brad Hurst the album presents “an evolved version of Papich’s post-Frippertronics guitar work married to skittering Berlin-school electronics.”

In August the LP will be preceded by Ecstatic Sunshine’s “Turned On” 7-inch, which features a non-album track and a remix by Rjyan Kidwell (A.K.A. Cex).

In the meantime the first installment of of the label’s new techno 12-inch series has also arrived with the first installment coming from San Francisco’s Mi Ami. The idea behind the series is to take bands that aren’t traditionally associated with techno music and get them to make techno music.

The Mi Ami 12-inch features two side-long and somewhat conceptual electro-riffs on the deep, dark, mutant bass and slow grooves of Shackleton’s “Blood On My Hands.”

“Blood on My Hands” is used more as a reference point for the source material at the center of the record. “Towers Fall” merges the group’s signature use of polyrhythms and massive bass to create a sustained drum and synth odyssey. “Towers Fall (Cassette Mix)” presents the previous rhythmic work out as a much slower and dirtier dub-heavy dirge that pushes the song deeper and higher into the electronic ether, and any and all vocal yelps have been boiled down to a bare-bones minimum.

Also just-released is the LP edition of Food For Animals‘ critically acclaimed Belly (200 copies are on translucent gold vinyl).

Also in the works for 2009 will be a new EP and a digital full-length from Atlanta expat and Prefuse 73 cohort Ryan Rasheed’s Leb Laze. A new Food For Animals full-length will also see the light of day as well as new releases from All The Saints, Brass Castle, Ben Lawless and more.

Ecstatic Sunshine’s “Turned On” (unmastered) mp3

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Drummer Bill Salas is the new guy in These Are Powers, but the fascist cadences of his hallucinogenic beats give direction to the ghost-punk traipse at the center of All Aboard Future. “Easy Answers” establishes a rigid, slow-motion dub/industrial framework at the album’s onset. Vocalist Anna Barie’s elated banshee cry in “Life of Birds” is at once horrifying and alluring, as it jams the senses with a mashup of too many mixed signals. TAP is the rightful heir to the legacies of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Coil, Suicide and so on. Prior to All Aboard Future, likening them to such an esteemed lineage felt like wishful thinking. But in light of the hypnotic rush of “Parallel Shores,” the creeping and mechanical plod of “Double Double Yolk,” and the clutter of damaged bass swells in “Blue Healer,” the sonic pedigree is undeniable.

The Chap, Lyonnais and Balkans open. $7. 9 p.m. Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery, 290 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Suite 8. 404-522-0655.

(Photo by Michael Flack)

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Baltimore-based ATL expatriate label HOSS Records has announced that this fall it will be releasing the third full-length from Atlanta purveyors of sludge-infected drunk-punk riffage, Brass Castle. Though the currently untitled LP is still in production, here is a sneak peak mp3 of the song “Raining Balls,” which kind of says it all.

In addition to the Brass Castle full-length, HOSS has a few other releases up its sleeve slated for release late in ‘08 / early ‘09…

First and foremost there is a new 12-inch / digital EP from the group MI AMI. This will be he first in HOSS’ forthcoming “Techno” 12-inch series. More details on the series are coming soon.

Also, FOOD FOR ANIMALS album, Belly, will arrive on vinyl.

The label is releasing a digital EP from resident ATLien BEN LAWLESS, which will precede a full-length that slated to arrive in early ‘09.

And lastly, the much anticipated QUEERHUNTER / COCKCLEANER split 12-inch between Deerhunter and Clockcleaner looks like it will actually see the light of day as well.

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Thursday night (Aug. 28th) wasn’t quite business usual at Kirkwood Ballers Club. The regular cast and crew of local yokels twiddled knobs, bowed cymbals and plugged away to the sounds of vintage videogame consoles on stage.

Headlining act Hungry Bodies from Baltimore ended with a show of hypnotically amorphous beats and textures that melted-down the bass elements of hip-hop, drone and maximized minimalism into pools of liquid noise.

Sam Garner from Baltimore’s Lexie Mountain Boys wailed a muffled banshee howl into the microphone, adding a haunted, human layer to the mix of sloshing sounds and resonance. The group also featured members of Washington D.C.’s hip-hop experimentalists Food For Animals, alongside ATL expat. and Hoss Records owner Brad Hurst. It was a happy homecoming for Hurst who was a KBC fixture when the weekly open mic Ballers Club nights were held at the old Lenny’s. Hungry Bodies’ set was surreal, short and sweet, which is one of the greatest things about the Ballers Club. Be it a weird indie rock dude beating violin strings with a turkey baster, a lonely young gal strumming on an acoustic guitar or a spontaneously formed ensemble of noise rockers lost in a moment of teeth-gnashing Sonic youth-style feedback, you take the good with the bad. After all, KBC is ground zero for the most adventurous and unorthodox music in the city. So if one particular performer is absolutely unbearable, you can take solace in the fact that it won’t last for much longer. If a band puts on a fantastic performance you’ll be left wanting more and you can talk them up when they’re finished and maybe walk away with a CDR of some stuff they’ve been working on.

All night long the audience was buzzing with word that Geologist from Animal Collective was in the house and hanging out, if only for a brief while. Animal Collective is in town mastering their forthcoming album produced by Ben Allen (Gnarls Barkley, All the Saints, Constellations). Sadly there was no impromptu AC performances, but for the scene of anything-goes musicianship that KBC has cultivated, a visit from Animal Collective is like a nod from royalty, and a sign that experimental music is on the up swing in Atlanta.

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Hungry Bodies from Baltimore, MD features members of Food For Animals, Lexi Mountain Boys, Mexcellent and Atlanta expat and Hoss Records founder, Brad Hurst. The group revels in improvised beat, mutant hip-hop, deconstruction, pure sine tones and digitally “digitally-scrubbed glossolalia.”

The group is performing at The Kirkwood Ballers Club this Thursday night at The Highland Inn Ballroom. Music starts around 9 p.m. It’s free but the out-of-towners could sure use a donation.

To listen to the song, titled “Singles (Radio Edit)” from Hungry Bodies’ forthcoming 7-inch, click here.

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