Author Archives: Z.A. Clark

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About Z.A. Clark

Is your local, neighborhood English major with too much time on his hands (directly related to the same major), so he bothers the people around him about music, news, and other nonsense. He is a writer for DITKalamazoo, The Index, Kalamazoo Local Music, and has written for Kzoo Music Scene. He is also a co-founder of the no-cost recording group DIT Sessions, where he also manages video editing and video recording. Grief and Grumble. Goodnight and goodluck.

LOVE SUCKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS–but music doesn’t; Love Sucks Fest Thursday through Saturday @Milhouse and Touchdown City

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Valentines shows should be wildly inappropriate and off theme from mainstream heart-throb media–not enough ferocious growling and volcano guitars beating eardrums until they burst, so by golly that is just what is going on this coming weekend.

Starting this Thursday, possibly in honor of St. Valentine’s Day or maybe just because Thursday is the new Friday, the irreverent folks from Milhouse and Touchdown City set-up a three day music festival for those that don’t feel struck enough by love.

Tim Tapper has had words with critics before, but he has words for the faint of heart as well, and will play upon those cardio-strings with a ambling echoey mentality that escapes the trends of the other bands this weekend. He opens up the festival Thursday, 9 p.m., at Touchdown City.

Following him comes one-man guitar drone beamed straight out of a cassette tape Sean Hartman (of Forget the Times fame/ilk). Velvet Talk Motel, Trinket, and Abortion Survivors will also be playing Thursday.

But hey, in case an adrenaline shot wasn’t enough, a good-old boot-stomping from The Reptillian, Atalanta (Chicago), Sin Orden, and Greenwashed Friday night in the depths of the murky basement that is Milhouse. Bring your extra sweat lozenges. Atalanta jams hard while grating some garage screams, The Reptillian does its punk flambé of their electrics, and Sin Orden will fill in the gaps. Haven’t heard of Greenwashed, but surprises are a treat. Same time, 9 p.m.

Saturday? Oh yes, one more day in case everyone’s limbs aren’t broken and a thousand toothy grins haven’t been hockey-player ruined by this point. Statia does this:

–which is somewhere in between what a rock-opera and a scream-band would sound like, with Fisherking dialing it down to more of droney, speedy, epic battle of guitars and mountain-top yelps. That probably isn’t dialed down, but if you still have hearing by this point, then it should be. Seventeen Again rounds out the night. Same time as the other nights, back at Touchdown City.

Have fun, respect the house, respect each other (don’t actually break anyone’s bones), and maybe send some donations around. I’m sure someone will give you a hug.

Shoot ditkalamazoo@gmail.com for location information.

90’s Greatest Hits, or Saturday Morning Cartoons: Speedy Ortiz, Roomrunner, Rotten Wood Moon, and Anybody But The Cops @ Milhouse 1/11

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Someone make me this jacket.

Man, I wish I was as cool the liner of this jacket.

Grime nonsense like static through television Saturday morning cartoons, except going on this Friday night at the, one and only, Milhouse. It’s as if the winter has you feeling to clean or adult like, then slam bam wick-a-wham you have fun-noisy-rock thrown into a dishwasher and up-through those rabbit ears we all used to have fun adjusting in the wee small hours of the morning to watch the naughty channels. Friday night is for the ’90s kids.  Individuals born in ’80s are also welcome–and they may invite the other decades if they promise to be cool.

Speedy Ortiz is back from the pits of shows that weren’t with Minutes–which was a bloody fine, hot show that had the room running with sweat and dusty ceiling bits. Had you dancing about with plenty of head swinging–more like droopy swaying with heavy female narration. Moody summertime tunes in a winter basement. Some say they are akin to Built  to Spill, and others could say they’d fit right in with The Pillows.

