Milhouse has got the cure for yr Monday blues. A rock solid lineup of local and touring weirdos ready to Rip It Up!
Check the technique:
Spray Paint are a fresh up-and-coming Rock band from Texas. All kinds of interesting elements make up their unique sound. Garage fuzz, No Wave skronk, Post Punk dance, Rock & Roll reverb. Debut full length LP out now on S.S. Records. Be sure you grab a copy at their show tonight!
Frostbiter is a side project from the mysterious Matt Maverick. Dueling synthesizers playing coldwave minimal electronica. Might even hear a little saxophone. Come nod yr head to this.
Surprise Attack is a local Noise Rock Power Trio. Sid and Poncho on the drones and Saxsquatch on the skins. Prepare yrself for liquid trance jazz sound waves. Let it take you away.
Y’all know the drill.
Leave the jerks at home.
Bring a friend.
Donate to the touring band.
Buy some merch.
Doors at 8pm.
Respect.
Eclectic doesn’t necessarily mean difficult, and here is a prime example of artists drawing from many different sources to create compelling and catchy music that’s hella tasty for your earbuds!
PORCHES. a full band and sometimes solo project of Aaron Maine, is a blend of folk and indie rock in an unexpected way. Traveling all the way from New York to our humble basements, PORCHES. are here to share with you captivating and moving songwriting you can get your dance on to. This group is labelmates of such wonderful groups as Pile, Speedy Ortiz, Krill, Kal Marks and many others who may have already impressed you.
This show will also feature a resurgence of Double Phelix man of mystery GITIS BAGGS! Although Gitis has been playing music consistently in a myriad of local projects, his solo work has not been heard for some time. That being said, Gitis plays wonderful experimental and thoughtful folk that is lush, ambient, and strange. You wont want to miss!
PLUS while we’re at it, TRANCERS, a newer local project, will be making their basement debut. From influences all across the board, you can tell these folks have deeply entrenched themselves in music fandom, and are sharing their findings with us all.
Show starts at 9:00. Please donate what you can, as PORCHES. have traveled quite a ways to get here, and need to sometime get home. Be excellent to each other. Dance yr butts off. Contact DITkalamazoo@gmail.com for the address.
Speedy Ortiz are a band out of Northampton, MA who have been fortunate enough to have received a lot of positive attention from larger publications. Their hard work and talent has been noticed, and through that they’re getting opportunities to play with bigger indie bands in big venues.
But the thing about Speedy Ortiz is that the four weirdo rockers have an affinity for Kalamazoo, ever since playing here on their first major tour in the summer of 2012. On their way out from the east coast to play several shows with The Breeders, they’re making a quick last minute stop to a dingy basement in our small, snowy college town.
If you’ve seen them, chances are you’re already planning on going to this show. If you’re unfamiliar, Speedy Ortiz are a hard-hitting rock group, packed to the gills with hooks without the cheesy aspect. They bring just the right balance of noise and melody to keep it interesting. You walk away from the show wanting to listen to the recordings, and you walk away from the record wanting to start it over again.
If my words fail you, maybe this will help:
Local support for this rad show will be Cobalt Mexican Wolves – the enigmatic dance machine from the Double Phelix group, fronted by Fiona Dickinson
As well as New(er) to the scene The Uncanny, a retro oldschool vintage throwback surfy instrumental project, comprised of folks from many other local bands, and inspired by the haunted or cursed guitar of another local musician.
This show will start at 8:00 on the dot! Please bring a buck or two as per usual. Please be excellent to everyone around you, and everyone around you will act in kind. Respect the everything and remember how much you like Kalamazoo.
Make your bummer-time middle-of-the-week Wednesday something more memorable by checking out the dense, heavy, massive, gigantic jams at Milhouse.
Touring in for the evening, LES RHINOCEROS are a band with releases on John Zorn’s label Tzadik (and if that means absolutely anything to you, I’ve probably already sold you on checking out this show) from Washington DC. They are a technical math-rock band, incorporating rhythmic patterns from the middle east, coupled with hard-hitting fuzzed out rock riffs. If you happened to have been at the Joint Chiefs of Math / Reptilian Shape Shifter show at Milhouse earlier this year, you will also enjoy this band almost assuredly.
Backing up this Les Rhinoceros will be local hard-hitters BROWN COMPANY – a band comprised of many veterans in the weird / rock / punk of Kalamazoo. This group creates a hell of a wall of sound, and are a highly compelling live show. This will also be their first house show, so lets give them a warm welcome.
