For those of you that have a sweet-tooth for good music, tonight you can just consider Louie’s Trophy House grill the Willy Wonka Chocolate factory of rock.
Irregardless of actual order, we’re going to start talking about Sleepeater right now. Why? Because they’re from Portland, and you kiddos know what comes from Portland: Wheat! Here at DIT we love wheat just as much as we love Alternative Psychedelic Rock, and Sleepeater is good at the latter of the two, which as previously stated, we respect highly, so check them out.
Three Mile Island hails from Petaluma, California (Not Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) and plays some type of weird Bluegrass inspired Garage Rock. I say weird in the nicest way possible, because I like them, and you can believe me when I say that because I write for this blog and half of these bands on here are weird and that’s the best part. They have great presence on stage and it’s stuff you can sing along to and I know how much people like to sing along to music so that ought to be great.
Widow’s Hatchet is a metal band with a female lead singer that seems to take ques from all around the metal spectrum. They’ve gigged from Grand Rapids to Detroit, playing metal that feeds off of the blood that seeps from the black, brutal roots of the giant mother metal tree.
Lastly, local staple Good News will be adding and subtracting (maybe even performing some long division) musically with their Post-Math-Instrumental-Rock that’s so technical and precise they use TI-83 calculators to compose most of their tunes. Joking aside they really are technical and precise, and you should catch them at Louie’s tonight because their shows are always super legit.
The music starts at 9pm. The fun starts shortly before. The cost is 5 dollars. See you down there.
Tonight at Louie’s starting at 9 o’clock you can find some of the most astronomical music in the Kalamazoo area.
Photo by Rebecca Lessem
HORDES, hailing from Lansing, Michigan, book themselves as “… An exercise in taking the monotone to it’s unmusical zenith. A blasting howl perverted by the endless piles of rubble and scarred concrete that were once the heart of the city echoing on and on in septic waves of dissonance…” So if that sounds like your thing. If that tickles your little inner ear in a pleasant way, you should probably come down to the show.
And if you’re into HORDES you most certainly will like Boron Nuzzle. A local staple for weird music weird-os, Boron Nuzzle will literally blow your ears off with their spaced-out, experimental, glitch, drone, jamming that defies most explanation. Luckily, they did a set at WIDR that I’ve linked to below.
Come subject yourself to the abnormality of HORDES, Boron Nuzzle, and Tie Die down at Louie’s for the nominal fee of $5! It’s gonna be totally crazy!
Here at DIT we’re all about doing it together. Nothing embodies this concept better than things that are Open-Source. The video below is a TED Talk involving Open Farm Tech, a wiki and foundation intent on providing a simple way to get open sourced hardware solutions to people, for free.
Check it out.
“I bought a tractor, then it broke. I paid to get it repaired, then it broke again. And pretty soon I was broke too. I realized that the truly appropriate low-cost tools that I needed to start a sustainable farm and settlement just didn’t exist yet. I needed tools that were robust, modular, highly efficient and optimized, low-cost, made from local and recyclable materials that would last a life time. Not designed for obsolescence.” – Marcin Jakubowski.
Hey everybody, guess what? Tobacco is awesome. They were at the Strutt last September with Dreamend, Junk Culture, and Silverghost and now they’re back again but with Shapers and Beans!
Tobacco is the solo project of Thomas Fec, front man of Black Moth Super Rainbow. His special brand of Trip Hop can be heard inside of BMSR if you listen, but out at the Strutt tomorrow night you can hear it by itself, in all of it’s Trippy and Hoppy glory.
Come down to the Strutt Thursday, April 14th.
Cover is $12
Doors open at 8pm.
Louie’s is ’bout to be off the chain, ya’ll! Local favorite Glowfriends will be performing with HMS, Victory! and Good News (in lieu of the unfortunate cancellation of Evelyn) on the 30th, and, as always, you are encouraged to come out to Louie’s and subject your ears to the sweet, sweet beautiful musical magic of some fine Kalamazoo artists.
What’s that? What do I hear from the crowd of enthusiastic listeners chomping at the bit for more information about this show? YOU’D LIKE TO KNOW THE TIME!? Well I’m not going to tell you. You’ll just have to hang out at Louie’s until you see the limos show up. Just kidding, it starts at 8:30.
Be there or be square, y’all.
Kalamazoo math rock duo Good News performed a while back at the No Fun where I happened to pick up their self-titled EP.
They look like this:
Good News is a very talented duo, with Ryan Pate on Drums and Brett Jacobsen on guitar. When you first pop their EP in your walkman the first thing you’re going to notice is a smooth, gliding, sweeping guitar supported by precise and driving drums. You’re going to find that this is one of the reasons that Good News is so aesthetically pleasing; they stick to a solid, consistent sound, and do it well.
Their influences, which you can find on their myspace, illuminate the origins of their sound. When I saw them live The Mars Volta jumped out at me immediately as something similar (albeit without vocals); However, on their first track specifically, I felt a little more of The Mercury Program going on.