Roomrunner is also tailing with Speedy Ortiz on their newest tour. Sounding like droning forever rock, Roomrunner just keeps pacing, jogging, moving, and playing to a driven guitar section and garage vocals until things fall apart. Faster than Speedy Ortiz and a bit more like Sex Bob-ombs–if that is a silly enough comparison for ya’. Less silly things could be

Speaking of things falling apart–look who is back together! Rotten Wood Moon is adding on to it’s string of sparse shows with their first of the year. Mad conversations ‘twixt pedals, strings, and however they can be abused or contorted, Rotten Wood Moon rambles on in the finest of noise fashions.

Finally, those wascally sludge punk-ers, Anybody But The Cops, are going to smear over rock and dirtied-up the funk in an appropriately grimy fashion, I’m sure. Recently, bassist Rory was quoted as saying “my bass line is just too clean for these songs” so expect to feel ashamed of how nasty those notes are going to rattle your ass-kicking boots.

Hey, Speedy Ortiz is out on tour from Northampton, MA and Roomrunner is here from Baltimore, MD, so show some donation love for the touring bands.

Respect the house, be totally radical, eat some pizza, enjoy the show. And dress up like a Street Shark. But that is only if you want to be my best friend.

Short and Simple, Crazy Battles and Old Reunions @ The Courthouse features Crash City Saints, Jake Simmons vs. Decades, Smallhouse, and Uuno

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Seriously though, I feel like Michael Cera all the time.

Basically the show tomorrow.

Alright. Want punk-rock? Courthouse has it–provided by those friendly Hex Bombs. Sure to blow your face off, along with all the piercings and punk apparel you choose to bring along.

Jake Simmons? He’s feeling fiesty too. Feisty enoughto challenge the fearsome Decades fighters to a band battle to the best. Someone bring a trophy–although the prize will be oodles of fun for all.

VS.

Also, good ole Chris Wahamaki, one of the founding members of Crash City Saints will be playing a set together with the ole band–shoegazing holes right through your soles. Dreamsicle-pop, wavy, gum-drop, hazy, fun adjectives.

Spastic math rock will be all over listeners plates too, if they give their ears to touring band Smallhouse–this duo is on tour from Bowling Green, KY, and is sure to scream your eyes open while technical instrumentals will keep things titillating.

He has one more thing to add, too. Chris will be performing a unique set of sorts of his solo project, UUNO, with the hometown heroes of Crash City Saints, Lincoln County War, Werewolf, Mushmen, and Witchfingers. I’ll let you figure out how that might sound.

Respect the court, respect the citizens, respect yourself, respect the fun. Show starts at 9 p.m.

Questions? Email ditkalamazoo@gmail.com or espontaneo.clark@gmail.com

Also. This.

12/11: When A Lumberjack Falls In The Woods–High Dive, Our Lady, George Costanza, and Witchfingers @ Milhouse

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When carousing on a Tuesday night in Kalamazoo, Michigan, some stroller-abouts might have trouble finding something “relatable.” More so if if they happen to be a straight, white, male.

You get weird looks in the bars, surrounded by hordes of glassy-eyes ogling your Levi’s and plaid, and all the restaurants have funny names for the drinks like “Rainbow Hobgobbler,” or “Jackie Gleeson’s Log Cabin Party.”  By golly it even seems like the way I wear the bristly spider hairs on my face becomes subject to public criticism; especially on Tuesdays.

It happens everyday. Taking over the music scene, too. Gays, lesbians, transexuals, transgender, all the Alphabet Soup Party members burst out the perfectly matched shutters, periwinkle closets, and checkerboarded picnic tables of the Vine Street Neighborhood, screaming and hollering indecipherable rants on “acceptance,” “tolerance,” “community,” and “identity” into the atmosphere, inevitably linking up to the hive minded stage over at the 411 Club also known as Metro.

Spinning off of these choruses and chasms is what can be considered “queer-core,”  what show-booker and house-venue operator Rory Svekric describes as a genre that askews “ ‘heteronormatively’ written” songs “that need to be fudged a little to be relatable.” They may or may not contain members of the overwhelming  majority that is the LGBTQA as well. That’s why she booked the Bloomington, Indiana queer-core pop-punk trio High Dive for her show tomorrow at Milhouse–and maybe for lead singer Toby Foster’s playful lisp, or the quick bursts of energy that surround their two-and-half minutes diddys about isolation, love, and suicide as angst ridden teens and twenty-somethings. Kissing boys is a major theme as well.

