Following their appearance at the Ecstatic Music Festival on February 9 at Merkin Concert Hall, Texas experimental droners This Will Destroy You are hanging around for a few more days, playing with Amen Dunes at the Stevens Institute Babbio Atrium on Saturday afternoon in Hoboken, then trekking over to Brooklyn for a just-announced show at 285 Kent later that night with Wires Under Tension ($8, 8:00). Featuring Jeremy Galindo and Chris King on guitars, Donovan Jones on bass and keyboards, and Alex Bhore on drums, TWDY play long, atmospheric instrumentals, which can be found on their 2008 eponymous debut and their 2011 sophomore effort, Tunnel Blanket (Suicide Squeeze), which ranges from the brief “Osario,” clocking in at a mere 2:40, to the 6:33 “Killed the Lord, Left for the New World,” the 8:13 “Communal Blood,” and the 12-minute-plus epic “Little Smoke,” as well as “Black Dunes” (8:16), the ghostly new video of which appears above. While the band’s music might not quite destroy you, it will take you on one far-out, intense sonic adventure.
this week in music
VIDEO OF THE DAY: JOSÉ JAMES
Future Now — José James from Simon Benjamin
Born and raised in Minneapolis but now settled in New York, José James combines jazz, hip-hop, and spoken word in his work, which includes a stint in Ancestor Energy and his widely hailed solo debut, 2008’s The Dreamer, followed by the 2010 double shot of Blackmagic and For All We Know. James, who has been heavily influenced by John Coltrane and has played with such legends as Junior Mance, Chico Hamilton, McCoy Tyner, and Wynton Marsalis, has spent the last year and a half writing and recording his latest project, due in September, No Beginning, No End, songs from which he’ll premiere Friday and Saturday night as part of the Harlem Stage Uptown Nights series at the Gatehouse. He’ll be performing two shows each evening (7:30 & 9:30, $25) with a lineup consisting of Takuya Kuroda on trumpet, Corey King on trombone, Grant Windsor on keyboards, Solomon Dorsey on bass, and Nate Smith on drums, along with special guests Taylor McFerrin and Emily King. “Come get the world’s first view of my new journey,” he writes on his website, “and share Valentine’s weekend with us.”
VIDEO OF THE DAY — LOST IN THE TREES: “RED”
Ari Picker pays tribute to his late artist mother, who committed suicide in 2009, in “Red,” the first video from the upcoming Lost in the Trees album, A Church That Fits Our Needs (Anti-, March 20). The haunting video features sewing machines, leaves and flowers in a cast-iron bathtub, a woman spinning in a photograph, and a ghostly white gown fluttering behind a pianist. The follow-up to the group’s 2010 debut, All Alone in an Empty House, the new disc also includes such tracks as “Moment One,” “Neither Here nor There,” “The Dead Bird Is Beautiful,” and “An Artist’s Song.” “The album attempts to kind of create a space for my mother’s soul, I guess, to go,” Picker explains in a promotional video, “because I can’t really satisfy myself with just thinking that she went to heaven.” The Chapel Hill band will be in New York City to perform a benefit “Live from Home” concert for Housing Works on February 17 with Daytona ($15, 8:00), then will appear at (le) Poisson Rouge on April 11 with Fleet Foxes side project Poor Moon ($15, 7:00).
SONG OF THE DAY — BEAR IN HEAVEN: “THE REFLECTION OF YOU”
In preparation for the release of their third full-length record, I Love You, It’s Cool (Dead Oceans / Hometapes, April 3), Brooklyn-based trio Bear in Heaven has put out two versions of one of the songs on the disc, “The Reflection of You,” the album cut as well as the Lovelock remix courtesy of the Creators Project. You can get a taste of the rest of I Love You, It’s Cool on the band’s website, where the full album is streaming for free — at a speed four hundred thousand percent slower than recorded, so it might not be quite what you expected, but we’ve been mesmerized by it for two days now. Bear in Heaven — singer-keyboardist Jon Philpot, guitarist Adam Wills, and drummer Joe Stickney — will be at the Bowery Ballroom on May 8 and the Music Hall of Williamsburg on May 9 with Doldrums and Blouse.
