Workin’ The Corner: A night of rock at the Record Shop

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Sunday was a good day to be at the Corner Record shop. 3 touring bands and one excellent local outfit came together to make everyone’s shopping experience a bit better – and a lot louder.

Opening the bill was Kalamazoo’s own Philly Crawlers. 4-piece pop rock with just enough strange harmonies and interesting lyrics to keep things fresh. This was an excellent performance, high-powered and entertaining as always, and a great way to open for the touring talent. Also, according to various mumblings through the crowd, it seems the Crawlers may have a record out very soon here, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for that.

next up to bat was the boys from Athens, OH: She Bears. An excellent and hard-working indie-rock band, She Bears have been on the road for over a month touring, and this was their last date on that rather hectic schedule. I’m glad they could spend it in Kalamazoo, as their show is extremely entertaining, with them playing one absolutely polished tune after the other. It’s no wonder they were just signed to Deep Elm Records. check  ’em out their music, and check ’em out live if you ever get the chance. You will not be disappointed.

The third group was InBirdsEye from Northern Indiana, and they rocked. Technical guitar parts, inventive drum parts, and a throbbing bass made for the perfect vehicle for InBirdsEye’s intriguing lyrics to ride. If these guys come around (and I’m sure they will), make sure you catch them, as they are a most excellent group.

The final presence of the night were math-rockers all the way out of Calgary, Canada: This City Defects. They set up all their gear, turned off all the lights in the joint, and started making some vaguely musical sounds. Soon the racket had grown into something that was very nearly overpowering, and then the silhouette of the lead guitar player bent down, a light flashed on, and suddenly it was madness.

Anyone who has any interest in math-rock either as a listener or a player needs to check these guys out. They were clean, fast, and veritably terrifying both as individual players, and as a band as a whole. Fortunately, they’ve got an open day on their tour, and they’ll be destroying the Strutt tonight with Lincoln County War and the Savina Brothers.. Check it out. Trust me.

Catching Slow Animals is as easy as hitting The Strutt tonight!

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Wednesday nights are always interesting in one way or another. This Wednesday night is interesting in that a fantastic group, called Slow Animal, will be prowling the stage at The Strutt. How many bad puns can I squeeze in to one post? We’ll find out. Bad humor aside, though, these guys are great. They’ve got a big, borderline psychedelic feel to them that washes throughout, with some excellent soundscaping and high-energy guitar-work and strange but sweet vocal harmonies. Don’t take it from me though, check ’em out.

Playing the role of support will be two new local projects that don’t really have any recorded works out yet. The first is Andy Savina and Mark Thompson’s new Lifeplan, which, if you know anything about Andy and Mark, is sure to be killer. The second is some punk’s new project Saxsquatch and Bridge Band. One could call it fusion. One could also call it seat-of-your-pants improvisational music. One could, similarly, not worry about postulating and come see it first-hand. Either way, there’s really no telling what will happen in that set, so just suffice to say that some excellent musicians will be on deck to make some tunes occur.

It should be a fun show in any case. Slow Animal is coming all the way from Jersey, so come on down and show ’em how we do in the Zoo.

Are You Experimental?

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Then come check out the sweet noise show at The Strutt on August 11th! If you’re not, then come check out the sweet noise show at The Strutt on August 11th and get into it!!! Just one week from tomorrow. For only $5, your mind will be thoroughly melted. Here’s what’s up:

Vertonen –

This Califonia noise maker has been at it since the early 90s. In true noise fashion, he has release somewhere around five hundred thousand albums on just about every format imaginable. This includes a split with Wolf Eyes side project Demons. He also runs the C.I.P. label in his free time (somehow).

Nerfbau / Take Up Serpents –

Noise minus a little bit of the ear piercing harshness. These guys are both on tour together. Check out their tour page for an idea of what to expect.

Dental Work – Noise by way of Traverse City, MI. This guy is super active in Michigan’s experimental music community. He books shows all over the state and runs Placental Recordings. He’s released albums for bands all over including Acid Mothers Temple and Cock ESP.