Who can possibly find themselves in these songs?

High Dive will be playing alongside the ever-changing power-pop-punk group Our Lady from Springfield, IL, and home-grown emo-indie acts Witch Fingers and George Costanza, the second of which may quite possibly be the most emo band name I’ve ever heard. Both of the home town groups share a spastic spittle ridden silliness in their sound, that in some way shape or form may be appealing those gruff young kids that have the same spastic spittle ridden silliness called angst.

Tomorrow night, Milhouse. 8:30 p.m. Donations for the touring bands would be more than tolerated.

Respect the house, respect the bands, respect the perspectives.

If anyone has comments, questions, or concerns, it is encouraged that they comment below, or email the writer at espontaneo.clark@gmail.com

12/9: Noise Noise Noise or, Get Off My Lawn–Rotten Wood Moon, Rapstar, Cathode Ray, and brick mower @Victory House

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Rotten Wood Moon

noise

According to the googlebox, the most the news world of Kalamazoo has to say of “noise” is the new amendment passed by the Kalamazoo Board of Trustees to their previous ordinance. According to Emily Monacelli of mlive, “The Kalamazoo Township Board of Trustees voted unanimously Monday to amend the township’s noise ordinance to exempt noises sanctioned or conducted by governmental units, public or private schools.”

Seems the audibly blaspheming steps of children stampeding out to the hellish commands of the wailing banshee screech that is the recess bell outside the Reformed Heritage Christian School pushed one man to the brink of decency. The edge of mediocrity could not be dulled by their hedonistic cries of pleasure; damn well indecent that is. Faith against the system prevailed in giving those hellions a medium for their sickening, exasperating behavior.

In my experience, the 80’s era 3-way speakers, Panasonic tweeders satellites engineered for maximum noise blasting in a college living room consumed by piles of plastic like Born To Run, Shabazz Palaces, Broken Boy Soldier, Emperor X, all begin to echo bits of euphoria once analyzed for decibel content and carefully monitored by the blue men and women of the KPD.

Noise is a commodity to be given and controlled, like borrowing the salt from your neighbor to bake them a batch of green brownies; something to be shared naked, heaving, dazed and blurry-eyed. I harassed Dr. Herzog, an old friend recently tenured in the glass booth over at CVS, into slipping me a half-dozen scripts of noise for this growth on the side of my head, but upon opening my white-baggie all that sat at the bottom  was a 36 ounce tube of testosterone cream. Bastard mumbled something about “…not more than 50 decibels after 10p.m.” and retreated into the shelves to go calcinate some meth from the empty bottles of high-end cold-medicine. Or something like that.

After vigorously applying, one doesn’t usually notice a difference. And I haven’t, so that’s enough of that. Instead there some other folks trying to tell the young men and women of Kalamazoo how to responsibly enjoy their use of noise. Rotten Wood Moon, a recently resurrected group of musicians, will be headlining a noise-show over at Victory House Sunday night at 9 p.m.. Along with house-made-group Cathode Ray, and visiting noisemakers Rapstar, of Brooklyn, NY. I expect they will be making plenty of the stuff. Noise, that is.

It’s strong stuff, too. Made right in the living room or basement, filling up the hallways, it stinks of life–and it’s just as unstable. I’ll be damned if I know why there are any reasons to flock to these sorts of things, bashing on guitars, projections on the walls of empty hallways, lost-faces, dead dogs. The audience is likely to be in-corporeally surrounded by wails, drones, and chants that would drive fear into an Satan-loving man’s heart. Could hardly call the stuff music; sometimes sounds like jazz, meandering into rock, other times just instrumental spew–all of it a blatant disregard for the rules. I saw a  noise-freak once lay his electric guitar on the ground and start hammering away with his hands to the neck and body, summoning forth chords that the instrument wasn’t used to making in a performance setting. The audience just stared on like occultists monks, zoned out in a daze only replicated in the back-alley opium dens of Chicago’s Southwest side.

