San Francisco shoegazers Young Prisms make music that sounds like it floats on a thick fog, winding its way through a dark, mysterious night. Inspired by loss, loneliness, and being stranded at Heathrow during an ice storm, their sophomore release, In Between (Kanine, March 2012), is another trip through a haunted landscape, a worthy follow-up to their 2011 debut, Friends for Now. Consisting of childhood friends Gio Betteo and Matthew Allen, singer Stefanie Hodapp, singer-guitarist Ashley Thomas, and drummer Jordan Silbert, Young Prisms navigate through the darkness on such tracks as “Dead Flowers,” “Four Hours (Away),” “Floating in Blue,” and the downright bouncy “Runner.” Young Prisms will be at Glasslands Gallery on November 7 with Magic Trick and Crinkles and at Mercury Lounge on November 9 with Tamaryn, which should make for a particularly strange and magnetic show.
this week in music
SONG OF THE DAY: THE DARCYS’ “I GOT THE NEWS” REMIXED BY REY PILA
In addition to laying siege to numerous communities in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, causing horrific death and destruction, Hurricane Sandy’s wrath forced the cancellation of many events that make the tristate area, and particularly New York City, what it is. With power back on throughout much of the five boroughs, some of these shows have been rescheduled, so you still have a chance to catch them. One of the most intriguing is an international double bill Tuesday night pairing Mexico City indie band Rey Pila, led by Los Dynamite founder Diego Solórzano, and Toronto quartet the Darcys. The Darcys will be playing their latest album, Aja (Arts & Crafts, January 2012) — yes, a reimagining of Steely Dan’s 1977 classic — in its entirety. You can get a free download of the record (as well as their self-titled debut) here. Rey Pila will be highlighting songs from their upcoming 2013 sophomore release, which includes such ’80s-inspired English-language synth-pop dance tracks as “Blast,” “The Future Sugar,” and “White Night,” featuring Solórzano’s deep, rolling voice. Above, you can check out Rey Pila’s remix of the Darcys’ version of Steely Dan’s “I Got the News.” The Darcys and Rey Pila will be at Mercury Lounge on November 6 for a gig that was originally scheduled for November 1 but had to be postponed because of the storm.
FIRST SATURDAYS — JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL: MY WAY
Jean-Michel Othoniel, “The Secret Happy End,” Murano glass, Saint Just’s mirror glass, metal, vintage carriage, 2008 (© Jean-Michel Othoniel)
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, November 3, free, 5:00 – 9:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
The Brooklyn Museum is hosting a somewhat abbreviated version of its monthly free First Saturdays program tonight because of the hurricane, but it’s still packed with cool events built around the exhibition “Jean-Michel Othoniel: My Way,” a career survey of the idiosyncratic French artist that continues through December 2. There won’t be a dance party, but there will be live music by Slowdance, Jarana Beat, and Savoir Adore, a performance of The Blue Belt by Andrew Benincasa and Shadow Organ Theater, the experimental dance Ghost Lines by Cori Olinghouse, an origami demonstration, a movement workshop with Hip-Hop Dance Conservatory, a sensory gallery tour incorporating touch, smell, sight, and sound, an artist talk with members of Urban Glass, a glass-painting workshop, a book-club talk with Ruth B. Bottigheimer (Fairy Tales: A New History), and the psychedelic light projection “Cosmic Morning” by Don Miller. Also on view at the museum now are “Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe,” “Materializing ‘Six Years’: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art,” and “Aesthetic Ambitions: Edward Lycett and Brooklyn’s Faience Manufacturing Company” in addition to long-term installations and the permanent collection.
POSTPONED: VITAL VOX: A VOCAL FESTIVAL
The fourth annual Vital Vox Festival explores the far-reaching capabilities of the human voice
VITAL VOX FESTIVAL: VOX ELECTRONICS
Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave.
