Cosmic Rays Live AV
Six Seventy-Two Variations by Tomonari NishikawaThis is the second variation of the on-going 16mm film projector performance piece, “Six Seventy-Two Variations.” Nishikawa uses a wood carving knife to scratch off the photographic emulsion of the looped film and produces visual and sound as a live performance.Tomonari Nishikawa’s films explore the idea of documenting situations/phenomena through a chosen medium and technique, often focusing on process itself. His films have been screened at numerous film festivals and art venues, including Berlinale, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, London Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Singapore International Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival. In 2010, he presented a series of 8mm and 16mm films at MoMA P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, and his film installation a, Building 945, received the 2008 Grant Award from the Museum of Contemporary Cinema in Spain. He served as a juror for the 2010 Ann Arbor Film Festival, the 2012 Big Muddy Film Festival, and the 2013 dresdner schmalfilmtage. He is one of the co-founders of KLEX: Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film and Video Festival and Transient Visions: Festival of the Moving Image. He lives in Japan/USA, currently teaching in Cinema Department at Binghamton University.Prepared Desktop by Jon SatromJon Satrom’s Prepared Desktop leverages the digital defaults and mundane functions of our technologies. Scripts, presets, and glitches collide as he tickles the edges of his OS.Jon Satrom is an artist, educator, and organizer who problematizes old and new media structures, interfaces, and conventions. He is a kludge artist and a creative problem creator. By day, he fixes things, interviews folks, and creates digital tools at studiothread. By night, he breaks things in search of the unique blips inherent to the systems we use.Satrom performs realtime audio/video noise and new-media (often w/ XTAL FSCK, I PRESETS, & Magic Missile), develops artware (in partnership w/ PoxParty), and has co-programed and experimented with organizational and curatorial systems w/ dirty new-media && glitch comrades (including GLI.TC/H && r4wb1t5!.)He has performed, workshopped, and lectured across spaceship earth (at places like: STEIM, Amsterdam NL; musicacoustica, Beijing CN; transmediale, Berlin DE; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago US; Centro Multimedia, Mexico City MX; SXSW Interactive, Austin, TX US ).ΔV/ΔT by Jonas BersΔV/ΔT is an ongoing single-channel audiovisual composition performed entirely and exclusively in realtime, primarily with tools designed by the artist and built by hand.Pronounced “DELTA V, DELTA T”, ΔV/ΔT is the formula for acceleration — change in velocity divided by change in time.ΔV/ΔT is concerned with connections between the technological singularity, sensory perception and the physical universe; and phenomenological aspects of intense audiovisual stimulus.Jonas Bers is a New York based media artist working with hand-built and hacked audiovisual systems. Bers’ performances use salvaged scientific apparatus, VHS-era editing machines, surveillance equipment, and military surplus devices as tools to generate both sound and video in real-time.Bers has performed and exhibited at Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), The New Digital Art Biennale (Ghent), Vector Hack (Zagreb, Ljubljana), Hack’N’Act (Modena, Ferrara), La Lumière (Montreal), and in numerous NY cultural institutions, notably, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, La Mama, The Chashama Gala, and the Transient Visions Festival of the Moving Image.