For their farce on Sunday they’ve even harassed some properly-performing punk band into playing with them–expanding the stuff to those that can’t handle the hard, ethereal, ether stuff and making it accessible for the Bouncing Soul types to get a hold of noise. I’d heard about the sleazy streets of New Jersey from a cousin who’d gone to Seton Hall, but I thought that brick mower, the group that is, might try to do their civic duty and keep it down. Their music doesn’t seem to reflect that standard of proper noise-making, instead traditionally following the lines of power chords and loud choruses, songs about sex and cigarettes.

Peddling expression to the creative youth like it’s something to be freely abused. It seems like 50db isn’t a marker of common decency anymore. First the children, now this–I’m going to start petitioning for a new ordinance. God knows what they might be teaching in that house.

If anyone has comments, questions, or concerns, it is encouraged that they comment below, or email the writer at espontaneo.clark@gmail.com

Respect the house. Respect the noise. Respect the self. Donate for the touring bands.

12/1: Double Felix produced peace-jams to wobble-about Kalamazoo Peace Center; Lasso, del Brutto, and Mike Savina

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"...except that one scruffy musician, you know, the one that drinks beer"

“All are welcome…even scruffy musicians!”

Western’s Wesley Foundation seems to be the hosting-site for all sorts of acoustic assemblies lately: both the punk-show held last month, and Saturday night’s Double-Phelix themed Peace Phest at 8 p.m., both hosted by the folks of the Kalamazoo Peace Center. Usually the college’s hub for the United Methodist Ministry, the KPC uses the Wesley Foundation and such events to minister doses of green-sense  to the college-aged populace of our fair city; a perusal of their website reveals showings of Gasland, If A Tree Falls, and various public announcements against corporate tyranny. On the website there is even some attention thrown towards the ECO anti-frackers that were being legally lionized over at the Stabbin’ Cabin Friday–but that’s just a distraction. Saturday’s festivities, just like Friday night’s, are all about the fundraising–or merely about fund raising, as there is a suggested donation of five dollars to go towards continuing such activities.

As for the music, it’s regional with a spit of local flair–flavor provided primarily by production/ musical rotating cast Double Phelix Studios. del Brutto, the blues psycho folk sounding fellows from Ann Arbor playing Saturday night, had their recent album Greenhorn produced by Andy Caitlin over at the studio behind Black Owl. The result is garage sound filled with notes of a tin-rattling blues-guitar and a vocal style akin to the maddening rambles of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Sounds like it could be playing in someone’s back porch somewhere with Christmas lights and stuffed hunting prizes, through a lo-fi microphone. Good for the blurry-bar romp, or the exhalation of twitching music nerves. Mike Savina of the Double Phelix collective is also slated to join the group for some added mellow melodies.

Lasso, Andy Caitlin’s solo-soundtrack-western-project, will be providing the other half of the Double Phelix themed performances Saturday night. Like Ennio Morricone bumping into the medicine cabinet and tripping on some smooth Valium (although the metaphor is ruined when realized it isn’t a psychedelic.) Though tomorrow seems to be calling for the 8-piece collective effort  it can be hoped that the goofy, plunking piano, and moseying guitar that seem so aware of the genre Lasso is emulating,satirizing, and ultimately will remain the premise and fun of the project, and in-turn the performance will be just as endearing. Lasso’s newest EP  Lasso, Arizona was released this past Wednesday:

Wesley Foundation is right across from the Flagpoles of Western University, the pinnacle of the hill–or for more tech savvy users just use this address (2101 Wilbur Ave.,  Kalamazoo, MI 49006) with Google Maps.

Respect the venue, respect the bands, and mayhaps donate a few dollars for less broken bones around the world. Or least in Kalamazoo.

11/11: High-school Wishes On a Few Acoustics–No Fun House

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EPF--seemed appropriate.

Singer against meadow. That’s about the sound of the show tomorrow night.