October 29-30, $15, 8:00
917-267-0363
www.vitalfoxfest.com
www.roulette.org
The fourth annual Vital Vox Festival, dedicated to exploring the seemingly limitless range and power of the human voice, will present a half dozen cutting-edge performers over the course of two nights at Roulette in Brooklyn. Monday, October 29, will consist of a cappella jazz and blues singer and composer Philip Hamilton’s “Vocalscapes: Solitude” for voice, percussion, and electronics; excerpts from New York-based, Uruguayan-born audiovisual artist Sabrina Lastman’s “An Encounter with ‘El Duende,’” which pays tribute to Federico García Lorca using voice, movement, sound, bowed psaltery, megaphone, and visuals; and San Francisco-born, Brooklyn-based violinist, composer, vocalist, and poet Sarah Bernstein’s Unearthish, a duo with percussionist Satoshi Takeishi. Tuesday’s program features Lisa Karrer’s “Collision Theory: Works and Premieres for Voice & Multi-Media,” a collaboration with partner David Simons that will include her “Meeting Max: Vocal Experiments with Interactive Video Mixer” and his “The Opera Within the Opera,” with electronics, triggered Theremin, and keyboard; multidisciplinary artist, composer, and teacher Sasha Bodganowitsch’s “Mirror Upon Mirror,” a song cycle involving live looping and processing, dance and movement, text, and such instruments as the syrinx, fujara, koncovka, halo drum, and karimba; and San Francisco-based Pamela Z’s “Works for Voice, Live Processing, and Video,” with excerpts from “Memory Trace” along with other short pieces. [Ed. note: The Vital Vox Festival has been postponed because of Hurricane Sandy; new dates will be available shortly.]
JOHN CAGE: THE SIGHT OF SILENCE
John Cage, “New River Watercolor, Series I (#3), watercolor on parchment paper, 1988 (courtesy National Academy Museum)
National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through January 13, $15, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org
The National Academy continues its transformation with the cleverly curated multimedia exhibition “John Cage: The Sight of Silence,” held in conjunction with the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the seminal avant-garde artist. A controversial minimalist composer, music theoretician, Zen practitioner, I Ching follower, and longtime partner of Merce Cunningham, Cage was also a watercolorist, and the National Academy show features more than four dozen of his paintings, drawings, and etchings made primarily during his residency at the Mountain Lake Workshop in Virginia in the 1980s and early ’90s. A short documentary reveals Cage’s fascinating process using local stones, feathers, and the same ideas of chance and complex numbering systems he employed in creating his musical compositions, resulting in gentle, spiritual works with colorful circles on paper sometimes prepared with smoke. A vitrine contains some of the elements Cage used for the pieces, which were hung by the National Academy on the walls of two galleries by chance as well, through a series of four rolls of the dice. The show also includes Cage’s 1969 Plexiglas homage to Duchamp, “Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel”; one of his unique scores; and a 1976 self-portrait. “The Sight of Silence” is supplemented by several video presentations, highlighted by a 1960 appearance Cage made on the TV game show I’ve Got a Secret, performing “Water Walk,” a composition for water pitcher, iron pipe, bathtub, goose call, bottle of wine, electric mixer, whistle, sprinkling can, ice cubes, two cymbals, mechanical fish, quail call, rubber duck, tape recorder, vase of roses, seltzer siphon, five radios, bathtub, and grand piano. In addition, another monitor plays the John Cage section of Peter Greenaway’s 1983 documentary Four American Composers, which captures unusual live performances, interviews, and Cage’s interstitial “Indeterminacy Stories.” It all makes for a charming show that is likely to surprise Cage devotees as well as those unfamiliar with his oeuvre.