Tay Tay Party – Taylor Swift Inspired DJ Dance Party
2 Hour Taylor Swift Inspired DJ Dance Party featuring merchandise raffles at the end including signed items.
NRBQ
NRBQ is Terry Adams, Scott Ligon, Casey McDonough, and John Perrin. “NRBQ”, which stands for New Rhythm and Blues Quartet, has often been called a national treasure, which may be why the band’s music has attracted legions of devoted fans worldwide, including Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Costello, Penn & Teller, Doc Pomus, R.E.M., SpongeBob SquarePants, Michael J. Pollard, Ian McLagan, Steve Earle, Drew Carey, and Nick Lowe, among many others. NRBQ songs have inspired cover versions by Bonnie Raitt, Los Lobos, Darlene Love, Dave Edmunds, She & Him, Widespread Panic, Yo La Tengo, and more.The group served as the unofficial “house band” for The Simpsons for Seasons 10-12. They appeared as zombies in George Romero’s movie Day of the Dead. They have appeared at the Berlin Jazz Festival, the Grand Ole Opry, and Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival. In their 50+ year career, NRBQ has released almost as many albums, including a series of critically acclaimed titles in the past decade, among them Keep This Love Goin’ (2011), Brass Tacks (2014), and the 5-disc, 50-year retrospective, High Noon (2016). Of the brand-new studio album Dragnet, released at the end of 2021, Bill Bentley in Americana Highways says, “They play with such startling and powerful simplicity, a style that must be earned and not learned,” while Uncut says, “[it’s] as though the history of 20th-century popular and unpopular music has gone through thorough, playful distillation.”Website | Facebook | Soundcloud
The Weight Band feat. Members of The Band & Levon Helm Band
This is a seated show.Performing original songs as well as classics of The Band, The Weight Band is led by Jim Weider, a 15-year former member of The Band and the Levon Helm Band. The Weight Band originated in 2013 inside the famed Woodstock barn of Levon Helm. Weider was inspired by Helm to carry on the musical legacy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group.On their new album, Shines Like Gold, The Weight Band presents a dynamic set of classic Americana that draws upon roadhouse rock, funky swamp pop, blues, country soul and folk music. Composed of band leader, renowned guitarist Jim Weider (The Band, Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble Band, Jim Weider Band), keyboardist Brian Mitchell (Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble Band), bassist Albert Rogers (Jim Weider Band, Jimmy Vivino), drummer Michael Bram (Jason Mraz) and keyboardist Matt Zeiner (Dickey Betts), the veteran quintet shares a deep appreciation and knowledge for this music, which Weider describes as the “Woodstock Sound.” The Weight Band continues to serve as its torchbearer, with Shines Like Gold representing a sublime example of these masterful roots musicians at work.The Weight Band recorded Shine Like Gold live at Clubhouse Studios in Rhinebeck, NY, over four days – with minimal rehearsal during the height of the pandemic in 2020. Producer Colin Linden, an award-winning musician and Weider’s longtime collaborator and co-writer on several of the album tracks, was in Nashville. The arrangement, however, worked out perfectly, according to Weider. “He had a big hand and footprint on this record. Weider added, “We go back, so there is a comfortableness working with him.”In 2017, The Weight Band performed on the PBS series Infinity Hall Live. The following year, their self-produced debut, World Gone Mad, was released to strong reviews. Billboard called it “excellent” while Goldmine Magazine hailed World Gone Mad as one of the year’s best indie albums. Most recently, the Weight Band put out Acoustic Live in 2021. This 11-track album features five songs recorded at the Big Pink on October 25, 2019, and six songs recorded the following night in Levon Helm’s barn/studio. Performances include memorable versions of “World Gone Mad,” Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” Jerry Garcia’s “Deal,” and several Band covers.The Weight Band’s origins are tied to Woodstock and some of its most famous inhabitants, The Band. Weider, a Woodstock native, served as The Band’s lead guitarist from 1985-2000, following Robbie Robertson’s departure. In the late 00s, he replaced Jimmy Vivino in the Levon Helm Band, which already included Mitchell. The connections extend further, as Rogers shared the stage with Helm and Hudson while in The Jim Weider Band and Bram drummed in the Chris O’Leary Band, an off-shoot of Helm’s band The Barnburners.Following Helm’s death in 2012, Weider performed a few “Songs of The Band” concerts, which included Vivino, Byron Isaacs, Randy Ciarlante and Garth Hudson. The shows were so well received that Weider started the first version of The Weight Band with Ciarlante, Isaacs, Mitchell, and keyboardist Marty Grebb. Over the next several years, the group shifted from playing mainly Band songs to their originals.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
Joe Pug