FIRST SATURDAYS: BLACK MALES DEFYING STEREOTYPES
Chris Johnson and Hank Willis Thomas, with Kamal Sinclair and Bayeté Ross Smith, stills from “Question Bridge: Black Males,” multichannel video installation, 2012 (courtesy of the artists and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York)
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 4, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
The Brooklyn Museum turns its attention to Black History Month for its February First Saturdays program, focusing on the exhibition “Question Bridge: Black Males,” in which Hank Willis Thomas, Chris Johnson, Bayeté Ross Smith, and Kamal Sinclair traveled around the country interviewing 150 black men in a dozen locations and editing the results into a multiscreen video installation. On Saturday night there will be an Action Station where visitors can add their own questions on the topic of identity, a discussion with the creative team, pop-up dances by Renegade Performance Group inspired by the exhibit, an interactive workshop led by “Question Bridge” education director Samara Gaev, and a dance party with DJ Stormin’ Norman featuring songs by black men. In addition, there will be live music by Game Rebellion, curator Shantrelle P. Lewis will discuss her Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts exhibit “Dandy Lion: A Re(de)fined Black Masculine Identity,” hands-on art will help attendees create a mixed-media piece based on Kehinda Wiley’s work, museum guides will lead a tour about defying gender stereotypes, Daniel Bernard Roumain will play parts of his “Symphony for the Dance Floor” with Lord Jamar, Carla Peterson will discuss her book Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City, and the Brooklyn Circus will host a fashion runway show. And the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” “Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin,” “Raw/Cooked: Shura Chernozatonskaya,” “Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919,” “Work of Art: Kymia Nawabi,” and “19th-Century Modern.”
FIRST FRIDAYS: THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975
Angela Davis speaks out about the Black Power movement in compelling documentary
THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 (Göran Hugo Olsson, 2011)
Bronx Museum of the Arts
1040 Grand Concourse at 166th St.
Friday, February 3, free, 6:00 – 10:00
Admission: free
718-681-6000
www.bronxmuseum.org
www.blackpowermixtape.com
From 1967 to 1975, a group of more than two dozen Swedish journalists came to America to document the civil rights movement. More than thirty years later, director and cinematographer Göran Hugo Olsson discovered hours and hours of unused 16mm footage — the material was turned into a program shown only once in Sweden and seen nowhere else — and developed it into The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, a remarkable visual and aural collage that focuses on the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement, a critical part of American history that has been swept under the rug. Olsson and Hanna Lejonqvist have seamlessly edited together startlingly intimate footage of such seminal figures as Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, including a wonderfully personal scene in which Carmichael interviews his mother on her couch. But the star of the film is the controversial political activist Angela Davis, who allowed the journalists remarkable access, particularly in a jailhouse interview shot in color. (Most of the footage is in black and white.) Davis also adds contemporary audio commentary, sharing poignant insight about that tumultuous period, along with Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets, singer Erykah Badu, professor, poet, and playwright Sonia Sanchez, Roots drummer Ahmir Questlove Thompson (who also composed the film’s score with Om’Mas Keith), and rapper Talib Kweli, who discusses specific scenes in the film with a thoughtful grace and intelligence. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is an extraordinary look back at a crucial moment in time that has long been misunderstood, if not completely forgotten. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is screening on February 3 as part of the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ free First Fridays program honoring Black History Month and will be followed by a Q&A with coproducer Joslyn Barnes. There will also be performances by GIF, Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Mahogany L. Browne, and M.C. K~Swift, and the galleries will remain open until 10:00, giving visitors plenty of time to check out the exhibition “Urban Archives: Emilio Sanchez in the Bronx” and the Acconci Studio long-term installation “Lobby-for-the-Time-Being.”
BILL MORRISON — A MODERN MASTER OF SILENT FILM: DECASIA
DECASIA (Bill Morrison, 2002)
World Financial Center Winter Garden
200 Vesey St.
Friday, February 3, free, 7:30
212-945-0505
www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com
www.billmorrisonfilm.com
Experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison’s production company is called Hypnotic Pictures, and for good reason; the Chicago-born, New York-based auteur makes mesmerizing, visually arresting works using archival found footage and eclectic soundtracks that are a treat for the eyes and ears. In conjunction with the upcoming theatrical release of his 2011 film The Miners’ Hymns at Film Forum next week, the World Financial Center is presenting “Bill Morrison: A Modern Master of Silent Film,” curated by WNYC’s John Schaefer as part of the “New Sounds Live: Silent Films/Live Music” series. The free four-night festival began Tuesday with a screening of The Miners’ Hymns, accompanied by a live score performed by the Wordless Music Orchestra, and continued Wednesday with Morrison’s latest, The Great Flood. Tonight features 2010’s award-winning Spark of Being, based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with the big finale on Friday, when Morrison’s masterpiece, Decasia, will be shown. Made in 2002, Decasia is about nothing less than the beginning and end of cinema. The sixty-seven-minute work features clips from early silent movies that are often barely visible in the background as the film nitrate disintegrates in the foreground, black-and-white psychedelic blips, blotches, and burns dominating the screen. The eyes at first do a dance between the two distinct parts, trying to follow the action of the original works as well as the abstract shapes caused by the filmstrip’s impending death, but eventually the two meld into a single unique narrative, enhanced by a haunting, compelling score by Bang on a Can’s Michael Gordon, which begins as a minimalist soundtrack and builds slowly until it reaches a frantic conclusion. The on-screen destruction might seem random, but it is actually carefully choreographed by Morrison, who wrote, directed, produced, and edited the film. As an added bonus, Decasia will be accompanied by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble performing Gordon’s score live, which should make for a senses-shattering experience.