It’s going to be a Kalamazoo kind of night, right? There are some locals, or used-to-be locals, looking to provide some excellent acoustic-based music for No Fun House goers tomorrow night at 8:30 p.m. Apparently there will also be pasty, nervous, film-maker there pleading for interviews, but it may be safe to ignore him as just another victim of too much music, schooling, and un-protected basement crawls. Remember, never sweat next to exposed dry-wall.

The proficiently productive performer recently returned to Kalamazoo as part of his vinyl-release tour Small Houses will be featured tomorrow night. To go with the release tour, Jeremy Quentin has also prepared a 4-piece band to back his guitar/harmonica combo, although this isn’t quite kosher with the No Fun House dialect, so it’ll be a surprise. Back to the music. The Ron-Swanson looking fellow has been featured everywhere from Daytrotter to A.V. Club, but for reasons beyond his formidably hirsute lip. Jeremy Quentin’s sound seems founded in the same love shared  for his shirts–trotting on the edge of the country as a cowboy, singing a tune with a voice that seems grasped with the tinge of Marlboro’s. Most songs sound sad; more tears than whiskey.

Another Kalamazoo native, Elisabeth Pixley-Fink will be featuring her willow-the-whisp, Gary Jules-esque, deep-forest vocals that are as childishly playful as they are nervously morose. While usually paired with piano, EPF’s sound is vaguely reminiscent of She & Him, but more complicated in its experimental poetics and its bloody exploration of folk-songs. Fiddling with a banjo, an ever-so bitterly tuned piano, and a bowler hatted guitar player, Pixley-Fink seems to be the natural progression of a new-folk movement. Even if performing solo (without common companion Andru Bemis), EPF would be treat to for those that wish to see the state of all those summer-backyards that we used to play tag in, underneath the willow, and beyond the hills. As fun skipping down a dirt road, while enigmatic as the hole burrowed behind the oak tree.

Silphium Blooms is the on-going solo project of Tyler Basset (of the currently on-hiatus Neu Spryghts), an exhibition in meandering, grumbling, technical acoustic guitar playing–sounding a bit like an independent film-soundtrack from the 90’s. Most of this is based off the demo released this past Wednesday on Silphium Blooms’ bandcamp–so I suppose your opinion is just as fine as mine, mayhaps better. Listen for yourselves below:

Respect all things, including the music, yourself, and the house.

Donations are always nice.

11/9: Four Men, or a Thousand Ways To Tell the Story: Show #2, Guitar Party at Touchdown City 2.0

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I appear to have some competition…that is there are many shows going on this Friday night for all the variety of tastes that listeners young, slightly older, and possibly older than them, may desire. Buts it’s really the generational aspect that entices the eye and the gut: the ageless quality, the community of patches; comprised of the old-punks, the new-hipsters, the college capitalists, and the cantankerous DIY veteran. So supposedly all are welcome to welcome the music.
But if the shows busts than the blame will squarely be placed on the drunken piss waggler in the street with a mighty crunch of the beer can. I cannot vouch for the folks over at Touchdown City 2.0, but a swift kick in the ass may be appropriate in any case if the threat to community ever comes to pass.

That being said, the actual music being presented is brought to you by a collection of four odd-men, three from home-base Kalamazoo and one from the West. That music they play being the sort of “I’m all by myself and this here guitar is my only friend” type, or “mayhaps this will be my murder weapon” sort of string strumming. More so these one-man-acts provide the kind of show that allows listeners to really appreciate the grain in the coniferous wood body of the performer’s chosen instrument and perhaps even whisper the word “intimate” into the next show-goers ear.

Graveling about from the state Oregon, crawling out of  that creative cess-pit of villainy, saxophone players, and liberal-arts majors known as Portland, Ghostwriter (or Steve Schecter to friends) has the sound of an electric guitar that had the pleasure of being crammed into the exhaust pipe of a Ford 4 x 4 along with Tom Wait’s left boot. Schecter is an embattled, entrenched, and entertaining DIY performer that chews out notes like the death rattle of some rusted-pick up that needs a carburetor replaced, all the while keeping passengers calm by the occasional usage of a hand-brake, or more accurately, a pedal-operated tambourine. A treat for the DIT deviants and fans of tin-can, swamp-punk.

