CHUNKmedia shooting a second local music documentary

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September 2009, CHUNKmedia began production on a local music documentary called Weekend Warriors and released it in June 2010. It included Avenmore, Blackwater Valley Songs, Brandon John Foote, Burning Alexandria, Doctor! Doctor!, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Kissyface Fashion Faux-Pas, La Dispute, onlytheashesremain, Please Promise, The Corn Fed Girls, The New Scum, and Their Teeth Will Be Of Lions.

Recently they decided to make a second documentary, while having more time to focus on editing, getting more/better footage, and getting more bands involved. It should be completed and released on DVD by sometime this fall and entered into a few film festivals shortly after.

Participating bands in part 2 include Analecta, Arson Party, Brothers, Discerned, Dr. Device, Forget The Times, From The Ropes, Ghosts of the Great Lakes, Infinite Design, Jeremy Cronk, Please Promise, Pope of Dope and the Ministers of Mayhem, Protected Left, Sleepeater, Their Teeth Will Be Of Lions, The Penguin Collector, Three Mile Island, TimeLapse, and Traitor. Suggestions are always welcome for bands/musicians and shows to shoot at.

Most of the bands involved are located in the Kalamazoo area (although, they would like to extend further) and most of the footage will be shot at local venues around Kalamazoo.

The next shoot is this Friday at the DAAC in Grand Rapids, where they will be recording Brothers, From The Ropes, and TimeLapse. CHUNKmedia members Jared and Lisa’s band, The Penguin Collector, will be playing as well. Saturday, they will be shooting Ghosts of the Great Lakes at Kindleberger Rock The Park in Parchment.

Here are some unedited videos from the last show they shot at Louie’s Trophy House Grill.

Protected Left (from GR/Kalamazoo)

Sleepeater (from GR/Kalamazoo)

Their Teeth Will Be Of Lions (from Kalamazoo)

To keep updated, check out http://www.facebook.com/weekendwarriorsdocumentaries

Cook out with Natural Disasters!

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Once again the Fat Guy house graces us with another amazing show, but this time it comes with a pre cook out at 3 p.m.! So bring some grillables and hang out with your friends early. Due to the amount of bands on the bill this SHOW WILL START AT 7 P.M. SHARP! Don’t forget to bring donations for the touring bands.

Natural Disasters- awesome pop punk, hardcore from our vary own Kalamazoo ( http://www.facebook.com/pages/Natural-Disasters/103370013059834)

Hold Tight!- fast in your face pop punk from Richmond VA\(http://holdtight.bandcamp.com/)

The Greek Favorites- melodic pop punk from PA! (http://thegreekfavourites.bandcamp.com/track/wax-wings)

Choke UP-hard, and fast punk coming straight from Boston MA (http://chokeup.bandcamp.com/album/choke-up-ep)

This Is Your Life-melodic hardcore not to be missed, hailing from Richmond VA (http://thisisyourlife.limitedpressing.com/)

Hard Daze-heavy hardcore from Livonia MI (http://www.facebook.com/pages/HARD-DAZE/144149368973965?sk=app_178091127385)

Respect the house, Respect the neighbors, Respect each other!

D-I-Tea Time

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Here at DIT we’re working on moving back into having regular weekly meetings as well as branching out to as many people in our music community who want to take part. Tomorrow afternoon at 4PM there will be a meeting at No Fun and we would love to see you there and get your input on what shows you’re throwing, what you want to see happen in our town, and what you think we can do to make this operation run better. Be there! If that time doesn’t work but you still want to get involved, let us know and we’ll do what we can to arrange things accordingly.

DIT or DIE.

7/2 Let’s have a dance, shall we?

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It’s a scorcha of a  Saturday and The Strutt is kindly providing us with the bounty of an out of this world dance party. Put on your dancing shoes and show some skin because it’s going to get sweaty tonight. DID I MENITON IT’S FREE!

STEPDAD

They’re gonna make you move. Their songs are poppy and unbelievably catchy. With a hugely successful EP under their belts, these Grand Rapids boys are set to record a full length with producer Chris Zane (Passion Pit, The Walkmen, Tokyo Police Club) and will surely go far. Come see them before they shoot up and tickets cost $50.

NUNCA DUERMA

This Michigan based DJ creates a vibrant sound with his skill for seductive hip hop beats and its marriage to a lush landscape of ambience and melodic sampling.

THE WRAP

Described as a party right when it’s being broken up, The Wrap is an intense, gritty, and downright shocking group of sweaty young men MCing over a mix of hip hop, fierce electronica and raucous samples

FREE! FREE! FREE! The Strutt. 9.30pm.

7/1- FREE SHOW!! Onn/Ozenza/Heavier Than Air Flying Machines

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Get your leather jackets, kids! TONIGHT, The Strutt’s bringin’ in July with a FREE SHOW. On the bill are Grand Rapids’ own Onn, Ozenza, and Heavier Than Air Flying Machines, the former being of Friction Records.

This is an evening that will not disappoint! If you’re looking for hard, heavy, straight-up Rock n’ Roll, then you’re in luck! It is sure to be an evening full of angst, anger, and rough-ridin’ Rock for the ages!

