“Long about ten I’ll be flying high/ Rock on out unto the sky/ But I don’t care if I spend my dough/ Tonight I’m gonna be one happy soul/ I’m gonna rock it up/ I’m gonna rip it up/ I’m gonna shake it up, gonna ball it up/ I’m gonna rock it up and ball tonight.”—A song sung by Little Richard but written by Robert Blackwell and John Marascalco.Marascalco and Blackwell were two important early proponents of the rocanrol sound. Blackwell was the first producer to record Richard; Marascalco also wrote “Good Golly Miss Molly” and later collaborated with the mysterious Harry Nilsson. The two spent their lives looking for, recording and distributing the new sounds they heard all over the nation, deeply influencing the genre and its associated lexicon.Basically you can thank these two dudes for being able to say you are going to rock out, that you’re a balla, and so on and so forth. Which reminds me to remind you: Check out this week’s concert preview selections for hints on how to manifest the stuff going on in that important first paragraph.
Show Up!: Thursday
La Fin Absolute du Monde
Courtesy of the artist
On Thursday, June 23, Low Spirits (2823 Second Street NW) is the site of a synthetically realized sonic situation that relies (mostly) on darkness for its Sturm und Drang. The atramentous output of La Fin Absolute Du Monde circles, sometimes anxiously, other times languidly—as if momentarily sated, around a dark binary star composed of husband and wife duo Cyndy and Jason Myles. The classically trained Cyndy Myles adds a sharp formalism to the crashing, careening experimentation that Jason Myles worked on developing for years before he met his favorite instrumentalist in 2009. Together the two make music that is horrifically and sometimes voyeuristically alluring, like a highway accident or a domestic disturbance at your neighbor’s run-down house. A band from the shadowy subculture known as the Noctivigant Collective—who are apparently adherents of of Gnosis and ambient tuneage (let my pet goat know if I’m wrong about this by the way, he told me it was so)—will also be represented at the evening ritual. The name of those ones is ia~mt~hi~ng, in case you want to know. Obviously they are not phonies. Bluesy stoner-rock stalwarts Marsupious begin the evening’s stygian discourse. A Lincoln is the only sacrifice you’ll have to make to enter unto this great 21+ gig.
Show Up!: Friday
AMIT
Courtesy of the artist
The London music scene is notable for a world-spanning spectrum of influences. The grungy guitar of Northwestern America got the English treatment in the ‘90s and before that, the Caribbean was a deep source of inspiration for musicians making their home on the sceptered isle. “Jamaican Sound Systems” perfected and then deconstructed already potent and postmodern forms—dub and dubstep—to create musical languages that can be deciphered with dance. Among the latest proponents of such forays into groovy gamboling is a fellow known as AMIT. He’ll make an appearance at Sister (407 Central NW) on Friday, June 24. A south-Londoner, AMIT uses his knowledge of dubstep, infuses those aesthetics with middle-Eastern accents, adds the glitchiness of modern urban life to the mix and calls it absolutely fantastic. Clearly his better angels at the Beeb agree; BBC listeners have consistently voted AMIT best producer and most listenable single-releasing artist in the UK. His combination of deft subsonic dropbeats, panoramic delay and tendency to let things roll at 174 bpm have established AMIT as the king of where EDM goes from here. Five bones in advance or 10 at the door will get the riddim going in your bones at this 21+ techno partay; it begins at 8pm.
Show Up!: Saturday
Let me be clear. Paul Oakenfold didn’t invent EDM music in the ‘90s. He actually came up with the whole schmear while celebrating his birthday in Ibiza in the late 1980s. Under his aegis acid house music became a thing and though folks weren’t quite ready for the sound and its trance-y, trippy implications back then, by the time the mid-90s rolled around, everyone was doing it. And it’s all Paul Oakenfold’s fault (though I’m sure the folks who manufacture Vick’s Vapo-Rub and rainbow-colored, knee-high toe socks were also somehow involved). In any case, Oakenfold brings his multi-dimensional sonic suitcase to The Stage at Santa Ana Star Casino (54 Jemez Dam, Bernalillo) on Saturday, June 25, for a show that deftly positions the word “trance” in a pulsating poetic couplet alongside the word “dance.” Oakenfold’s done it all, from hosting the “Theatre of Madness” in the aforementioned Spanish rave town to traveling to Southern India for inspiration to pioneering the EDM scene in the Americas. For a mere $20-25 you can witness something wickedly wise that begins with music and somehow ends up with the infinite space inside us all. For those 21+, that’s a pretty trippy break.
Show Up!: Sunday
Bodysnatcher
Evan Dell Photography via Facebook
Take a break from the electronic daisy-like carnival you’ve created during the last three days of experiential listening by checking out a for realz black metal deathcore show Sunday, June 26, at the Co-Op (415 Central NW). That’s when Spite and Bodysnatcher arrive at the above noted venue, remove their human suits to reveal something entirely sinister underneath, and then jam the fuck out, darkly and decisively. Spite is a five-piece deathcore ensemble from the Bay Area in Califas. Their sound is necessarily apocalyptic, filled with Satanic references, growling, cussing vocals punctuated by brutally precise percussion and churning, melodically limited, but sometimes soaring guitar passages. Bodysnatcher, from Florida, refers to their work as “beat down metal,” and works through visceral tuneage such as “Facedown in Filth” and “Soul Sucker” as if their goal was to burn down and poison everything in their path, using only their instruments, amps and attitudes. This all ages invocation of what teenagers think the occult arts might sound like if only it were available for purchase costs but $10. The soul you leave behind is another matter, but just in case you go, things get unleashed at 6pm.