A singer-songwriter known for his lyrical acumen and plaintive harmonica style, Joe Pug dropped out of college and moved to Chicago where he worked as a carpenter before breaking into the city’s music scene. Since 2008 he has released a string of critically-acclaimed albums and toured heavily in the U.S. and abroad. Paste Magazine wrote of his music: “Unless your surname is Dylan, Waits, Ritter or Prine, you could face-palm yourself to death trying to pen songs half as inspired”.He has toured with Steve Earle, Levon Helm, The Killers, Justin Townes Earle, Sturgill Simpson, and many others. He has appeared at Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, and The Newport Folk Festival. His music has appeared on NPR’s “Prairie Home Companion” and “Mountain Stage”. His music has been released by Lightning Rod Records, which features an alumni roster of Jason Isbell, Billy Joe Shaver, and James McMurtry.Additionally, he is the creator and host of the popular podcast The Working Songwriter.Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Mdou Moctar
Prodigious Tuareg guitarist and songwriter Mdou Moctar boldly reforges contemporary Saharan music and “rock music“ by melding Eddie Van Halen pyrotechnics, full-blast noise and guitar shredding, field recordings, drums rhythms, poetic meditations on love, religion, women’s rights, inequality and Western Africa’s exploitation at the hands of colonial powers to rip a new hole in the sky with the Afrique Victime album.Mdou Moctar’s home is Agadez, a desert village in rural Niger. Inspired by YouTube videos of Eddie Van Halen’s six string techniques and traditional Tuareg melodies, he mastered the guitar which he himself built and created his own burning style. A born charismatic, Mdou went on to tell his story as an aspiring artist by writing, producing & starring in the first Tuareg language film: a remake of Purple Rain called Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai – which translates to “Rain The Color Of Blue With A Little Red In It”, winning the approval of his family and his community. The word and the sound travelled across West Africa via mobile phone data cards, a popular form of local music distribution. Gruelling DIY world tours and albums on the independent US label Sahel Sounds followed, including 2019’s landmark Ilana: The Creator album that earned Mdou Moctar an ecstatic international audience.Afrique Victime is result of the combined efforts of Mdou and the members of the band that shares his name. Mdou’s crucial collaborator is Ahmoudou Madassane, who’s been his rhythm guitarist since 2008- their two guitars are an alchemical combination. As a songwriter, producer and recording artist Ahmoudou is the premier musical ambassador to Tuaregs in Niger, empowering young musicians with instruments, recording opportunities, and visas. Masassane helped form the revolutionary first woman-fronted Tuareg guitar band Les Filles De Illighadad, whose debut album and tours caused an international sensation in 2019.The band‘s youngest member is prodigal drummer Souleymane Ibrahim, also a member of both the well-known Niger band Sultanat Star De L’air and the longest running wedding band in Agadez, Etran De L’air. Souleymane’s playing on this album ferociously sets a new standard for the “rock” drumset.Producer & bassist Mikey Coltun flies 20 hours from Brooklyn, NYC, then takes a 28 hour bus ride to reach Agadez so the band can practice and record. With no support from a major label or a manager, they made this journey out of Niger every time they toured. In the past three years, Mikey’s played over 500 shows on three continents as Mdou Moctar’s bassist, road manager, producer/recording engineer, and friend. Coltun recorded and produced Afrique Victime around the band’s travels in 2019- in studios, apartments, hotel rooms, venue backstages, and in field recordings in Niger.Recording and honing songs as a touring outfit forged a livewire new sound, and If Ilana was a late ’60s early ’70s ZZ Top and Black Sabbath record – Afrique Victime is mid ’70s to early ’80s Van Halen meets Black Flag meets Black Uhuru. The ferocity of Moctar’s electric guitar and the band’s hypnotic rhythm section are on awe-inspiring display on songs like “Chismiten” and the mournful yet incandescent title track.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Sueco
Sporting signature spectacles under a loose mane of wild long hair, Sueco practically drips attitude. The gold-certified Los Angeles-based singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist channels the spirit of nineties pop-punk through a 21st century lens, tapping into the unpredictability of hyperpop, the catharsis of hardcore, and a whole lot of hip-hop finesse. His debut single “Fast” blew up in a big way during 2019. It captured #1 on TikTok, #1 on Spotify’s Viral 50 — Global, and #1 on the Viral 50 — US, reached gold status, and attracted Offset and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie for its high-powered Official Remix. On the heels of his first full-length project MISCREANT, he teamed up with Ty Dolla $ign, Wiz Khalifa, and Lil Yachty for “Speed Of Life,” Papa Roach on “Swerve” [feat. FEVER 333 & Sueco], and Illenium on “Story Of My Life” [feat. Sueco & Trippie Redd]. Along the way, he kicked off his next chapter, embracing his earliest influences with producers and cowriters such as John Feldmann [Machine Gun Kelly, Avril Lavigne, Jxdn, 5SOS] and Colin “DOC” Brittain [5SOS, Papa Roach]. He served up “PRIMADONA,” “SOS” [feat. Travis Barker], “Sober/Hungover” [feat. Arizona Zervas], and “Paralyzed.” Spotify’s “New Music Friday” plugged the latter, and it marked his first entry on Billboard and Rolling Stone charts, tallying 56 million Spotify streams. After generating nearly 1 billion streams and receiving praise from the likes of Rolling Stone, NYLON, Alternative Press, Billboard and OnesToWatch, he does the most punk thing of all and encourages everyone to sing and scream along on a series of singles for Atlantic Records in 2022 led by “Loser.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud | TikTok