John Cage performs “Water Walk” on I’VE GOT A SECRET
“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time,” Cage once explained. “There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.” The National Academy is making sure there is always something to see and hear with “Chance Encounters,” a series of public programs ranging from book readings and panel discussions to live dance and concerts. Among the special events: On October 28 at 3:00, William Anastasi, who played chess with Cage every day for nearly fifteen years, will read from The Cage Dialogues: A Memoir; on November 10, Joan Retallack, who wrote Musicage: Cage Muses on Words Art Music with Cage, will present “Conversation with Cage”; on December 1, exhibition cocurator Ray Kass will direct a performance of Cage’s “STEPS” by Stephen Addis; and on January 5, Du Yun will perform “Water Walk.”
VIDEO OF THE DAY: “BOW DOWN” BY XAVIER RUDD
“Do you feel like any of this is wrong? Do any of you feel like any of this is wrong? Coz I feel like some of this is wrong,” Australian musician and activist Xavier Rudd declares on “Comfortable in My Skin,” one of thirteen eco-friendly tracks on his seventh studio album, Spirit Bird (SideOneDummy, June 2012). A one-man band who fights for the environment, indigenous cultures, animal rights, and other causes, Rudd again plays a multitude of instruments on the new record, including numerous guitars, keyboards, harmonica, drums, a stomp box, and the yidaki, (didgeridoo). In addition, several songs feature bird and whale samples; one of Rudd’s current causes, and whose call can be heard on Spirit Bird, is the endangered black cockatoo. Rudd is currently participating in an online auction sponsored by the Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Rehabilitation Centre, where he recently visited. He has donated a specially commissioned, signed Tjukurtjarra Didgeridoo on which he has written, “One love / One mob / For country / Arms up / Thank you, Kaarakin!” (The current bid is $2,200; the auction continues through October 31.) Rudd’s world music sound mixes elements of folk, pop, dance, and reggae with African and aboriginal rhythms that often border on New Age before picking up speed, especially on the epic, mostly instrumental ten-minute “Full Circle.” The album ends with Rudd pleading, “Please patience please patience please / I’m creating a dream.” You can join Rudd’s ever-growing movement on October 28, when he plays Irving Plaza with Yeshe.
JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE: IN THE SPIRIT OF WOODY GUTHRIE
Justin Townes Earle will lead Woody Guthrie centennial tribute at Pace on October 26-27 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
PACE PRESENTS
Pace University, Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts
3 Spruce St.
October 26-27, $25-$50, 7:30
www.pace.edu
www.justintownesearle.com
Since his 2008 debut record, The Good Life, Nashville-born singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle has been wearing his heavy heart — and his diverse influences — on his long sleeves. Melding his own American roots-rock blend of folk, rock, jazz, pop, and blues, Earle doesn’t hide that he is the son of Steve Earle and was named for his father’s mentor, Townes Van Zandt. “I hear my father on the radio / Singin’ ‘Take Me Home Again’ / Three hundred miles from the Carolina coast and I’m / I’m skin and bones again / Sometimes I wish that I could get away / Sometimes I wish that he’d just call,” Earle sings on “Am I That Lonely Tonight?,” the opening track of his most recent album, Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now (Bloodshot, March 2012). The follow-up to 2010’s Harlem River Blues and 2009’s Midnight at the Movies, the younger Earle’s latest is an exploration of love and loneliness seen through the eyes of a man still searching for his place in the world. “So, please, baby, just drive / Carry me out into the night / Carry me out into the night / ’Cause I need to know / That there’s something more to this life / That there’s something more to this moment,” he pleads on “Passin’ Through Memphis in the Rain.” Among Earle’s other influences are Bruce Springsteen, Kris Kristofferson, Randy Newman, and Woody Guthrie. On October 26 & 27, Earle will be at Pace’s Michael Schimmel Center honoring that last influence for the special program “In the Spirit of Woody Guthrie,” being held in conjunction with the centennial of Woodrow Wilson Guthrie’s birth. Earle will host two nights of music and stories featuring original songs and covers, with Earle and his specially chosen guests, which include Deer Tick’s John McCauley, the Low Anthem, Joe Pug, and bestselling author and columnist Joe Klein.