That being said, and without further genre-fication or comparisons to previous acts, this EP was terrific. Track two has this frenzied feel that loops around and finds itself, varying slightly in short and precise riffs. Track three continues on this kind of organic, just intensely groovy feel wherein the drum goes nuts, and the guitar (he does this with a loop pedal live) plays and then plays over itself…these different quick and precise riffs. This then degrades itself and you end up on the fourth track, which is this more cinematic and emotional jam.
Good News then, with the fifth track, busts out their longest song, a 5 minute epic with lots of effects, blowin’ yer mind. Track six is a driving, upbeat, mad song that ends abruptly into reverse guitars and then…an uptempo and feverish seventh, that has a finale befitting the end of an album, or ep, or whatever.
I would say that this has re-playability. As in, I would listen to it again. I’m pretty sure all of the tracks I detailed here that were on the CD are also on their myspace. Or you could just catch them around sometime cuz they’ll probably be doing shows at the No Fun House or the Strutt or just around Kalamazoo and then you can get their CD…it’s pretty awesome.
La Chambre No Fun, A Casa No Fun, in all languages it means the same thing: The No Fun House. And Friday night, July 30th to be exact, The House of Supreme Malaise hosted three (count ’em) bands: Good News, Fox and the Law, and And I Was Like, What? (in that order).
The latter two on the previously stated bill hail all the way from Seattle, Washington. For every mile they drove, they rocked two.
The night started out with “math rock” gods Good News playing to a crowd yearning for more individuals. Those individuals didn’t come, but Good News gave absolutely no mind to this situation and played on. They played on to a fervent crowd of other bands and DIT junkies, a guitarist and a drummer, adding and subtracting their way into the night, raising the bar of rockin’ so high that I could see sweat beading off of the heads of the members of Fox and the Law. They would not be frightened.
Fox and the Law met this challenge with a smile, told us we were the best crowd ever, and managed to rock everyone’s pants off. So much so that I had to go walk all the way to bronson park just to cool myself down in the fountain. So much so that I missed “And I Was Like, What?”. It sucked so bad that I missed them, though, I actually had to physically get up and drive myself to Steak and Shake to ward off the depression.
Yeah, that was a Steak and Shake plug, they’ve got good food, you mad?
The point here really is that you should all come to more DIT shows. Because often times there are awesome kids throwing down awesome jams at awesome places all around this fair city, and I know for a fact that if they stopped, you’d all cry. The good news is that they wont stop. Check the bar on your right, it’s on fire.
Fellow DIT-ers, something horrible has happened today. If you haven’t been reading the news, I regret to inform you that 800,000 gallons of oil were released into a creek in Marshall ealier today. Said creek feeds the Kalamazoo River.
Kalamazoo county has declared a state of emergency. This is a picture, created by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment, detailing where the oil spill is and where it is travelling to. Note that the end of the road is Lake Michigan.
There is a facebook group that has been put together in the hopes of organizing people to help with this in any way. It is my modest suggestion that you join it.
Not only is it unnecessary for me to elaborate on this, but I am severely unqualified to do so. I will, in respect to the urgency and seriousness of this matter (if that’s needed at all, in this case), leave you with a snippet from the Kalamazoo Gazette article I linked to above:
“I just came from Fort Custer and you can smell it now,” Kalamazoo County Undersheriff Pali Matyas said. “… It’s all rolling downhill and there are a lot of complications.”
Let us hope this has a timely and safe resolution.
So I was at La Iglesia Friday night for punk rock pancakes and some noisey tunes from some of the finest artists kickin’ it in this fair city of ours:
Bronson Blvd kicked off the night, followed by Forget The Times. This First Band as well as Problems that Fix Themselves used synth to make noise, while the other two bands used drums and guitars(s), but all of the bands at La Iglesia that night made alot of noise, and seeing as how the show was “Punk Rock Pancakes” (which were made, lack of syrup be damned) I suppose that makes a whole lotta sense.
Before Forget The Times started, we had to set up a sophisticated police detection system in preparation. This included a look-out, and a text message. Fortunately for us and the police, they decided not to bug us. I don’t think anyone would’ve been surprised, however, because Forget the Times was loud…real loud. They smashed their way through songs, practically distorting the gravity in the room. Not for the faint of heart.
Problems that fix Themselves similarly warped the soundwaves in the room, with Josh Tabbia piloting his synth-craft from atop the Iglesia’s kitchen counter. I didn’t see much of this act, but I heard it, and it was warped in a good way. Check it out if you can.
And The Grow Fangs! well, they were loud too. The crowd cheered for random guitar ditties done between songs, as we were all amped up from all the rockin’, and The Grow Fangs! capitalized on this and put on a good show accordingly. There was a guy holding a boom box, face covered by a bandanna, creating some kind of distortion with his stereo but mostly adding to the overall aesthetic of the band, while James Duke was bottomless, and Ray Jackson was topless. Also Ray almost fell out of the window.
It was a good send off, and I think all parties involved had a great time. I suggest, if you see one of these bands playing somewhere in the future, you should go listen to their set. Word.
EDIT: I was having a good time Friday night and I got things a little mixed up in terms of order. I fixed it, though, and even if I said it in the wrong time line, everything I said was true.
DITKalamazoo 