9:30 p.m.
THE STRUTT
18+ / and FREEEEEE!!!

Onn:

 

Ozenza:

 

Heavier Than Air Flying Machines:

THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF THE NO FUN HOUSE

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It’s been a while, Kalamazoo! No Fun House has been laying low for the past few months due to some noise complaints. It’s been our plan to come back for a few select shows this summer. Tonight is the first of them all.

To add to the specialness of the occasion and to make things as cozy as possible, we’ll be having a potluck before the show and all music will be performed in our living room.

If you’ve got a dish to pass, bring it on over at 7pm. Music will start promptly at 9. We may even fire up the grill for this one…

We’ve got some pretty stellar touring musicians coming from Toronto, Montreal and Austin, TX. Local support will be provided by the amazing GARY NEASON!!

As always, we’re asking that you bring donation money so the touring artists can pay for gas. We’re also keeping with our no drug/alcohol policy to ensure a safe and problem free environment for everyone.

Take a minute to read up on our touring acts. This is gonna be mesmerizing!

KHORA: www.khora.ca/albums

Khôra is an experimental music project of Toronto musician Matthew Ramolo aimed at blurring the lines that separate the organic and synthetic, improvisation and composition, and the artist and the expressivity of nature. The emphasis in Khôra’s music is distributed equally between melodic acoustic and electronic figures and experimentation involving field recordings, analogue and digital processing, and extended techniques, with a high degree of attention paid to assembling unique sound palettes containing rich colour, texture, and dynamics. In 2006, Ramolo self-released a small handmade full-length record under a different moniker entitled ‘Now Beacon, Now Sea…’. After subsequent years of writing, refinement, and translating a recorded aesthetic into a live performance setting, Khôra emerged with the 2009 self-release ‘Silent Your Body Is Endless,’ an album that was warmly received, hailed as “a complete revelation” and reaching the top of CKUT’s music charts. In the autumn of 2010, a re-mixed, re-sequenced, and re-mastered version of ‘Silent Your Body Is Endless’ was released by Constellation Records as part of the first edition of Musique Fragile, alongside albums by Montreal’s Nick Kuepfer and Les Momies De Palerme. In addition to collaborative projects, Khôra will be traveling with a sublime live show through Canada and the US in the summer of 2011, and is presently at work experimenting and recording for a third full length album.

NICK KUEPFER: www.myspace.com/nickkuepfer

Nick Kuepfer is a guitar player who weaves nylon string and electric guitar pieces with live sampled tape loops and drones. His sources range from static repetition and subtlety to frantic and abrasive; always with a tendency for experimentation. He was born and raised in Stratford, Ontario and is now living in Montreal, Quebec since 2003. He has performed solo for a short time and occasionally plays with guests Eric Craven (hanged up), Kristina Koropecki (Mark Berube), John Corban (SMCQ) and Nick Scribner (Clues). His current activity was preceded by playing in the bands Lungbutter, Aidswolf, L’embuscade etc and presently plays with Hrsta and No Nature. In November of 2010 he released a full-length solo record as part of the first edition of Montreal record label Constellation Records’ Musique Fragile series. In addition he released a limited pressing mini-cdr with Toronto Print shop and record label Standard Form as the 7th installment of their RR series in March of 2011.

SILENT LAND TIME MACHINE: http://sltm.bandcamp.com/

Silent Land Time Machine is a one-man bedroom recording-project based in Austin, TX. SLTM is a naive composition of guitars, viola, violin, cello, accordion, voice, percussion, samples & found-sound, various electronics & noise-makers, and piano; musical-experiments which move from small exercises in sound-manipulation into full-on orchestrated blow-outs of coordinated noise that sound more like a small electro-acoustic orchestra than a single individual. On his debut album, &hope still ((TLR045/IQR001) collaboratively released between TIME-LAG Records and his own Indian Queen Records) SLTM was described as ‘naive bedroom folkrock filtered through some blissed out minimalist phase experiment…ecstatic, post-psychedelic chamber rock maybe?’; &HS was met exclusively with warm-regards and kind words and played on the likes of WFMU and the BBC, and was said to be “a bit like a backwater Panda Bear or Godspeed You Black Emperor, with all the hypnotic, emotive power that suggests.”

6/30- May Erlewine/Seth Bernard Two-For-One Blowout Bonanza!

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It’s that time again!
That special time that comes around every so often in a town’s life when Michigan Folk favorites Seth Bernard and May Erlewine roll into town with their gaggle of friends and fellow musicians. The recipe’s perfect: incredibly talented musicians, song writing skills to embarrass your 8th grade English teacher, a whole evening’s worth of story-telling, and maybe even some good ol’ fashioned camaraderie… what’s there to lose!

As always they’ll be featured with a smattering of their usual line up of friends- Joshua Davis on keyboards, Mike Shimmin on drums, and Ian Gorman on bass. You really would be doing yourself an injustice if you miss this one!

So come on down for a evening of musical delights and do your soul some good!