Boron Nuzzle – Kalamazoo’s own fun loving absurdists rockers. Sounds ranging from straight noise to free jazz to psych rock and everything in between.

Like I said, Only $5. Doors at 8pm. First band at 9pm. 18+. See you there.

No Fun July 30th

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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.

No Fun House! Tomorrow!

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Tomorrow night at the No Fun House, all the way from Toronto, comes an instrumental band called Sleep For the Nightlife. I had the good fortune of running into them earlier on this tour in Long Island, NY. I had no idea what to expect as I hadn’t listened to them before and I was pleasantly surprised, nay, blown away. Their mathy dual-guitar attack was right up my alley but I was even more delighted when I realized that for a post-y band of this nature, they refreshingly eschewed anything unnecessary. They keep their songs short and between the straight up two guitar, bass, and drums lineup only one member uses any effects and even that is only limited to a single Line 6 delay pedal.

Joining them will be a new creation which I have yet to witness, Deep Waters, the latest project from Kalamazoo stalwarts David Spalvieri-Kruse, Pat Carrol, and Josh Holcomb. Do I have any idea what we’re in store for? Just imagine this image in musical form…

And rounding out the bill is our very own the Number Eight whom you should be plenty familiar with by now. If not, have you ever even been to a Kalamazoo show? Now a duo, these guys play indie/shoegaze influenced slow burners that are as pretty as they are seductive. You heard that right. If we’re lucky, we’ll hear some singing-saw thrown into their primarily acoustic guitar/electric guitar performance.

Barking Tuna – The Scoop

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Summer is rapidly ending, which mean Fall is rapidly beginning, which mean it’s almost time for WIDR’s Barking Tuna Fest! Which also means it’s time to fight . . . for the Tuna.

Last Year's poster. So awesome.

But what does it all mean? Well, essentially, every year WIDR puts on a festival where they bring in most excellent touring talent from all over the place and have them rock a great show over the course of some days. There’s local talent involved, though, and that’s where the fighting comes in.

Fight for the Tuna is a 10-day precursor to the festival. Essentially, it’s a battle of the bands for local talent to duke it out, all gunning for the chance to open for whatever illustrious and righteous headliner the folks at WIDR manage to bring in to town. The format is 3 rounds (read: three nights) where the contenders get to show their stuff. Attendants of the shows each get a ballot with which they can vote for the winner (this is, after all, America). The winner then plays Barking Tuna.

But WIDR needs bands! So, if you have an outfit that’s local and wants to rock it at Barking Tuna, you can send your demos/press packages/pleas and petitions to:

WIDR FM/WMU attn:FFTT,Michelle
1501 Faunce Student Services Building
Kalamazoo,Mi 49008
OR
Send Digital copies to: Widr.tuna@gmail.com

Make it happen.

But before you do that, check out tonight’s show at No Fun House. It’s gonna be a good one.

Things are getting Noisy

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The boys and girls over at Kalamazoo NOISE! are doing the difficult thing: dropping content on a full-color hard-copy magazine all over West Michigan. Don’t believe me? Well, check their press release and get back to me.

They’re looking for help with distribution, so if you know anything about store-fronts or other means of getting paper circulating, you should let ’em know. Also, as many people know, getting something published for hard copy is a lot of hard work and money. If you feel like you want to see this thing really take off, why  not toss them a few bucks to help with printing costs? Just an idea.

DIT(K) will be working with NOISE to make sure as much of the local music scene is accurately represented, so if anybody has any ideas for things you’d like to see covered, let us know at ditkalamazoo@yahoo.com.

There’s a show at No Fun tonight, with The Fox and the Law and And I Was Like, What? kicking it all the way from Seattle, with locals Good News rockin’ it even. It’s going to be an excellent show, with lots of great guitar work and fantastic arrangements. Check it out.

