this week in music

DELFT BLUES: ARTS AND LIVE JAZZ

Heleen Schuttevaêr will lead free jazz shows at the Holland Tunnel Gallery as part of 5 Dutch Days celebration of art and music

Holland Tunnel Gallery / Stairmasters
61 and 59 South Third St., Brooklyn
Friday, November 19, 5:00 – 8:00
Saturday, November 20, and Sunday, November 21, 3:00 – 7:00
718-384-5738
www.5dutchdaysnyc.org

As part of the 5 Dutch Days celebration continuing across all five boroughs through Sunday, honoring the rich Dutch cultural heritage in New York, the Holland Tunnel Gallery / Stairmasters in Brooklyn will be hosting a series of free live jazz concerts along with the exhibit “50 Artists Reinventing Delft Blue Pottery.” In conjunction with the four hundredth anniversary of trading between the Netherlands and Japan, the three-story space will be displaying ceramic works by more than one hundred artists, including Marjolijn van den Assem, Ka-Kyung Cho, Maartje Folkeringa, Hans van Uden, Nathalie Trovato, Joe Barnes, and Mireille Brouwer, curated by painter Paulien Lethen, whose paintings will also be on view, along with works by Jan Mulder. In addition, Dutch jazz vocalist and pianist Heleen Schuttevaêr (who is Lethen’s sister and Mulder’s partner) will be hosting free live music performances all weekend, featuring guitarist Ron Jackson, bassist Joris Teepe, drummer Jean-Clair-de Ruwe, and singer Jula Aimée on Friday, bassist Debbie Kennedy, de Ruwe, pianist Jarrett Cherner, singer Maria Christina, and trumpeter Diederik Rijpstra on Saturday, and Jackson, de Ruwe, Teepe, and singer Jerry Sheldon on Sunday, with many special guests scheduled as well. The 5 Dutch Days festival also includes a look at the restoration of the stained-glass window “Arrival of the Half-Moon,” an open house at the Holland Society of America, a Noonday Prayer tulip planting at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, the Peter Stuyvesant Ball at Pier 60, a scavenger hunt, visits to the Dyckman and Wyckoff Farmhouse Museums and the Lefferts Historic House, workshops, an illustrated lecture, a garden tour, a concert by Sylvan Winds, and other events.

A TRIBUTE TO JIM CARROLL

Barnes & Noble Union Square
33 East 17th St.
Thursday, November 18, free, 7:00
212-253-0810
www.barnesandnoble.com

On September 11, 2009, poet, musician, and famed heroin addict Jim Carroll died at the age of sixty. In celebration of the publication of his posthumous novel THE PETTING ZOO (Viking, November 2010, $25.95), a group of his friends, led by 2010 National Book Award winner Patti Smith and guitarist Lenny Kaye, will gather together tonight at the Union Square Barnes & Noble to pay tribute to the BASKETBALL DIARIES author, who also released such fine albums as CATHOLIC BOY and DRY DREAMS.

BARN OWL

Barn Owl will be at the ISSUE Project Room on November 18

ISSUE Project Room
The Old American Can Factory
232 Third St., third floor, Brooklyn
Thursday, November 18, $10, 8:00
718-330-0313
www.myspace.com/barnowlband
www.issueprojectroom.org

On Barn Owl’s brand-new album, ANCESTRAL STAR (Thrill Jockey, November 2010), San Francisco duo Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras take listeners on a sonic journey through inner space and outer consciousness (or is that outer space and inner consciousness?), creating gorgeous dronescapes that feel as if they are about to explode at any moment. But instead, they remain floating within an ambient darkness that gently rumbles just beneath the soul. Both Caminiti and Porras play guitar, with Porras adding drums and harmonium; other contributors include Marielle V. Jakobsons on violin on two songs, the Norman Conquest (who produced the record) on modular synth on the title track, and one of Caminiti and Porras’s other groups, Portraits, lending Eastern percussion to “Incantation.” Several tracks, including the Western-like “Visions in Dust,” feature background vocals by Caminiti and Porras as well as the Norman Conquest. The names of the songs give you an idea of what you’re in for — “Cavern Hymn,” “Twilight,” “Awakening,” the aforementioned “Ancestral Star” and “Incantation” — as Barn Owl winds them through improvisational experimentation that result in brief, beautiful excursions as well as longer, drifting head trips. It’s not all doom and gloom, but it’s also not high-spirited electronica. Barn Owl will be at the Issue Project Room on November 18 with High Aura’d, Tom Carter, and Loren Connors.

NITZER EBB

Nitzer Ebb will get bodies moving at the Gramercy on November 16 (photo by Emma Cohan)

Gramercy Theatre
127 East 23rd St. at Lexington Ave.
Tuesday, November 16, $33.25, 7:00
www.myspace.com/nitzerebbmusic

While we weren’t part of the initial Nitzer Ebb revolution that began in the mid-1980s with such albums as BASIC PAIN PROCEDURE (1983), THAT TOTAL AGE (1987), SO BRIGHT SO STRONG (1988), and BELIEF (1989), we have quickly fallen under the British band’s powerful techo spell with INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (Artists Addiction, November 2010), their first new record in fifteen years. When they declare “Get down on your knees” on the disc, we can’t help but get down on our knees, and you’ll be hard-pressed not to as well. And when they proclaim, “Left right left / left right left / move that body / move that body,” with the help of Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore, we get right in line. Essex duo Douglas McCarthy and Vaughn “Bon” Harris fill INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, which inexplicably took a while to get released here in the States, with big-sounding electro-pop and thrilling techno beats, although they do slow things down on the beautiful Chili Peppers-esque “Going Away from Me.” “Again and again, I come back,” they sing on “I Am Undone,” and indeed they are back, playing a small club gig that is a far cry from their European arena tour in early 2010 supporting Depeche Mode. Joined by drummer Jason Payne, who first played with NE on the 1995 BIG HIT tour, Nitzer Ebb will be at the Gramercy Theatre on November 16, with Tense and Twitch the Ripper opening up.