Though the namesake isn’t clear to some, Arms Akimbo seems most at home when flaking the skin flecks off the metal banded strings adorned on his southern-lute, or banjo for short. (I don’t plan on addressing the namesake) While the guitar playing is settling, it’s the cracked voice, the uneasy quality in the timbre, the uncertainty bounding from one word to the next in his performance that coddles both wary and ignorant listeners into a bleary past of some golden creation, full of crickets and cat-tails.

Occasionally an ass-fool, Tim Tapper is a prolific son of Vine St., always trying and always contentious. His sound follows suit with confidence, with delicate attention to his instrument–carefully navigating through the muggings, murders, and poverty of the surrounding neighborhood from whence it played. The sour tone occasionally flowing into Tapper’s singing always chains me to this place–Kalamazoo–exposing the flaws in the pavement and the chips in the paint of the wood panels covering the student ghetto residences, whilst sobering dark imaginations.


I sat down with Alex Young the other day in studio. He was barefoot for the most part and carried his coffee in a mason jar. I was late, but so was he so we called it even. With my colleague David had setting-up the microphones and the decade-old Canon postured into my palm, the only bit of business left to attend to was the young-man’s performance. While the orange-lamp glared, the red-camera eye blinked in constant attention, and the dry-wall held its breath, Alex began a few songs that just made the scenery seem something electrically correct. The nasal-pitched voice climbing through vocal chords that sound scratched from screaming is complemented by an attentive electric guitar diddy. Makes the rug under your feet warm, and the wood smell like the city.

Show is at 10 p.m.

If directions to Touchdown City 2.0 are needed, email ditkalamazoo@gmail.com

Respect the house, the idea, the people, and yourself.

Donate.

10/31: Costumed Creeps Capture Crazed Captcha Writers, force them to scribble reviews–Millhouse’s House Venue of Horror

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Happy Holidays

Gif, what gif?

Ever wonder what to do for Halloween? I don’t. I listen to music and go to shows. Occasionally I’ll dress up. Good thing I found an outlet for all of these extracurricular, all-hallowed activities–right in the vicinity of the Kalamazoo area. Like a damned miracle. Crawling into that inclusive concrete basement, pitifully preserving the tatters of my costume  torn-up by the zombified Misfits-guitar player, I expect to be thoroughly covered in fake-blood, real-sweat, and unidentifiable Halloween goo.

I want the music to be heavy in the air as the fleshy lips groaning it out.

Grimey as whatever demon-oozed concoction of booze and perspiration slime has covered the supports beams of the questionably stable house.

Maybe I want to be both things, too. But that’s another matter. A festive fistful of groups are incorporating all the corporeal functions of the holiday in both costume and music,  entertaining blissful escapism in the spirit of Halloween and gritty basement shenanigans.

Listen to the masquerading Misfits, and someone will tear out the Danzig face, then emblematically skull-bash the music right into auditory centers of the brain. Detroit’s Child Bite will be performing the procedure, with what can be assumed as a blood-gurgling tone that eventually curdles out of some heaving dark pit that got filled up with the bass-notes of Cage the Elephant or some other adequately psychosis/psychedelic fused induced rock-noise.

My description may not be perfect, so provided is actual music:

All for the continuing depravity and reckless behavior so attuned to show-going is Anybody But the Cops. The trio of instrumental-punk rockers are currently conquering the basement scene by blistering up a few 2 minute jams and skirting away before proper law-enforcement can nab them. One can only hope that eventually they will be stopped, before the lot of us are dragging ourselves through gardens of Miller 40ozs and fields poorly-costumed plaid to secure a fix of fuck-you induced fun.

I am trying to say they are addicting, fast, and out of control–and it might be fun to catch these shows while their sound is still developing.