The Last Great Wave

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Happy Wave Wednesday, DIT! Kasey Chaos here, advocate of all that is hardcore and lover of general metally goodness. That being said, I can’t help but to notice all of the attention being garnered by the hardcore scene as of late. In lieu of the dead metalcore scene, some musicians tuned back up, learned a few more tricks other than a good sweep or a stomach-turning bass drop, and have found that nobody wants to hear songs based on horror movies and necrophilic romance right now. Growing steadily stronger in that place is some two-stepping riffs to get you moving, super-posi lyrics and a passionate feeling of community and brotherhood.

May I introduce: The Wave.

Firstly, Grand Rapids’ own, La Dispute. These guys have been around for quite a few years (since 2k5) with a sound that gradually grew from experimental, bordering thrashy and screamo at moments, to a more artsy, albeit catchy, and edgy post-hardcore. Their lyrics are completely outwardly focused, and members of the band show their creativity in more ways than just with La Dispute. With the 3 “Here, Hear…” concept albums, the members of the band each write a song completely, playing every instrument by themselves, and turn it over to the vocalist to lyricise. Impressive. They’ve gathered alot of attention over the past two years by being mentioned in AP two or three times, touring overseas twice, and hitting a couple national tours with well-known acts like alexisonfire, Thursday, and The Fall of Troy. You’ll also see on their myspace, on the left hand side, something I am completely proud and supportive of: their list of friend bands, venues, labels and artists. They’re huge on supporting their friends and community, which I dig to lengthless extents and feel is a good component to any artist.

Second, we have Boston’s own Defeater. Started in 2005, this Bridge Nine (hardcore record label having hosted well-known acts such as Have Heart, Verse and Terror)  band is, in my opinion, the band most mirroring the first wave of modern hardcore (not hardcore punk although there is definitely some punk influence) of the five wave bands. With a straight forward and hard-charged sound, this enviro-friendly band has been turning heads since they were called “the perfect definition of modern hardcore” by Lambgoat.com and since their record “Travels” had been cited by punknews.org as “a new artistic peak for hardcore”. It’s also cool as hell how many of them are up-front activists in their community and general life. Word up, check them out.

Next, we have Pianos Become the Teeth from Baltimore, MD. Started in 2006, this more emotional-melodic type of hardcore band has been partners with the Topshelf (Defeater, Into It. Over It., Castevet) record label since the end of 2009. A band who tours extensively and writes intensively, these guys have gotten attention from AP, Exclaim! and Indie Rock Reviews. And how! I was privileged enough to catch these guys when they came around on their Summer ’10 tour with local support (see photo blog). Being a band that’s more on the emotional side of hardcore, these guys are doing what they do extremely well and are very talented musicians. I was definitely not disappointed in their show and cannot WAIT until we get them back around here!

Bringing us to the only west coast band on the Wave, Touché Amoré. These Los Angeles-based guys just played the Sound and Fury Festival with fellow Wave bands, Defeater and Make Do and Mend. Another notch to add: they just got off tour with Bane and Strike Anywhere. Of the five wave bands, I believe TA shows their punk influence most. Making their place on No Sleep and 6131 records, this band shows much promise. They’ve done split releases with both La Dispute and Make Do and Mend, they also offer a 7″ demo and one full-length album. One quick glance through their myspace show photos will tell you that they seem to have a quite an enthusiastic crowd.

Back to the east coast: Make Do and Mend. From Connecticut’s capitol, this Panic Records band has been going at it since about 2007. Since 2009, they’ve toured like madmen and have put out two full length records on cd and vinyl. Being the only band on the wave with sung vocals, they do come across as less abrasive, but in no way less powerful. You can catch them around the area August 23 at Metal Frat in Ann Arbor.

Finally. Something to encompass and accommodate all of the eclectic and very segregated harder music scenes. I, for one, am EXCITED for this upcoming year. S’ya at the show.

resources:
http://www.myspace.com/michhardcore
http://michiganhardcore.onlinegoo.com/

URGENT: Oil Spills into creek that feeds Kalamazoo River, State of Emergency Declared

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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.