YOUTH BRIGADE

Youth Brigade will look back on thirty years of punk Sunday night at the Mercury Lounge

Mercury Lounge
217 East Houston St.
Sunday, November 14, $12-$15, 7:00
www.mercuryloungenyc.com
www.myspace.com/youthbrigadebyo

Thirty years ago, the brothers Stern — Shawn (guitar and vocals), Mark (bass), and Adam (drums) — formed Youth Brigade, a California punk band that went on to record such albums as SOUND & FURY (1982) and TO SELL THE TRUTH (1996) and such tracks as “I Hate My Life,” “Did You Wanna Die,” “Fuck You,” “Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In,” and “Where Are All the Old Man Bars.” Shawn and Mark also founded BYO (Better Youth Organization) Records back in 1982, and the history of the band and the label is captured in the documentary LET THEM KNOW: THE STORY OF YOUTH BRIGADE AND BYO RECORDS (Jeff Alulis, 2009). In honor of their thirtieth anniversary, the band is back out on the road; before heading off on their first European tour in seven years, which will take them to the Netherlands, Greece, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Spain, they’ll be making a highly anticipated stop at the Mercury Lounge on November 14. The festivities begin at 7:00 with a screening of LET THEM KNOW, followed by live performances by TV Tramp at 8:30 and the Scandels at 9:10 before the headliners take the stage at 10:00. Just be ready for YB to rip up the halls and tear down the walls, and beware that pool of blood on the dance hall floor. . . .

ZERO FILM FESTIVAL

November 13 & 20, Nutroaster Studios, 120 Ingraham St., Brooklyn, $12-$15, 7:00
November 14-19, Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen St., $5 donation
November 13-20
www.zerofilmfest.com

The Zero Film Festival was founded by Richard Hooban as a platform to show truly independent, self-financed works. Now in its third year, the festival gets under way tonight with an opening party that includes two blocks of short films, four cinematic installations, visually enhanced live performances by Oberhofer, Sherlock’s Daughter, and Asobi Seksu, and a dance party with DJ Dmitry and free booze. The festival then continues at the Invisible Dog Art Center November 14-19, with screenings of international shorts, features, and special installations that the programmers promise “you will not see anywhere else.” The November 18 slate includes visually enhanced performances by Dirty Churches, Paradise Band, and Contradia. The festival concludes on November 20 with an awards ceremony, a DJ set by Bear in Heaven, a dance party with DJ Morsy and DJ Scallywag, and visually enhanced performances by Natureboy and School of Seven Bells. Admission to the opening and closing parties are $12 in advance, $15 at the door, while all other screenings request a $5 donation. This is a great opportunity to see lots of fascinating films as well as see some hot up-and-coming bands in one-of-a-kind settings.

GRINDERMAN

Grinderman will feature songs from its bold new disc at the Best Buy Theater on November 14 (photo by Deirdre O'Callaghan)

Best Buy Theater
1515 Broadway at 44th St.
Sunday, November 14, $37.50, 8:00
212-930-1950
www.myspace.com/grinderman
www.bestbuytheater.com

“Come on, baby, blow my mind!” Nick Cave proclaims on “Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man,” the opening track on GRINDERMAN 2 (Anti-, September 2010). The fifty-three-year old Gothic renaissance man may be asking his baby to blow his mind, but he is sure to blow listeners’ minds on the second album from his side project, Grinderman. Again featuring Bad Seeds Warren Ellis on various stringed instruments, Martyn P. Casey on bass, and Jim Sclavunos on drums, Grinderman does it bigger and louder — and better — than on their debut disc, which was released in April 2007. GRINDERMAN 2 features nine mind-blowing tunes, from “Worm Tamer” and “Palaces of Montezuma” to “Bellringer Blues” and the deceptively titled “Kitchenette.” Cave’s morbidly wicked sense of humor shines on such tracks as “Heathen Child,” as when he sings of the title character, “Got a little gun / Sitting in the bathtub / Having some fun,” and on the aforementioned “Mickey Mouse,” on which he declares, “Try not to wake the executioner / He’s sleeping with a fireman’s axe / He leaves his glass eye on the pillow / And his dentures floating there in a glass.” Cave has been enjoying one hell of a decade; he wrote the screenplay for the 2005 Western THE PROPOSITION, released the 2009 novel THE DEATH OF BUNNY MUNRO, composed the soundtrack for numerous films with Ellis (THE PROPOSITION, THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, THE ENGLISH SURGEON, THE ROAD), and wrote the score, again with Ellis, for Gísli Örn Gardarsson’s theatrical productions WOYZECK and THE METAMORPHOSIS, the latter of which arrives at the Brooklyn Academy of Music November 30 – December 4. Grinderman will be playing the Best Buy (formerly Nokia) Theater on November 14, with Armen Ra opening.