Cave

Cheer Accident

Chicago’s Cheer Accident started as a post-no-wave weirdo band typical of the Skin Graft roster, but of late, they’ve been doing some unrestrained pop and rock. They even have harmonized vocals and an occasional horn. This isn’t to say they’re commercializing – their songs are just as complex as ever, and there’s still a hint of discordance beneath the shimmering new sound.

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Jon Rose playing Australian electric fences

I recently caught Australian violinist/sound artist Jon Rose at Red Room in Baltimore. He used a motion-sensitive rig to his bow to manipulate sounds on a laptop while he played along. It was a very intense set. Among many other endeavors, Rose has been working on the ongoing Fence Project where he ‘plays’ the wire fences scattered across his home country.

Virus

People have drawn comparisons between Virus and Talking Heads. The Norwegian trio surely incorporates a lot of jazz, experimental, and metal (the band is a supergroup of sorts with ties to bands like Satyricon, Aura Noir, and Inferno) elements, but their distinct gothic rock sound has very little connection to David Byrne and company. That’s not to say that it doesn’t rule.

Hooded Menace

I had to put up with some seriously obnoxious jocks and drunken highschool kids at a recent show featuring flavor-of-the-moment acts that did the whole ecstatic, 80s electro thing that’s so popular these days. Lots of fluorescent colors. I had to blast some death freaking metal when I got home, and Hooded Menace fit the bill perfectly with their doom-leaning, aural assault. Nothing pisses me off more than tepid, uninspired music, and nothing makes me feel more alive than real, gut-wrenching, skull-pounding, giddily sinister heavy metal.

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Anthony Lister

The bad boy persona in the art world is still alive and well in Australian-born painter and installation artist Anthony Lister. Posing for most photos slumped below his work, cigarette dangling from his lips, Lister is the latest in a long line of somewhat deviant figures in the art world. His work, which generally features superheroes — ‘misguided role models,’ as Lister puts it — has a jerky geometry to them, yet simultaneously a gestural quality reminiscent of 80s art deco, fitting with Lister’s ‘impulsive genius’ image and suggesting a bit of a nod to the cocaine-dusted, heroin-soaked downtown New York scene of 30 years ago. Read more

Hipsters on Food Stamps

Heeb magazine founder Jennifer Bleyer recently interviewed me for an article about young creative types on food stamps. The editors at Salon.com decided that I am a hipster. I don’t really know what that means. Judging by the comments that the article generated, I’m some sort of lazy bum who can’t give up my artisinal chevre. I don’t need to go into detail defending my food choices, but all I’d like to say is that I try to buy healthy foods at the lowest prices. I never eat out. I love to cook, and I really need to control what goes into my food, so I cook every meal for myself. I often share with friends. I want to be healthy and I want my friends to be healthy because none of us have health care. Read more