THURSDAY, JUNE 30
BELL’S ECCENTRIC CAFE
$10 (holy cheap for a Bell’s show, Batman!)
21+ (sorry dudes…)

DAVE BIXBY 6/27/11

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When I used to work at The Corner Record Shop I would sometimes go up and fill shifts at the Grandville store. Some pretty amazing records came through the door but one that stood out to me was ‘Ode To Quetzalcoatl’ by Dave Bixby. The title, coupled with the strange minimalist artwork, intrigued me. Sometimes, you can tell a record is gonna be good just by looking at it.

I listened to the record and was immediately interested. One of the best psych/folk albums I’ve ever heard! A lot of music in that genre is typified by odd instruments, lots of effects, ambient instrumental sections and general psychedelic sounds. However, this album was mostly just Dave’s vocals and acoustic guitar with some natural reverb and echo. What really set it apart was the mood. Practically the definition of haunting pop. These are beautiful songs but played with a feeling of torture and isolation. There is a profound sense of passion and longing. No doubt that the music is completely genuine.

I did some research and found that the album was actually recorded in Grand Rapids in 1969. Apparently Dave was a part of a drug cult at the time. One evening he found God and decided to renounce his ways and live a life of sobriety and peace. He was then promptly abandoned by the cult, his friends and the local Christian group. Shortly after he wrote and recorded ‘Ode To Quetzalcoatl’ as a reflection on his new found convictions and loneliness.

I then found out from CRS’s owner, Steve, that the record was super rare and was the kinda thing vinyl nerds went crazy for. We put the album on ebay and as I remember it ended up selling for close to $1000. I found the whole thing fascinating as there seemed to be very little known of Dave since then. He recorded a few other albums with no real success or acclaim and then seemingly dropped off the face of the earth for 40 years. As a lover of obscure music, I’ve come across many artists with stories ending similarly. I can’t help but wonder where some of them are currently and what they’re doing.

Normally the story would end there. However, a few weeks ago I got a unexpected email from the musician Derrick Hart. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in helping set up a show for this guy he’s touring with. DAVE BIXBY. I couldn’t believe it! Instead of just wondering what happened to him, Derrick actually tracked the man down and convinced him to go out on another tour. AFTER 40 YEARS! This kind of thing just doesn’t happen often.

So, all this to say, the one and only Dave Bixby will be playing The Strutt TONIGHT. Joining him will be Derrick Hart, Peter Damien Cook and Silphium Blooms (Tyler Bassett). Cover is only $5 and music starts at 9pm. All ages are welcome.

If this sounds at all like something you’d be interested in, please help spread the word! Let’s make sure Dave feels welcomed!!

Noise and Pop Collide At Louie’s TONIGHT!!

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What happens when you combine unhinged Noise and cute Indie Pop? A seisure? Well, yes, perhaps. But what’s more, you get AN AWESOME SHOW AT LOUIE’S! This show has somethin for the whole family- chaotic, ambient, free-jazzin’ noise and good old fashioned feel good music. Surely no disappointment to be had.

Chicago transplant Problems That Fix Themselves and Kalamazoo hometown-heroes Forget The Times will be rattling everyone’s brains late into the eve, and Iowa City’s The Wandering Bears and The Western Front will be delighting all with their sweet soda pop to round out the night.

The festivities get goin’ at 8 p.m. at Louie’s Trophy House Grill (773 W. Michigan)
Forget The Times plays first at 8:30 SHARP (no punk rawk time!)

$5/ 18+

GET ON DOWN!

Forget The Times:

The Wandering Bears:

Problems That Fix Themselves:

Already Dead Tapes 5th Release: FOOHGAWZ – Chapter 7

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The 5th cassette release from Chicago-based Already Dead Tapes is Foohgawz “Chapter 7,” an experimental electronic recording that ventures all over the map in one continuous feed of audio.

Starting out the gate with an eerie wind tunnel of a drone, slowly creep in the electronic beats and rhythms that are present on and off throughout the duration of the program.  Cycling pulses and symphonic wails make frequent appearances, with what seems to be real guitar making the occasional pop-in. While essentially one piece of music, as there are no breaks, the mood is ever-shifting and does not get caught up in redundant electronic dub club ennui.

About a third of the way into the tape, out of nothing, a female voice enters the mix and suddenly we are cast into a Portishead-like trip hop piece for a few minutes, and just as quickly, right back into an electronic drone, never to revist anything remotely this song-
oriented again in the remainder of the tape, almost as if this were a cass-single for this pop song with bonus material wrapped on both sides, though not “filler” by any means.

I’m not certain if “Chapter 7” is a story, but it seems to end violently, with funeral bells, turbulent electronics, and what sounds like a car crash.  This is how side A concludes, and there is nothing to be found on side B.  This is a very singular and unique release, shrowded in mystery; the cassette itself is plain white, and aside from the artist name and title, the only other information found in the packaging is the address for Already Dead Tapes, rendering the average person clueless as to who, where or what is behind all of this.  A little bit of modern-day stalking (i.e. the internet) reveals that a man named Alex Meissner, a former Kalamazoo resident now in Orlando, Florida, is the sole force behind this project.  He has been playing around with this style since 1998.  Other recordings of his are available on his Soundcloud and this release can be ordered at Already Dead Tapes website.