Also on the bill, a combined effort from two experimental groups – PROGNOSIS NEGATIVE and FUZZ TOWN – will be making an appearance. They have never played together, chances are they never will again. Fuzz Town is an experimental guitar / pedal / loops/ beats duo comprised of the birthday boy of the day Poncho, and Josh Miller of many local bands. Prognosis Negative is a saxophone improv duo comprised of local notorious figures Saxquatch and Sean Hartman. Together these groups have something special in mind for the evening.
Show begins at 9:00 on the dot with BROWN COMPANY. Please bring money for the touring group. Strive to be the best person you can be. Tell your friends.
If this doesn’t sound like your sort of deal, not to worry! Fireplace Club and Courthouse will also be having shows this day. Fireplace Club will be starting earlier in the evening (with pumpkin carving!) and Courthouse later, so feasibly you could check out all performances!
FIREPLACE CLUB: Glowfriends (tour kickoff), Deep Waters, Erich Kuperschmidt
COURTHOUSE: Anwar Sadat, White Reaper, SAPPHIC
For any of these addresses, email ditkalamazoo@gmail.com
The folks at Milhouse have just passed their two year mark in the house! Also, this show will represent the 50th in a two year span. Come celebrate and help encourage 50 more!
This show is a sort of mixed bag of sounds, so likely there’s something for everyone, or at least for everyone who can dig on strange sounds.
THE JOINT CHIEFS OF MATH hail from Philadelphia, organized as a guitar/drum duo unlike any other. The guitarist’s pedal board set up is out of this world, making the live performance hard to believe, and the sound intense and full. If you’re into heavy math rock sorts of bands, this will be your bag. If you’re in to electronics, this band will probably also be something you want to see.
REPTILIAN SHAPE SHIFTERS are not local band The Reptilian. They are however a conspiracy theory math rock band from Oakland California. Incorporating technical prowess with the heaviness we’ve all grown to know and love from many shows in the Milhouse basement, this is a band that you will not want to miss.
VVRVVLF (Formerly WearWolf) is an enigmatic one man dancy noise onslaught, fully prepared to bring the party as well as a tad bit of alienation. VVRVVLF played the second show at Milhouse, and the man behind the mask has played several times in other projects there too.
THE UNCANNY are a newer local band with a vintage vibe. Sounding like a spooky interpretation of The Ventures, The Uncanny are four dudes that may have killed local musician Matt Maier and stolen unfinished demos from his ghost.
As always bring donations for the touring bands, be excellent to every single last being and entity, and enjoy the noise.
Although Milhouse has had a few returning touring acts, Speedy Ortiz will be the first to return three times in just about a years time! Although this act has been getting some attention from major publications, they’re still attempting to run their tour circuit through some favorite DIY spaces – Kalamazoo included.
SPEEDY ORTIZ are on tour to promote their new album, Major Arcana, which came out July 9th. The four piece band has a huge sound, with heavy drums and spiraling/strange guitar lines, all matched with unbeatable catchy hooks.
Also performing will be locals CRASH CITY SAINTS, the local longtime running shoegaze band featuring a changing line up and evolving sound, who first brought Speedy Ortiz to Kalamazoo. SHARK BEACH the brand-spankin’-patent-pending new band featuring a few of those buddies from MINUTES will be playing their first set. And finally, local hit makers and heart breakers BORING PEOPLE will knock your socks off with delightful bummer tracks as they always promise to do.
If you like things loud, weird, and stuck in your head for days, this is the show for you.
Please bring donation for the touring act. Please respect everyone at the house. Be kind, rewind. THIS SHOW IS STARTING EARLY. We’re kicking things off at 7:30! The reason for this is that once this is done, you can get TWICE AS MUCH ROCK by going to Wayne Manor to see Jake Simmons & The Little Ghosts, The Island of Misfit Toys (Chicago, IL), The Dead Records (Fort Wayne, IN), and Saxquatch & The Bridge Band.
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.
This Tuesday, Milhouse host a handful of sincere, loud bands in their basement.
Tiny Moving Parts from Minnesota is coming back through and providing upbeat, 90’s emo influenced songs. In support are The Great American Witch Hunt and Running Shoes from Grand Rapids, as well as The Reptilian from Kalamazoo.
The Great American Witch Hunt is a doomy, heartfelt 2-piece led by Monte from Mountain Goat and Cult of Reason. Running Shoes is a new band that is mostly instrumental and reminiscent of American Football. Closing out the night will be Kalamazoo’s favorite The Reptilian, so don’t get sick and lose your voice or you won’t be able sing along.
The show starts at 9:00pm and donations will be accepted for the out-of-town bands. As always, come planning to be respectful to all.
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
DITKalamazoo 