Deli Girls, Kill Alters
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47 Eyez on Me & Late Notice present: Above the Clouds
47 Eyez On Me and Late Notice present “Above the Clouds”, an immersive and captivating performance by two of Raleigh’s up and coming collectives. 47 Eyez On Me, an independent record label and art collective based in NC has grown to encompass creatives from all backgrounds and skill sets. The collective features musicians of all genres from hip-hop and jazz to latin reggaeton. This past November, 47 Eyez On Me opened up for Waka Flocka Flame at a sold out NC State event in the heart of campus. The group has also performed alongside the talents of rising local act Tia Corine.Late Notice, a high-energy Raleigh-based band known across the state for their unique blend of rock, funk, hip-hop, and blues. Beginning on a whim in 2021, they have since released three singles, “Breathing Black,” “Hard to follow,” and most recently, “Snowball.” Composed of six best friends, Late Notice passionately shares their love for music, the audience, and each other with each performance.The two groups hope to provide attendants with a fun and enticing performance that will have them wanting more. They aim to match the high energy of the event’s date, 4/20, and soar Above the Clouds in what will be a night to remember. Tickets can be purchased for $7 online and $10 at the door.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
James McMurtry
In James McMurtry’s new effort, The Horses and the Hounds, the acclaimed songwriter backs personal narratives with effortless elegance (“Canola Fields”) and endless energy (“If It Don’t Bleed”). This first collection in seven years, out August 20, 2021 on New West Records, spotlights a seasoned tunesmith in peak form as he turns toward reflection (“Vaquero”) and revelation ( closer “Blackberry Winter”). Familiar foundations guide the journey. “There’s a definite Los Angeles vibe to this record,” McMurtry says. “The ghost of Warren Zevon seems to be stomping around among the guitar tracks. Don’t know how he got in there. He never signed on for work for hire.”The Horses and the Hounds is a reunion of sorts. McMurtry recorded the new album with legendary producer Ross Hogarth (John Fogerty, Van Halen, Keb’ Mo’) at Jackson Browne’s Groovemaster’s in Santa Monica, California, a world class studio that has housed such legends as Bob Dylan (2012’s Tempest) and David Crosby (2016’s Lighthouse) as well as Browne himself for I’m Alive (1993) and New Found Glory, Coming Home (2006). McMurtry and Hogarth first worked together 30 years ago, when Hogarth was a recording engineer in the employ of John Mellencamp at Mellencamp’s own Belmont Studios near Bloomington, Indiana. Hogarth recorded McMurtry’s first two albums, Too Long in the Wasteland and Candyland, for Columbia Records and later mixed McMurtry’s first self-produced album, Saint Mary of the Woods, for Sugar Hill Records. Another veteran of those three releases, guitarist David Grissom (Joe Ely, John Mellencamp, Dixie Chicks), returns with some of his finest work.Accordingly, the new collection marks another upward trajectory: The Horses and the Hounds will be McMurtry’s debut album on genre-defining Americana record label New West Records (Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Lucinda Williams, John Hiatt, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Buddy Miller, dozens more).“I first became aware of James McMurtry’s formidable songwriting prowess while working at Bug Music Publishing in the ’90s,” says New West president John Allen. “He’s a true talent. All of us at New West are excited at the prospect of championing the next phase of James’ already successful and respected career.” McMurtry perfectly fits a label housing “artists who perform real music for real people.” After all, No Depression says of the literate songwriter’s most recent collection, Complicated Game: “Lyrically, the album is wise and adventurous, with McMurtry — who’s not prone to autobiographical tales — credibly inhabiting characters from all walks of life.” “[McMurtry] fuses wry, literate observations about the world with the snarl of barroom rock,” National Public Radio says. “The result is at times sardonic, subversive and funny, but often vulnerable and always poignant.”His lauded storytelling — check out songs such as “Operation Never Mind” and “Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call” on The Horse and the Hounds— consistently has turned heads for decades now. “James writes like he’s lived a lifetime,” said John Mellencamp back in 1989, when Too Long in the Wasteland hit the Billboard 200. “James McMurtry is one of my very few favorite songwriters on Earth and these days he’s working at the top of his game,” says Americana all-star Jason Isbell.Website | Twitter | Facebook
