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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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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