But that is too easy. College interns should finish their upcoming DIT Session so viewers aren’t subjected to poorly lit rooms and questionable youtube videos to hear their music:

And if Rory Svekric wasn’t enough Rory Svekric for you, the Milhouser’s will be transmuting plasma sacrifices of party-goers to make a Rage Against the Machine reanimation for those too hip for underground music. Fuck you, don’t listen to what you tell me.

And who let Benji of Wearwolf, the Mushmen, and Lincoln Wars in on the show? Owes me shot of demon-rum for suggesting half of his musical genius. Surprises await, and with cohort Codi in tow, expect ultra-violence, or really anything because N0PARENTZ isn’t afraid of anyone, especially no parents. Or any musical explicative, because really the angst, sadistic humor, or plain insane zanity that is whatever Benji touches is sure to promote some sort of frothy, emotive response–ranging from raging to tearful.

Like the Reptillian? Bagheera is hoofing it to provide some “ex-tillian” entertainment. I can’t say much else. They’re new. Let’s be new together.

For those curious  the event is at Milhouse tonight, temporarily converted into a musical hall of horrors where all the ears can be mutilated, devoured, or otherwise horrifically effected. Only in the most pleasant of manners, though.

Donation, respectful, and starts at 9 p.m. Tonight. Halloween.

Dress up. Not as mandatory.

10/12: The La De Les, Analecta, Keyoung, Brass Bows, & Shuffle @ The Courthouse

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SHOW BILL

Oh hey der

A rock-band, some shoe-gazers, a spoken word artist, an indie-duo, and a straight-edge trio walk into a courthouse, but instead of a lame punch-line that I can’t come up with, there is a show hosted by a new house venue this Friday night at 8:00 p.m.
Making its premiere is The Courthouse with its first in a series of shows beginning this weekend followed by their Spelling Bee show featured October 21st. But rather than sticking to a single genre, these folks have an eclectic group of performers to stretch those musical muscles of versatility. Don’t like one band? Take a smoke-break, beer break, or jam some fingers into those eardrums for 25 minutes and there will probably be something for even the most persnickety listener.
On-tour for the past six shows  with Analecta and The La De Les is Peoria, Illinois native, spoken-word poet Keyoung. Inspired by faith and Christian imagery, Keyoung batters beats with breathless exasperation, often sounding off a plea to the poetry he speaks. Some pieces are ponderous notions on creation to the common theme of the girl that floated away like cloud in the sky.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJfglCy7ZY4
Labelmates Analecta also manage to explore various realms from an abstract area of straight-edge post-rock. The band itself draws from many different genres–their name means “to sample” in fancy English major terms. These South-benders like to sit on the ether twixt noise-rock and post-metal with zephyrus tones for good measure. Noise without too much complication.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3f1jEZ290

Rounding up the trio of headliners is experimental/electronic-shoegazers the La De Les.
Their newest effort, Carlo, is a tribute to their former drummer and in and of itself a statement of change for the group past their rock-tendencies. The premiere track “Too Small of Hands” straddles between the mix of ambient healing, with electronic beeps and whirs imitating the hum of a hospital, along with the static screams of pain howled out from the blips of grey and black. The La De Les have the depth and darkness of a pool during a humid summer night. Fans of The Shins will dig ’em and DIT followers can also expect a DIT Session with them sometime in the near future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87CDQIM_7x0&feature=related

For those of listeners that get florescent butterflies in their stomach when they think of “ambient,” “experimental,” or “poetry,” the Brass Bows will be providing some nitty-gritty rock to jump and pump those hearts and legs. Expect dirty jokes, but a good deal of sweaty fun as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdEE6P84jbk&feature=relmfu

   Two-piece, indie-rock group Shuffle will also be performing on the bill Friday night, and will be showcasing a batch of reinvented material, which will be a treat considering their only available music online is a sixty-second demo. From that glimpse you can surmise some late 90’s style post-hard core, but who is to say what might turn up this weekend.

The show is free, although donations are encouraged. Doors are at 8:00 p.m., music starts at 9 p.m.

Respect the house, respect the crowd, respect yourself.