From my debut at Philadel­phia Week­ly:

When noise artists Bore­doms replaced Green Day as the open­ing act for Philadel­phi­a’s Lol­la­palooza stop in 1994, it came as some­thing of a com­mer­cial shock and a thought-pro­vok­ing rev­e­la­tion. Bore­doms’ apoplec­tic per­for­mance proved both excit­ing and mem­o­rable as singer Yamat­su­ka Eye fre­quent­ly leapt from the stage, much to secu­ri­ty’s dis­may. Fet­ed by the likes of Son­ic Youth and Nir­vana, hav­ing toured with both bands, they were tout­ed by crit­ics for their quirky pri­mal scream­ing and Freudi­an noise rock. Then, as quick­ly as they’d arrived on the Amer­i­can aur­al land­scape, they dis­ap­peared. Now the Bore­doms are again ready to share their epicycli­cal ener­gy with Amer­i­can audi­ences, play­ing Philadel­phia as one of only six U.S. dates.

Voore­doms aka Bore­doms, w/ Light­ning Bolt & Hrvats­ki @ Starlight Ball­room aka Club Polaris. Sold out.

[By way of expla­na­tion, this was sub­mit­ted as a 500 word fea­ture that had to be cut for space. Oh and if you need a tick­et, let me know in the com­ments box.]

The Fiery Fur­naces w/ Man Man. TLA. Tonight!

Few bands are as beguil­ing as The Fiery Fur­naces. Since Blue­ber­ry Boat splashed out in 2004, Matt and Eleanor Fried­berg­er’s Amer­i­can Goth­ic has unrav­eled as a com­pli­cat­ed, tumul­tuous fam­i­ly romance: an embar­rass­ment of rich­es, squan­dered!? A tri­umphant stand for art, arti­fice and arte­fact over novelty?!

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

From Down­beat, Nov. 1961:

At Hol­ly­wood’s Renais­sance club recent­ly, I lis­tened to a hor­ri­fy­ing demon­stra­tion of what appears to be a grow­ing anti-jazz trend exem­pli­fied by those fore­most pro­po­nents [Coltrane and Dol­phy] of what is termed avant garde music.

I heard a good rhythm sec­tion … go to waste behind the nihilis­tic exer­cis­es of the two horns. … Coltrane and Dol­phy seem intent on delib­er­ate­ly destroy­ing [swing]. … They seem bent on pur­su­ing an anar­chis­tic course in their music that can but be termed anti-jazz.

Eric Dol­phy died 42 years ago this week.

[See also: “John Coltrane and Eric Dol­phy Answer The Jazz Crit­ics”, Down­beat, April 1962]

If you’re inter­est­ed in clas­si­cal and new music works, look no fur­ther than Clas­si­cal Con­nec­tion and Le Roi S’a­muse. They make me wish Woe­bot was right about this Xenakis biog­ra­phy. [It’s real­ly not in print. Le sigh.]

For­tu­nate­ly, good friend and Deci­bel Mag­a­zine art direc­tor Paul Romano made me like 1,000 min­utes of insane mp3 rips of noise and avant-garde com­po­si­tion that I may final­ly begin to unpack. Once I’ve found those pesky cd-rs I’ll try to post a few lengthy aton­al mp3s to sample.

From the New York­er:

Leg­end has it that after one group of play­ers had crept their way as qui­et­ly as pos­si­ble through a score of his Feld­man barked, “It’s too fuckin’ loud, and it’s too fuckin’ fast.”

Feld­man’s Rothko Chapel con­dens­es so much feel­ing into so lit­tle space that, giv­en the empha­sis he placed on time and patience and the volu­mi­nous emo­tion­al depth of his work, it’s strange that such a mov­ing trib­ute would be so brief and so accessible.

[See also: Mor­ton Feld­man says]